Small scale MIS required

[User3204]

Hi,

As part of the schools 'outreach' programmes, we need to store data on students and parents, in the same way we have SIMS do for the school as a whole currently.

The head of outreach has asked if they were able to use SIMS groups for this, but they got a response that was generally 'no', although there was a lot of words used, there was no real reason given. I'm not even sure if this would have worked anyway.

Basically, the outreach people are looking for a way to store the usual stuff:
1. Parents details: name address, email tel number
2. Student details: name, age, special requirements.
3. What sessions they have attended. The outreach run at least one session each holiday within the school, and other sessions at other sites.
4. Attendence of students at these sessions.

But because this is part of a fundraising venture, they charge for this. So they want a web-based portal where parents can pay for these sessions/courses in all the usual ways.

Any ideas ?
I realise the OU has something that does this, and they're using Moodle, so it should be possible.


Currently they're using Excel... yeah, with lots of duplication of info, each session has a sheet in the document, so details are stored here PLUS they are all duplicated into the 'master' sheet.... :yikes:


Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

[penfold_99]

Have a look at adsum4, they have an application that can handle wrap around services that attract fees. It also plugs into payment gateways to parents can pay online.

It can integrate with sims.net as well.

[matt40k]

I thought this would be ideal for Fees Billings\Agora? Or ParentPay or the other 99 third party add-ons.

[User3204]

Hmm...
I obviously didn't explain properly.

They want the web-based front end for signing up for the courses, but they also want the back system too, as these kids aren't part of our school. They run the courses as a way to pull in more students from outside our catchment area, as we're a Grammar school.

We are getting the SCO online payment system for the students that go to our school, so we've asked Tucasi if there is any way to have two databases, one from SIMS, and one from 'somewhere else'.

[matt40k]

Could get another SIMS database for it. I would guess about £500 for another SIMS license.

[User3204]

yep.

That might do it... I didn't think about being able to use a 2nd database on SIMS, but I suppose there's no reason why it wouldn't work. It's probably going to be more than they need (and I'm not sure how we'd go about storing different sessions/courses as opposed to classes), but I can have a check with Capita and see what the pricing and configuration would be.

And then it should be possible to tie a different online payment system to this database...