# Offering, cohort and trail: what the difference is

> The three pieces behind every enrolment, what each one does, and why they do not depend on one another.

## What you will get

A settled understanding of the three words that turn up everywhere in the
system. Mixing them up is what slows a school's setup more than anything else.

**One sentence each:**

- **Academic offering** — *what* you sell.
- **Cohort** — *with whom and when* the student studies.
- **Trail** — *several offerings* sold as one package.

## The offering is the product

The course, the school year, the module, the workshop. It lives under
**Academic › Academic Offerings**.

It holds what describes the product: name, type, modality, workload, duration
and base price. It holds no students and no start date — that is the cohort's
job.

![Academic offerings list with four different types and one inactive offering](/Apps/edupay/ajuda/ofertas-lista.png)
*Each row is a product the school sells. The **Tipo** column separates postgraduate, undergraduate, K-12 and free courses.*

## The cohort is the group with dates

It lives under **Students › Cohorts**. It holds a name, an intake period, a
start date, an end date and a status.

**A cohort does not belong to an offering.** They are independent: the same
cohort can take students from different courses, and the same course can have
ten cohorts. What brings the two together is the enrolment.

This usually surprises people, because it feels natural for "2026.1 cohort of
the Management postgrad" to be a child of the course. In EduPay, that connection
exists only in the name you give the cohort.

## The trail is the package

It lives under **Academic › Learning Trails**. It gathers several offerings and
sells them together, with a sequence and an added-up value.

It is for full programmes, study plans, bundles. **If your school sells one
course at a time, you can ignore trails** — they are optional.

## Where the three meet

None of them charges anything on its own. The **enrolment** does, and that is
where the pieces come together:

| The enrolment picks | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| The student | **Students** |
| The product: one offering **or** one trail | **Academic** |
| The cohort | **Students › Cohorts** |
| The price table | **Contracts › Financial Plans** |
| The contract template | **Contracts › Contract Templates** |

Instalments are born from the enrolment.

## Two student lists that never talk to each other

This is the detail that causes the most confusion once everything is set up.

There are **two** ways a student can be tied to a cohort, and they are
independent:

1. **The cohort's list** — whoever you add on the cohort's own screen, or
   whoever arrives through a spreadsheet import. It is what the **No. of
   Students** column counts.
2. **The cohort chosen on the enrolment** — the cohort field inside an
   enrolment.

Neither feeds the other. A cohort can show **0 students** on the list and still
have dozens of enrolments pointing at it.

The cohort's list is for organising the school and for the class environment.
The enrolment's cohort is what counts for the contract and for syncing.

## How you know it worked

> [certo]
> You can answer without hesitating: "what I sell" is the offering, "when and
> with whom" is the cohort, "a bundle of several" is the trail. And you know none
> of the three charges anything without an enrolment.

## If something goes wrong

> [erro]
> **You created a cohort and it does not show up on the enrolment.** Only cohorts
> with the status **Open** are offered.
>
> **You are looking for the cohort's seat count.** It does not exist. The system
> does not track capacity — the school does.
>
> **You are unsure whether you need trails.** If each student buys one course at
> a time, you do not. Trails only pay off when the whole package is the sale.


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https://edupay.estudiosite.com/en/ajuda/day-to-day/offering-cohort-and-trail
2026-08-05