Cashless schools - some help required

[SovietRussia]

Hi all,

 

We are looking at the cashless schools route and trying to do some research:

 

 

1. When opting into a cashless schools system like ParentPay, does it give the ability for parents to still come into school and purchase things via credit card or PoS style?
   
2. If you currently use a cashless schools system, do you sell uniform through it?
   

 

Thanks for any responses I get, its pretty tricky finding any information on this stuff.

 

- SR

[sparkeh]

We are cashless and we use @Schoolcomms

Hi all,

When opting into a cashless schools system like ParentPay, does it give the ability for parents to still come into school and purchase things via credit card or PoS style?

The way we handle this is to have an iPad in reception so parents can login to the schoolcomms site and make the payment.

If you currently use a cashless schools system, do you sell uniform through it?

No, we use the Marks and Spencers uniform shop, parents can buy through that.

[Chris_Cook]

We use parent pay and have a PC setup at reception for parents to use. It doesn't get much use.

 

We have cashloaders to go with our Vericool tills, so kids can still bring in coins and notes and put it on the system that way. We are hoping to move away from that though.

 

You can also print off some sort of token to use at PayPoints in corner shops.

 

We don't do uniform, but we do event tickets and textbooks through parentpay, so I guess its possible.

[Sibrows]

1. When opting into a cashless schools system like ParentPay, does it give the ability for parents to still come into school and purchase things via credit card or PoS style?

 

We allow parents to top up in school via credit card and they then credit the student's account.

 

2. If you currently use a cashless schools system, do you sell uniform through it?

 

Yes, and other items as well (trips & school branded iPad accessories).

 

One word of warning: Our cashless catering is run by an external company who seem to have an uncanny ability to cause no end of pain with issues left to build up for weeks, months in some cases including:

- Students who are eligible for free school meals not showing on the system as eligible even after three remote sessions a site visit from an engineer who proceeded to phone the office while they looked at the issue.

- Incorrect balances showing on accounts.

- Entire year groups not showing up.

I shall avoid naming the company in question but as you may take from the above they can be 'cunning' in their approach

 

We've used them now for 5+ years and there doesn't appear to be much alternatives in the market.

[sonofsanta]

Hi all,

 

We are looking at the cashless schools route and trying to do some research:

 

 

1. When opting into a cashless schools system like ParentPay, does it give the ability for parents to still come into school and purchase things via credit card or PoS style?
   
2. If you currently use a cashless schools system, do you sell uniform through it?
   

 

Thanks for any responses I get, its pretty tricky finding any information on this stuff.

 

- SR

 

Our cashless system is from Nationwide Retail Systems, our online payments are from WisePay.

 

Using the latter, parents can top up via credit card, and girls can then buy uniform using their cashless account in the school shop.

 

We also have one of the school shop tills set up as a cash till, which is a bit of a kludge in the back end (it's a cashless system, after all, it wasn't designed with cash in mind) but it works well in the day to day, and it's only us that ever have to deal with the odd quirk as a result of the setup.

 

Not had a parent turn up and ask to pay on card, to the best of my knowledge, but I suppose if they did we could get them logged into their WisePay to top up, then make the purchase against the student's account - you can look them up without them being present.

 

There's an online uniform shop as well, I think that's a local company, and they can order for delivery to the shop and pick up on site.

 

And bearing in mind the post above - NRS support have always been very good (as have WisePay).

Edited March 27, 2015 by sonofsanta

[sparkeh]

We've used them now for 5+ years and there doesn't appear to be much alternatives in the market.

Really? A few have come up already?

[SovietRussia]

Thank you all for your comments - we wouldn't be hopefully looking to move to an external one, rather our own built in-house system - keep being given feature requests and then wondering, does anyone else actually do this...

 

Again thank you - some invaluable research here!

[fiza]

We allow parents to top up in school via credit card and they then credit the student's account.

 

 

 

Yes, and other items as well (trips & school branded iPad accessories).

 

One word of warning: Our cashless catering is run by an external company who seem to have an uncanny ability to cause no end of pain with issues left to build up for weeks, months in some cases including:

- Students who are eligible for free school meals not showing on the system as eligible even after three remote sessions a site visit from an engineer who proceeded to phone the office while they looked at the issue.

- Incorrect balances showing on accounts.

- Entire year groups not showing up.

I shall avoid naming the company in question but as you may take from the above they can be 'cunning' in their approach

 

We've used them now for 5+ years and there doesn't appear to be much alternatives in the market.

 

We've used the same 'cunning' company for the last 3 years and not come across those problems. We had issues in the first year but that was down to it being a new system and us not knowing the ins and outs of it. Since then, touch wood, alls been good.

[localzuk]

Hi all,

 

We are looking at the cashless schools route and trying to do some research:

 

 

1. When opting into a cashless schools system like ParentPay, does it give the ability for parents to still come into school and purchase things via credit card or PoS style?
   
2. If you currently use a cashless schools system, do you sell uniform through it?
   

 

Thanks for any responses I get, its pretty tricky finding any information on this stuff.

 

- SR

 

1. Yup. We can take payments over the phone or in person.

2. Yup.

[Andrew_C]

From a parent perspective; please plan for someone to actually do the adding to the "available things to buy" list. Keep getting caught out by odd trips and similar not being available to pay for. Don't know what they use though.

[rad]

Parentpay online payments and NRS Till System.

 

We dont have many issues, any we do have get dealt with via email or on the phone. Happy to talk via PM

[SovietRussia]

From a parent perspective; please plan for someone to actually do the adding to the "available things to buy" list. Keep getting caught out by odd trips and similar not being available to pay for. Don't know what they use though.

 

This will be all integrated into stock management so it keeps itself up to date, with the office staff adding to the stock level when new items come in - always open to human error I know. Interesting about trips is that we are making it so when the student brings his/her letter back they are then enrolled into the trip, this then shows on parents 'dashboard'

[sparkeh]

This will be all integrated into stock management so it keeps itself up to date, with the office staff adding to the stock level when new items come in - always open to human error I know. Interesting about trips is that we are making it so when the student brings his/her letter back they are then enrolled into the trip, this then shows on parents 'dashboard'

Interesting, we are paperless as well, so letters about trips are emailed to parents, once they pay for a trip they are counted as being on the trip with parental consent. Just thinking about whether your way is better.

[Disease]

We swapped from Easytrace to Vericool last summer and all I can say is it's been like a breath of fresh air, great service any problems are dealt with quickly, can not recommend them enough. We use ParentPay for online payments.