ParentPay: The Ultimate Solution for your School Payments

Imagine a market-leading school payment provider with a customer satisfaction rating of over 95%. Now imagine a system that has been built from the ground up with schools in mind.

That’s us.

At ParentPay, we’re committed to making life easier for schools, staff, and parents, and that’s always been our driving focus. Since 2003, we’ve been at the spearhead of a ‘cashless revolution’ which is happening in schools of all types throughout the UK.

And with 83% of UK schools projected to be cashless in the next 2 years, there are no signs of this slowing down. With concerns over budget cuts, the safety of holding physical cash, and time spent sorting and counting cash, we’ve helped over 12,000 schools find the right solution for their unique needs.

So, are you ready to switch to the UK’s leading school payment provider?

The Right Solution for You

We don’t just do school payments. Our system is designed to make your life easier in every way we can.

Take our user-friendly Trips functionality. Whether you’re navigating the logistical minefield of a high-cost foreign trip, or just planning an afternoon at the local library, ‘Trips’ can lend a hand. We’ve custom-built this module for safeguarding your children, allowing your school to manage consent, emergency contacts, and allergies (as well as payments).

All of this comes together in a comprehensive package that’s easy to set up and quick to use, taking the pressure off your office and teaching staff.

But when it comes to school payments, we’ve always been best in class.

Seamlessly integrating with your cashless tills and MIS, our income collection allows you to easily manage all of the payments that your school receives. With the option to collect money for donations, music lessons, uniform, clubs and more, we can help you to streamline your income collection for just about anything.

We don’t just help you to save time either, our schools have noticed a significant increase in income. Anita Donnelly, Office Staff at Our Lady of Compassion Catholic School in Solihull, said that since they adopted ParentPay, “We have increased our fundraising income by over 180%”. MATs have also seen a growth in online income, with Avocet Multi Academy Trust showing a 55% increase in online payment in their 3 years with ParentPay.

Collecting income is great, but will you still have to manually trawl through the seemingly endless payment items to produce detailed reports?

Not with us. We provide analytics for a range of financial metrics, reporting high-level information across a school group – perfect for MATs and Local Authorities. Whether you require reconciliation at school, year, class, or pupil level, our detailed reports include income type or specific account/cost codes and individual payment transactions.

Spotlight on… Meal Manager

Starting out as a cashless solution for catering and dinner money management, we’re experts in school dinners. With ‘Meal Manager’, our cashless and paperless meal management system, we bring together all aspects of online meal management with no hardware installation.

Our cloud-based system integrates with your MIS to bring pupil dinner orders together with attendance registration, greatly reducing the time it takes to pre-order meals and take attendance. Couple this with our focus on managing allergies and other requirements, and we’ve got a system which safely caters for every child’s individual needs whilst saving you valuable admin time.

Cutting down on kitchen waste is another big concern for school kitchens and caterers. With the ability to order meals up to 10 weeks in advance, Meal Manager lets you plan ahead so that your caterers can buy the right stock to meet the demand.

Take Llandough Primary School, who, since adopting Meal Manager, has said that “We have noticed a big difference to speed and timing, and the meal selection process is much quicker”.

You’re in Safe Hands

But we don’t let our success slow us down. We’ve invested over £5 million over the last 2 years, ensuring that we continue to sit at the top of the pack.

Investing in our software security and data protection is important to us.

We see it as essential to provide top-class software security so that our customers can feel safe in our hands. This is why we continually dedicate investment into technology, infrastructure, and staff to support our dedicated security team.

And this has never been an afterthought. ParentPay has been designed with software security at the front of our minds. We have always delivered end-to-end encryption from your browser right through to the bank.

We are tried and tested. Our systems are frequently subjected to vigorous external security testing by industry-leading professionals who are highly regarded in their field.

Helping to locate any potential weak points, these specialists ensure that we operate a water-tight information security.

What Do You Think?

Whether you’re part of a small primary school or a large MAT, the beauty of ParentPay is its flexibility to meet every school’s unique needs. Sam Tse of South Dartmoor MAT noticed this, and has since said that one of the main benefits of ParentPay is that it “can meet different requirements at each school”.

And we know how tough it can be getting to grips with a new system; there’s always going to be an adjustment period while you learn how to get the most out of it. That’s why we have a devoted support team who are here to help you with any issues and requests you may have.

You’ll always find a member of our team at the end of the phone, and it’s this service that has led to over 95% of our customers saying they’re happy with the support they’ve received.

So what’s holding you back?

If your school is considering the transition to ParentPay, we want to make sure that the process is as smooth as possible. That’s why we’ve created this free checklist for schools who are looking to switch their cashless solution: