Parent mail type services.

[wesleyw]

There's schoolpost too decent price as well compared to some we've looked at!

[Nuttyprof]

Thanks for the corrections John and apologies for providing incorrect information. We don't use ParentPay and we have only seen a demo (which clearly was not as good as it should have been!)

As I said in my post, the decision for us has been made to go with +Pay and this is largely because we already use ParentMail (although the product is also much nicer to use IMHO - intuitive, user-friendly etc for the office).

I should also have provided some cost comparisons in my last post for a more complete answer so I've shown these below;

Transaction charges

Consumer credit cards: ParentPay 1.55% + 10p per transaction (+Pay 1.65% with no extra transaction charge)
Consumer Debit Cards: ParentPay 32 pence per transaction (+Pay 32 pence per transaction)

ParentPay offer Paypoint where parents can top up cards using cash in post offices (+Pay doesn't offer this yet as they think it it too expensive (rates) for schools, but will add it if there is demand (Mr Temple comment again)
+Pay offer PAYPAL for parents (rate 1.9% + 20 per transaction) - ParentPay don't offer PAYPAL.

There's not a lot between the two in terms of 'per transaction/ costs, but +Pay will be marginally cheaper for credit card payments.

With regard to subscription costs

+Pay can only be used with ParentMail (it's embedded into the product).

For a typical school of say 300 students, ParentMail +Pay will cost £698 per annum
For the same school using ParentPay, it will cost £700 in year 1, and then £500 in year 2 onwards (based on £1 per pupil, £200 annual license and £200 setup in 1st year).

For a larger school

1000 pupils --> +Pay £1398 per annum / ParentPay - £1400 in Year 1, followed by £1200 per annum thereafter.

2000 pupils --> +Pay £1998 per annum / ParentPay - £2200 in Yeal 1, followed by £2000 per annum thereafter.

These are published list prices but I'm sure discounts for group purchases will make the prices above cheaper. Looks to me that +Pay (being the newcomer) have set their prices to be competitive with ParentPay but that may be the cynic in me ;-) When you take into account +Pay slightly lower transaction charges for credit cards ... there's nothing between them as far as price goes.

Hope this info is useful.

Amanda.

[marshharrier]

Amanda,

We also recently ordered +Pay having studied the options.

It was a strange choice of ..... "whether to choose the established 'comms' player who are moving into the 'payments' space, or the established 'payments' player moving into the 'comms' space?

Both of these products (in my opinion) play to their historical strengths at the moment and it will be interesting to see how things develop.

For us, the fact that we already had 90% of our parents registered with ParentMail made the decision an easy one in the end, although I too much preferred the user interface in +Pay.

I'll be running a full analysis of our use of +Pay as it's a new product and I thought it would be useful for others here. Early days yet of course but I'm happy to answer questions from anyone if I can help.

H.

[john]

We decided for now to stick with the two sepearate systems so we use ParentMail for the texting / emailing and ParentPay for payments. We will review this decision in 12 months time and see where we go based on number of transactions with ParentMail on the card types to see what 12 months payments have done for us

[andymacfarlane]

Hi All

We use Tucasi's Schools Cash Office, it is a great product. I am in a school in Portsmouth and I set it up when I started here prior to that I supported 3 Hampshire schools and used it there.

Tucasi Home

It is a great product it's a total EPOS style back office system that deals with all income in schools, they also have an Internet banking module. The advantage of this system is that the admin team sell uniform or process trips or dinners for the pupils in school, then the parents can log in and settle their account over the internet. It can be used to manage lettings as well they have a lettings module.

Haha sorry I sound like a Tucasi salesman, I'm not I just think it's a great product and all the office staff say it's revolutionised the handling of our Income at school and has saved so much time.

The other advantages are the costs it's about half the cost of the others out there, the Credit Card Charge is 1.5% +10p and Debit Cards are 29.5p. The annual service and maintenance charge it £585 for secondary of £360 for primary. I think if you already have Tucasi it's £227 to add the internet payments module.

I know a lot of Authorities have set up links to their finance systems, Hampshire County has done it. So the internet Payments module, updates directly to the counties SAP system as well as the school own Back office system. This is a huge time saver as the transactions don’t need to be entered in twice.

I hope this helps, cheers, Andy

[zag]

I'm just looking at moving from Tucassi to Parentpay or Pay+. I'm sick of the failed local syncs with tucassi.

Does anyone know which one is better? Parentpay or Pay+? I just want a simple web interface that parents can pay for dinner money or school trips on.

[john]

I'm just looking at moving from Tucassi to Parentpay or Pay+. I'm sick of the failed local syncs with tucassi.

Does anyone know which one is better? Parentpay or Pay+? I just want a simple web interface that parents can pay for dinner money or school trips on.

Have you read the ParentPay threads on here, if not I suggest a quick search and read as well as a google about ParentPay problems.

Needless to say I would say Pay+ as I've yet to hear a bad thing about them in my research so far, they are fairly new to the payment system, about a year or so but they have been around longer as a firm with them being ParentMail Support is about 100000x better than ParentPays as well so will certainly not complain about the support I have had on the texting side so yes well worth a look at them