ParentPay Emailing Details to Pre-Admissions

[DavidYoung]

Hi,

 

Does anyone who uses ParentPay email the login details out to your Pre-Admission students?

 

I spoke to ParentPay today who said it wasn't possible but I find it really hard to believe that no school has wanted to do this before.

 

Thanks

David

[howartp]

Hi David.

 

ParentPay tell you it's not possible because email addresses aren't uploaded for preadmissions.

 

It's a pain to do, but we managed it last year for the first time.

 

Generate your printed letters as normal, then open them with "Open PDFs".

 

Save this PDF (275 pages or whatever your intake is) then use PDF2GO.com to split it into individual Page1.pdf, Page2.pdf, Page3.pdf etc - there's a button at the bottom to download a zip of all 275 individual PDFs.

 

Then I use Powershell and itextsharp.dll with a SIMS export of preadmissions to open each PDF, find the student's name in the PDF, and resave it as AdmissionNo.pdf

 

Then another Powershell loops through and emails them to the parent, or moves them into a subfolder "To Post" if we don't have an email address.

 

Peter

2_EmailParentPayLetters.ps1

1_RenameFilesByBatch.ps1

[DavidYoung]

Thanks. I did do some more investigating and see that MIS:Sync is not picking up the email addresses. I thought we might be able to manually upload the addresses but it won't even let us add it to the records.

 

I think this is completely ridiculous that a program intended to reduce school admin load can't do this simple task and instead causes the workload to increase.

 

I can download the activation codes in a spreadsheet so can do a manual mailmerge but it baffles me that this is required.

[howartp]

If you’re up to messing with MIS:Sync, you can get emails uploaded, but I still didn’t find (I don’t think) a way if emailing.

 

I’ll post the XML format tomorrow.

[howartp]

Ok, so I made a SIMS report to give the following fields, but with Email address instead of Street. (Read on to find out why.)

 

Bloggs

Fred

2007-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

M

999999

F815123456789

7y1

7

Miss Smith

1

Some Street

North Yorkshire

Skipton

BD23 1AA

Free Meal

T

2014-09-01T00:00:00+01:00

White - British

WBRI

No Religion

1

Some Street

North Yorkshire

Skipton

BD23 1AA

 

Then change the header to:

 

Then change header (and matching footer) to:

 

PreReg

...

...

...

 

Then use edit/replace to add a line PREREG to each student.

 

Then use edit/replace to change all 7 to 6

Then use edit/replace to change all 7 to 6 (This might be specific to my school; it allows me to group PreAdmissions in Paxton for printing their ID cards)

 

Then replace with so that their email address appears in ParentPay in their "Street" field - it gets corrected when MIS:Sync runs properly in September, but for now provides a means of storing email address in the PreAdmission table in ParentPay.

PreReg

PREREG

Adams

Carter

2007-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

M

800000

F815236509034

6y1

6

7

[email protected]

North Yorkshire

Skipton

BD23 2QB

T

2014-09-01T00:00:00+01:00

White - British

WBRI

No Religion

36461

 

Now upload the XML file manually via MIS:Sync (not automatically) and you'll have the necessary data in ParentPay for mail-merging out from.

 

Peter

[coolhands]

having googled this exact problem and found this thread, may I be the first to say what a load of sh14e

 

I've just been setting up how emailing (instead of pdf letter) non-activated payers in parentpay, then I find you can't actually do it with pre-admission pupils. What genius designs these poxy systems? bloody sick of these tossy systems nearly every one is absolute carp

[DrBeaker]

having googled this exact problem and found this thread, may I be the first to say what a load of sh14e

 

I've just been setting up how emailing (instead of pdf letter) non-activated payers in parentpay, then I find you can't actually do it with pre-admission pupils. What genius designs these poxy systems? bloody sick of these tossy systems nearly every one is absolute carp

Crap programmers who think schools are cash cows

People who don't or have never worked in schools.

Management who think this is a new nice shiny thing, but give sod all thought to implementation or how effective the system actually is.

[Lonix]

having googled this exact problem and found this thread, may I be the first to say what a load of sh14e

 

I've just been setting up how emailing (instead of pdf letter) non-activated payers in parentpay, then I find you can't actually do it with pre-admission pupils. What genius designs these poxy systems? bloody sick of these tossy systems nearly every one is absolute carp

 

 

Agreed. A simple thing to add from their end, the only think I would say is pester them to add it. If enough schools do it.. maybe just maybe.. they will. When other systems that cost around the same are already doing this.. it does frustrate the school.

 

Considering how much it costs to print and post..

[coolhands]

after googling this problem today, I find out I already replied to it before! Still absolute c4£p

[coolhands]

I can download the activation codes in a spreadsheet so can do a manual mailmerge

 

Question: can anyone point me to where I can download these activation codes from parentpay?

[howartp]

Question: can anyone point me to where I can download these activation codes from parentpay?

 

People > Payers > Scroll to bottom > Open in Excel.

[terrybradford]

Honestly - I have no idea how ParentPay still exist - The most basic tasks are not achievable without over engineering with very large shoe horns just to get basic tasks achieved.

