It is okay if a parent record is already on the system, you are just being informed that the parent record is in the database and will not be changed/updated with this import. The new student will be imported and added to that existing parent record, and will be a sibling linked to any other child of that parent. You can proceed with the upload.
If you get an alert that a parent already exists in the Way2Pay database, this simply means they are already in our system and it is not possible to add them a second time. A parent may be on our system if they have a child in another school that uses Way2Pay or if the parent has been enrolled in a night class in one of our schools. Conveniently, the parent only needs one user account to manage bills for different students/siblings or different schools.
If you are happy the mobile number is correct for this parent, click the Search button to find the parent record, then click Use This Parent. You are linking the existing parent to the new child in your school.
If you don’t see the Search option described above, you may need a different method to add the student and search for their existing parent record, see steps below:
Step 1: Navigate to the students’ phonebook and click ‘Add a new student and search for an existing parent’.
Step 2: Enter the phone number of the parent you wish to add and click search. The parent details will appear and if correct, click “Use This Parent”.
Step 3: Once the parent has been selected you will be able to add the student details.
Step 1: settle any outstanding activity bills for the student to be deleted
Step 2: Next go to Menu > View Students and click on the student name to view the student record. Then click on the red Delete button to delete the student record from your school phonebook.
Please do not delete the parent record as the parent may have a student in another school using Way2Pay.
Go to the SMS Report and confirm which number is being sent the SMS invoices for an activity. Sometimes if the phonebook has been updated with a new parent mobile number after the activity was created, and the activity is still sending the SMS to the old number.
In this case you can delete the invoice in the activity, and then add the student onto the activity again. This will save the new parent mobile number onto the activity bill.
if you are seeing a duplicate parent mobile number on your SMS report when you send out SMS texts (not invoices), it may be due to a second parent mobile number listed on the student record. To keep SMS costs low for schools, when sending SMS invoice texts only the primary parent is sent the SMS. When sending general SMS texts both the primary parent and second parent (if populated) are sent the SMS. This SMS to the second parent appears on the SMS Report as a duplication because it does not have its own independent record in the phonebook.
You cannot directly transfer money paid on one activity to another. You can add a note to the paid activity which is only visible to the school user (not the parent), that you are “Transferring” the money. And then on the new invoice you can use the Edit Invoice tab to reduce the invoice amount by €x and add a note in regards to the initial paid activity invoice. You are this way keeping a traceable record of the funds. Please make note that this will not change the amount recorded under the account code.
This feature assists parents in managing the financial cost of school bills. Parents are able to pay into Family Credit when they can afford to via their parent user account. This money goes into the school bank account as usual. The parent can then use this credit to pay off their activity bills at any time throughout the school year. Therefore you may see the money being used for an activity on Way2Pay in a subsequent month than it was paid into the bank.
In Activity Bills, if you click on a student name you can view the student payment details. You will see the payment method is “Family_CR” if family credit was used to pay that bill.
In the Payment Details report, a family credit will be included in online payments but will have a blank space for the reference number.
Family Credit is not available in ETB schools.
The system is designed for one primary parent login to view a student (siblings). To share the same user login account, please do the following:
On the Primary Parent record in the phonebook:
• The primary parent mobile number – is the username.
• Enter the second parent email address on the primary parent record
Both parents will receive the link to pay bills– one will get the SMS and one will get the email. The school are still only charged for one SMS per bill, keeping costs down.
The second parent with the email address will still have to use the last four digits of the primary parent mobile when logging in after clicking the link. If privacy is a concern, the last four digits is all that is visible on the parent dashboard so they don’t need to know the full mobile number of the primary parent and will not see it anywhere onscreen.
In the past your phonebook was archived and replaced so updates could be included. However, the current rollover process will only change the student class, as per the class listed for that student in your rollover file for the new academic year.
During the import process, a new student record is created for the student in the school. If a matching parent mobile exists, then the child record is added to that existing parent. If there is no matching parent mobile number, a new parent record is created.
No existing parent records will not update – this is to prevent a school overriding the database record shared in other schools. Parent mobile phone number is the unique identifier of a parent. During the import process, a new parent record will be created if a mobile number is not already existing in the database, possibly leading to duplicate records and un-linked siblings if attempted for an existing parent.
An external activity is no longer accessible if a) the Available To specified date/time has been reached, or b) the number of places limit has been reached. Go to Activity/Bills section, click into the activity and review the details entered when the external activity was created.
Way2Pay does not need to be PCI Compliant as no card details are captured in the application itself. Transactions are made when the user is redirected to a Hosted Payment Page hosted by a PCI Compliant payment gateway.