ParentPay Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 Essentially, once it is setup, it will run on a fully automated, scheduled basis, for any MIS data changes that are relevant to ParentPay and part of the current ParentPay upload set. Schedule can be set on a school by school basis (daily/nightly, weekly etc). A local application talks to ParentPay and to the MIS, much the same as MIS:Sync does today. Main difference is allowing the full automation and scheduling for non-SIMS schools. First release will work on full uploads (as per the current upload process), whereby all data is uploaded and then only the differences imported. A future release, probably later in the Autumn term, will allow either full or delta uploads. delta uploads do the 'differencing' locally and then only upload and import the changes (this just makes for a slightly lower bandwidth usage). Uploads can always be over-ridden, should the school want to 'force' an upload at a specific time.
john Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 Ah at last a product that stops discriminating for those who choose to not be a sheep and follow Capita. Worry's me its taken that long to do when the coding and API, if your paying Serco the right fees that is, isn't that hard to integrate many company's have done so and use the API system so its live and works great, but at least its on it's way which is a starting place just a shame its been so far away. It has been a hard time teaching people to map fields etc and that has been annoying and limited support for non-sims schools was also annoying. As for no more changes to processes thats good but still you did work the other day and have emailed today saying more is coming at the start of September which is wrong, you want to do those changes either in August or October Half term, not the start of September as that is just crazy. ParentPay really needs to learn about its market, 6 week summers = upgrades, 2 week Easter and Christmas = upgrade time, term times = never touch unless its blown up and smoke pouring out of it which is the way we all try to operate on here. 2
CyberNerd Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 Looks like their site is down, or at least under severe load. All that work they did over the summer reassuring us.... Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine. Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off". Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
Soulfish Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 So very glad we've got for sQuid over ParentPay!
NikChillin Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 We use Wisepay and they have been great, their support is great too, fast response and they upgrade the year at no cost, unlike the other company we work with who are dreadful.
Mr_Writer Posted September 6, 2011 Author Posted September 6, 2011 Despite Parentpay's website saying it's still possible to log in, a colleague here just tried to top up her daughters dinner money and she couldn't log in - hopefully the school won't let her daughter starve! Any idea what Parentpay's SLA's are? There must be grounds for compensation given the amount of downtime they've had this year.
trolley01 Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 We have had issues getting on ParentPay all day. And it was ridiculously slow yesterday (minimum of 30 seconds to load any page). Some parents can't get on either. Not the best advert for the school with new year 7's. No matter how much you may tell the parents that it is out of our hands - the parents still blame the school. Wish I knew what their SLA's were, but because you 'Information pages are under maintenance but you can still log in' you can't actually find out anything about their T&C's or SLA. Can't find anything on my email about it either.
elsiegee40 Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 I'm a parentpay parent and can't get the website to load, never mind login at the moment.
rad Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 Parentpay .... They are not at the top of our "friend" list today...
trolley01 Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 Parentpay .... They are not at the top of our "friend" list today... Not sure they will make it today either! Just been trying to log in for 45 minutes and not yet succeeded. Complaints from parents are coming a bit thick and fast.
Tallwood_6 Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 Met by a member off staff as i walked in the door telling me they cannot get on parentpay, this is pretty shambolic stuff.
gaz350 Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 Question is can you get on at silly o'clock? In some ways I am grateful for me and The finace team being overloaded with new stuff and haven't rolled out our cashless catering for 6 months (new building) They've had a new finace package to get used to, academy status and a federation with a primary to sort (add in the joys of new it systems and me signed off by the doc for a week!)
elsiegee40 Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 We have deactivated the external website but the application is still running If you have difficulty, please be patient, we are investigating the issues Fat lot of good this is in the first week of term
CyberNerd Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 Luckily their newsletter told us that employed another 8 of telephone staff as a result of this thread, who just say it isn't working
trolley01 Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 We are continuing to monitor to ensure server resources are allocated where required. We'll send another update later this afternoon on this. Another quote from the same newsletter. Still waiting on the follow up email...
glennda Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 We have a student here who has a receipt for a payment on the site that his dad did last night... no payment on our cashless system!
jcookhgs Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 I raised the issue last summer that there was no dedicated telephone support line for schools support staff (although there is for parents) and you had to email them to request a support call. 1 year on and things are even worse in this first week and the webpage you are forced to use for sending support issues to is down. Progress eh! The email sent out yesterday was a load of bobbins too as the service had been unusable for two days now.
rad Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 I can't comment too much, as this is not in the "private" section of EG
glennda Posted September 7, 2011 Posted September 7, 2011 We have a student here who has a receipt for a payment on the site that his dad did last night... no payment on our cashless system! an update on this - pp blame Cunningham's which is all working...
