It’s great when your kids start school, isn’t it? The nursery fees disappear, you’re going to be so much better off!
Ah but wait, the school day is shorter so you may need to pay for wrap around care or breakfast clubs, that costs a bit. Oh well, you’ll still be better off than you were before. Hang on, you also have to pay for school dinners, school trips, there’s a tuck shop at break time, oh and they’re having a fair on Friday so your child will need some money for that too.
Additional expenses will hoover up any money saved on nursery fees let me tell you, but at least there is a hassle free way to pay for it all: ParentPay.
This app won’t make your life any cheaper, but it will at least make it easier.
If your kids haven’t started school yet you have all this to come, but for those of you just discovering the ParentPay app for the first time, read on.
How Does it Help?
If you’re anything like me, downloading yet another app onto your phone counts as a pain in the backside these days. In reality it takes a few minutes, but mentally it’s an effort.
ParentPay is genuinely helpful though.
When I was a kid my Mum was always rooting through her handbag, checking the back of the sofa, and borrowing money from mine and my sister’s savings pot in order to give us cash for school.
We had to pay for all sorts, and cash was the only way of doing it.
As we move faster and faster towards a cashless society, finding physical money is becoming a pain. A much bigger than downloading an app.
ParentPay solves this problem by allowing parents to pay for whatever they need to via one central hub. You sign up for an account, link to the school and register a card, and you’re done. You can even create separate ‘profiles’ for different children within the same account if you have more than one at the school. If you have kids at different schools and both schools use ParentPay, you can even manage the spending at both from one ParentPay account.
There are other benefits that you might not have considered too:
- Safety – Carrying cash can make your kids a target.
- Reduced admin – Since everything is handled from one app, you can do all your school finance admin in one go. Everything that needs paying for is all in one place for all of your kids.
- Instalments – For big spends you can pay in instalments, helping you manage your finances.
- Automated payment reminders – For regular top ups, you can ask the app to remind you so you never forget.
- Additional uses – The app can also be used to manage things like parents evenings and even school meal selections where this is an option.
It’s up to the school to decide which of ParentPay’s services they want to use, but even if they only use it to pay for school dinners it’s a heck of a lot easier than messing about with pound coins.
The company was set up by a parent and a teacher, so they knew the exact issues parents were facing here. That was back in 2002 so they have had plenty of time to perfect the setup too.
Creating an Account
This is so simple to do it is almost pointless walking you through it, but nevertheless.
You will be given a unique activation username and password by the school. You will be asked for these the first time you log in, and once inside you can change them. Your email will be your new username and the password can be anything you like.
You will also be sent an email verification link to confirm the account creation. Click the link in the email and ParentPay will know you are who you say you are and will let you in.
Once inside you can create a profile for your child or children using the ‘Add a Child’ button. On each child’s profile, you will be able to see the various things available to pay for, from school dinners to stationery and uniform items, it all depends what the school has on there.
Payments
Since there is the potential for ongoing purchases and one off purchases, there are a few ways to handle payments.
Getting a card registered on the app is just the same as spending money online anywhere else, but because the app is a bit like a digital wallet you will have a balance in there that will go up and down over time.
You can set up a direct debit to top up the account if you want to. This makes everything even easier as it’s automatic. Or you can add amounts manually as and when it suits you. You can do a mixture of both too, so you may want a direct debit for school dinners as it is the same each week, but if there are occasional extra purchases you may choose to add additional money manually.
There are very obvious buttons on your interface to do all of this.
More importantly, you can set daily spend limits and view what has been purchased from within the app. So if the little buggers are trying to pull a fast one you will spot it right away and be able to stop it.
In terms of safety, the app is totally secure. They use the same encryption and behind the scenes safety as any other online retailer so it’s all up to standard.