This has been implemented with the following new feature:

Show exactly what parts of a generated schedule don't respect the "Prefer" and "Prefer Not" availability entries

Please note that you still need to use "Prefer Not" (not "Must Not") if you still want non-optimal schedules (with conflicts highlighted). For more info, please see Hard constraints vs. soft constraints.

The part about editing one of the resultant non-ideal schedules can still be done, but needs to be done manually.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Implemented for "Prefer Not"s. Less of a use case for "Prefer"s.

Hello! Thanks for the feedback. This is good stuff.

It's definitely possible to add another preference for "Minimize Bonus Overtime" (or some similarly named item).

In the meantime, one way to handle this is to see students for the entire scheduled session (including the overtime), and bill as a group. Once the student has reached his/her monthly, quarterly, semesterly, or annual target minutes, stop seeing them. Clearly this does not help students with weekly minutes targets, also billing gets more complicated near the end of the month, quarter, semester, or year.

Hi Debbie, thanks for the idea! I tried really hard to present data entry in a grid format for this year, but it didn't work out well.

The fundamental problem with a grid or spreadsheet is the dynamic nature of the data you're entering about your caseload. If I make each row represent a student, then it's hard to represent multiple sessions for that student (parts of a row?). If I make each row represent a session, then data tied to the student (like grade or teacher) will be duplicated on multiple rows.

Further, my biggest struggle: It's poor design to have an entry form that requires multiple scroll bars or doesn't render well on a small mobile phone screen. I'm open to suggestions on how to make the grid/spreadsheet work!