Mr_Writer Posted September 8, 2011 Author Posted September 8, 2011 (edited) A colleage here (who uses Parentpay and still can't get into their website!) just sent me this link http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/usability-atrocities-parentpay/ This bit made me laugh, but hit's home a bit! Comment by Paul September 7th, 2011 at 4:47 pm BTW….. A quick bit of GCSE Maths…. They claim that they are supported by 2000 Schools. OK….. Here we go….. No of Schools = 2000 Average Number of Pupils per School = 500 Average Amount Held on Account per Pupil per School = £10.00 Therefore: 2000 x 500 x £10.00 = £10,000,000.00 Parent Pay have, in principal, £10 Million in the Bank at any one stage and they can’t have a Website that works! Blimey….. I wish I could run such an inefficient company. I would be a MILLIONAIRE ! Cheers Paul Edited September 8, 2011 by Mr_Writer
john Posted September 8, 2011 Posted September 8, 2011 (edited) A colleage here (who uses Parentpay and still can't get into their website!) just sent me this link Bruce Lawson’s personal site* : Usability atrocities – ParentPay This bit made me laugh, but hit's home a bit! Comment by Paul September 7th, 2011 at 4:47 pm BTW….. A quick bit of GCSE Maths…. They claim that they are supported by 2000 Schools. OK….. Here we go….. No of Schools = 2000 Average Number of Pupils per School = 500 Average Amount Held on Account per Pupil per School = £10.00 Therefore: 2000 x 500 x £10.00 = £10,000,000.00 Parent Pay have, in principal, £10 Million in the Bank at any one stage and they can’t have a Website that works! Blimey….. I wish I could run such an inefficient company. I would be a MILLIONAIRE ! Cheers Paul Do you use ParentPay? If so you would know that money is in the schools banks not ParentPay's, as much as I hate it at present, 4 days and counting of unusableness now (I don't consider it starting to work at like 2/2:30pm to be acceptable when we finish at 3:30pm!) but they won't have that cash in the bank at them, they have holding accounts until its transferred to the schools but it depends on how your setup some are direct with them and have regular delivery of cash and others have it via the LA central bank who then transfer it to schools etc.... an update on this - pp blame Cunningham's which is all working... Oh yes interesting the Cashless Systems I've been talking to for us have all said that a large volume of support calls are PP related not the cashless systems failure which tbh I am very inclined to believe after our experience this week. I certainly think that they need a serious re-think, this is the 2nd year this has gone so wrong. After talking to some others today, they had been told that it was all the schools fault for not doing the roll over in August..... Not the fact that thousands of parents are trying to put money on for little Shaun to have dinner today or big Ric to be able to pay for his new tie he lost or Chris who is trying to help a parent who has lost there logon details and failing with the ParentPay system to get them..... Edited September 8, 2011 by john
glennda Posted September 8, 2011 Posted September 8, 2011 Nope i've been sitting here tonight and our problem appears to be half and half! some of the payments have hit our cashless software but then not be refiled into the accounts - whereas some havn't arrived at all! on the second note of not doing it in august - half our stuff cannot be done till sept 1st anyway!
CyberNerd Posted September 8, 2011 Posted September 8, 2011 on the second note of not doing it in august - half our stuff cannot be done till sept 1st anyway! on a third note, our data manager said the instructions they sent in August were missing out a line, so wouldn't have helped anyway
Banjogirl Posted September 13, 2011 Posted September 13, 2011 (edited) I'm so glad I've stumbled on this forum. I've had loads of problems with parentpay, as a parent, and their service is dreadful. For everything that is wrong they blame the parents or the schools, even the fact that their website broke due to unexpected demand (at the start of term. Who would have thought it?). They won't talk to parents at all and are incredibly rude and unhelpful. They just keep telling me to send an email but they never reply to them! I really hope the school ditches them and goes back to money. I think it's much better for children to see the real coins in their hot little hand and appreciate that when it's gone it's gone, rather than having a seemingly endless supply of money to buy whatever unghealthy delights the school offers them. Just heard from school that it's their cashless till thingy that won't talk to Parent pay, but it seems to me it takes two to tango and both companies should be working to sort out the problem as they seem to have no idea what's wrong and are assuming it's something in the cashless system. I really don't care. I just wish they'd fix it! Edited September 13, 2011 by Banjogirl
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