Feel like ParentPayGroup have taken me for a ride!

[Ciadelta16]

Let's get the ridicule out of the way first - Yes, I was mug enough to accept a new 3 year agreement with ESS at the beginning of 2024. We were never in position to move at that particular time, so made sense to accept the new 3 year contract and allow the school the time needed to make changes in 2026.

 

After all the promises of subsequent year's price caps, this year's pre invoice agreement seems to have increased by 2 grand!

 

I need to check a few things to clarify that I am not prematurely spitting blood.

 

1/ This is the first year that PPG have supplied the Pre invoice and as such, it is laid out differently with a breakdown of costs. ESS contracts in previous years have just had the one initial cost under '3 system area for maintained school Primary' - Would anyone be able to confirm that the 3 system area is referring to Sims, FMS and SimsNG? I need to know this to ascertain whether the new invoice is actually as extortionate as I think it is.

 

2/When I signed the new contract, I was under the impression that this NEW contract would replace the original one that I still had a year left to run, meaning that it would start 1st April 2024 and finish 1 April 2027. That would allow us this year and beginning of next to consider our next move. This new invoice though, is stating that my new 3 year contract starts April of this year and runs until 2028. This would mean that I signed up for a continuation contract which would become active once the original contract had finished. Not how I read it at all

 

I now have my doubts that I have been a mug and totally misread this situation. If I have to see out the next 2 years of the 3, then so be it. Not a lot I can do now if that is the case!

Anyhow, Thanks for your time and replies. Be gentle.

[AlistairB1983]

Whilst I'm not in a position to offer any suggestions for #1 or #2, I would add #3:

 

3/ Make sure they're not trying to trick you into signing up for a NEW 3 year contract which would then end in 2028.

 

This wouldn't be the first time they have dressed up a new contract as just documentation for an existing one.

[Aftab_Ahmed]

It's things like this, the reason why we made the decision to jump to BromCom's one stop shop. Where not only have we seen financial efficiencies but great enhancements to workflow processes and a no nonsense approach.

I couldn't deal with all the broken promises from other companies in the end.

[PotNoodleTech]

If theres one thing I have learned it is the longer you delay and delay the worse the contract situation gets as ESS are desperate to try and force-keep as many schools as possible so every time you sign a new contract your eventual exit gets far more difficult.

[TechMonkey]

Get someone to check the contract, depending on the percentage increase it could be a get out of the contract. Get your ducks in a row NOW, ready to move. Don't stick your (as in organisational, not you specifically) head in the sand.

[Quark]

We were told by ParentPay that not only were their prices increasing, they were going to charge us a fee to connect to our new MIS. We decided to ditch it and just move the payments functionality over to our new MIS provider.

[EssentialRug]

We were told by ParentPay that not only were their prices increasing, they were going to charge us a fee to connect to our new MIS. We decided to ditch it and just move the payments functionality over to our new MIS provider.

 

We also were quoted this at £600, eventually lowered to £300 per school. An absolutely ridiculous amount to swap considering all of our other third parties are doing this for free.

[synaesthesia]

We also were quoted this at £600, eventually lowered to £300 per school. An absolutely ridiculous amount to swap considering all of our other third parties are doing this for free.

 

Still considerably under the £1000 per school CRB Cunninghams wanted for a 10 minute job...

[ThomL]

Still considerably under the £1000 per school CRB Cunninghams wanted for a 10 minute job...

 

Soon becomes more than a 10 min job if you start seeing duplicate users in the database. Not that I'm justifying the list cost - I think it should be agreed as an hourly billable with a minimum of a hour.

An impact database with duplicate users and a mess to clean up from a change of MIS_ID took several days to resolve, in this instance £1000 wouldn't look so bad as billed hourly at the £200 rate you're looking at £1400 or so?

 

Another issue I guess - if you only have certain members of the support team technical enough to provide the support needed if things go wrong, a flat cost for the work allows you to book out their whole day to the job if needed - the hourly option I mention you don't know if that team member will be free in an hour, 3 hours, whole day, or just 10 mins for other work in their pipeline.

Edited March 6, 2025 by ThomL

[synaesthesia]

Soon becomes more than a 10 min job if you start seeing duplicate users in the database. Not that I'm justifying the list cost - I think it should be agreed as an hourly billable with a minimum of a hour.

An impact database with duplicate users and a mess to clean up from a change of MIS_ID took several days to resolve, in this instance £1000 wouldn't look so bad as billed hourly at the £200 rate you're looking at £1400 or so?

 

Another issue I guess - if you only have certain members of the support team technical enough to provide the support needed if things go wrong, a flat cost for the work allows you to book out their whole day to the job if needed - the hourly option I mention you don't know if that team member will be free in an hour, 3 hours, whole day, or just 10 mins for other work in their pipeline.

 

Whilst I technically agree with you, morally I don't - their shoddy database isn't the school's problem. Impact is diabolical! (Although in our case it wasn't Impact, it was the cloud based which as far as I know is just remote impact - ESS style "Cloud"! )