Manage participants

Open the house from Houses, then look for Participants on its page. Every current resident is listed as its own row, with + Add participant underneath for adding more.

Add a participant

Select + Add participant. A new row opens with:

• Name - required.
• Consumables - a tickbox for whether this person is charged the house’s consumables cost line. It starts unticked on a new row.
• One tickbox per meal the house’s cost-centre set bills, typically Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, each with its own $/week box for charging this one person something other than the house default.
• Is this participant under 21 years old? - answer Yes or No. SILWise will not let you save the row until you answer this.

Answering the age question sets this participant’s payment profile - the record of which Centrelink payments they receive - and opens the payment fields underneath it. See participants and payment profiles for what those fields mean and why the age answer matters.

Select Add participant to save the row, or Cancel to discard it. SILWise will not let a house hold more active participants than its Bedrooms for participants allows. See houses and bedrooms if you need to raise that number first.

What each field changes

• Ticking a meal adds that meal’s cost to the participant’s bill. Untick it and the charge drops off entirely, as if they never eat it there.
• A figure in a meal’s $/week box charges this one person that amount instead of the house default, without changing what anyone else pays.
• Consumables works the same way: ticked adds the charge, unticked removes it.
• The age answer and the payment fields beneath it set the Centrelink benchmark SILWise checks this participant’s charge against, so getting them right is what makes the figures trustworthy.

Edit a participant

Change any field on an existing row, then select Save on that row. If a saved payment no longer matches the saved age answer - for example after someone edited the rate tables - SILWise shows a notice naming what it cleared. Select Save again to keep the fix.

Remove a participant

Select Remove on a row and confirm. SILWise stops charging that person from that point on. A scenario you already saved keeps the figures it was calculated with, so removing a participant does not rewrite history, but every calculation you run afterwards leaves them out.

Removing or adding a participant also changes what everyone else pays. Rent divides across the house’s Bedrooms for participants, but its other shared costs - utilities, consumables and the rest - divide by the number of participants living there instead. See houses and bedrooms for how the two differ.

Change a payment profile

Each participant’s payment profile drives the Centrelink benchmark their charge is measured against, so a wrong profile means a wrong cap on what you can charge them. Change it from the same row: answer the age question again if it needs to change, then set each payment field it reveals. See payment profiles for what each payment line means and how they combine.

What you should see

The Participants section lists everyone actually living at the house, each with the age question answered and a completed payment profile. Once the list is right, run a calculation to see the updated figures.