 

I mean come on - why should you have to create a letter to send a parent on setting up their "ONLINE" account, what a waste of time - esp when the information for the email address exists - its extracted from sims and processed then discarded by the sync tool !

 

Parent Pay really need to update their tools and listen to their "tech customers" not just focus on that bank balance.

 

using 3rd party ID's would be another great move - not the overlapping staff and student ID's which they currently use too - it's a 3rd party ID for just this task but yet they don't use it.

 

For Staff sync's they become so involved that I wrote a script to extract them from sims and build the upload file upon single click instead of keep adding every member of staff individually.

 

awful software - awful support - if you don't have it "yet" don't get it "ever"

[ITGuyNW]

I assume this is still the case??

[howartp]

It's not quite as bad as it was; you no longer need the PDFs generating/splitting.

 

Download ParentPay > Payers > Open in Excel - this contains the student name, parent username and parent password.

Then run a report in SIMS to output parent email addresses against pre-admission student names.

 

Then vlookup to combine then mail-merge the results.

 

Peter

[ITGuyNW]

Cheers!

Edited May 1, 2025 by ITGuyNW

[howartp]

Ah, sorry - I'm working from memory because I haven't got back into July/August brain-mode yet.

 

Refer the 5th post above ("Ok, so I made a SIMS report...") - but I think the new Edugeek has stripped the XML tagging.

 

 

You basically need a .xml file looking like this:  (If you have Salamander they can generate the xml for you (tell them to look at South Craven School if they can't find it) then you just need to tweak the headers and optionally edit-replace <RegGroup>7 to <RegGroup>6 and the same for <Year>7 to <Year>6 to keep them separate in ParentPay - they'll autocorrect when term starts.

 

When you upload that (manually in MIS:Sync) it puts the students into PreAdmission, which you can then export the XLS as above.

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SuperStarReport-Enhanced>
  <RecordTypesToProcess>
    <RecordType>PreReg</RecordType>
  </RecordTypesToProcess>
  <Record>
    <RecordType>PREREG</RecordType>
    <AdmissionNumber>123456</AdmissionNumber>
    <ChosenName>Fred</ChosenName>
    <DateOfBirth>2013-12-25</DateOfBirth>
    <free_meal>F</free_meal>
    <Surname>Smith</Surname>
    <UPN>X1234567890</UPN>
    <Postcode>AB12 3CD</Postcode>
    <Gender>F</Gender>
    <ID>67890</ID>
    <RegGroup>6x1</RegGroup>
    <Year>6</Year>
  </Record>
</SuperStarReport-Enhanced>

 

[Edu-IT]

5 hours ago, howartp said:

Ah, sorry - I'm working from memory because I haven't got back into July/August brain-mode yet.

 

Refer the 5th post above ("Ok, so I made a SIMS report...") - but I think the new Edugeek has stripped the XML tagging.

 

 

You basically need a .xml file looking like this:  (If you have Salamander they can generate the xml for you (tell them to look at South Craven School if they can't find it) then you just need to tweak the headers and optionally edit-replace <RegGroup>7 to <RegGroup>6 and the same for <Year>7 to <Year>6 to keep them separate in ParentPay - they'll autocorrect when term starts.

 

When you upload that (manually in MIS:Sync) it puts the students into PreAdmission, which you can then export the XLS as above.

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SuperStarReport-Enhanced>
  <RecordTypesToProcess>
    <RecordType>PreReg</RecordType>
  </RecordTypesToProcess>
  <Record>
    <RecordType>PREREG</RecordType>
    <AdmissionNumber>123456</AdmissionNumber>
    <ChosenName>Fred</ChosenName>
    <DateOfBirth>2013-12-25</DateOfBirth>
    <free_meal>F</free_meal>
    <Surname>Smith</Surname>
    <UPN>X1234567890</UPN>
    <Postcode>AB12 3CD</Postcode>
    <Gender>F</Gender>
    <ID>67890</ID>
    <RegGroup>6x1</RegGroup>
    <Year>6</Year>
  </Record>
</SuperStarReport-Enhanced>

 

If you don't have Salamandersoft, is there a way to do this in SIMS? Also as they don't get a UPN until they are admitted I presume anything can go here?

[howartp]

You should have UPNs from the ATF already; it's the AdmissionNo's that get generated when you admit.

 

The attached report should do most of the heavy-lifting for you but you'll need to tweak the output in Notepad/Notepad++ etc to get it exactly right.

 

(Same attachment, zipped and unzipped)

 

Peter

PPReport.zip PPReport.RptDef

[coolhands]

Getting ready again to do it again this year 👋

 

parentpay still utter shite

 

also they’ve made new helpdesk login which is impossible to login to depending on what link you click so that’s fun too!

 

when is retirement….

[mullet_man]

We moved to Arbor a few years back and we now download a CSV from ParentPay of the pre-admission data, do some work on that to match up with data from Arbor, and then import it into Arbor into UDF fields, and then email out to parents via Arbor using a custom report/mail merge.  It works, takes a bit of work to get all the bits in place, in the past we just use to print the welcome letters and then post them out but since moving to Arbor we've made a decision to stop posting out as the speed and reliability of letters getting to people was shocking.

 

Still no idea why ParentPay doesn't have a simple on import email signup details to parents/carers.