Mass School E-mail from Authorized Parents May 16, 2013
Posted by NeatSchool in Communication.comments closed
Many of you have asked to have authorized Parents or Staff Members send mass e-mail. This is useful for PTO members or parent volunteers who need to reach the whole school population.
We just added a new user privilege, called “Mass e-mail” that allows just that.
The user who has this privilege will see a new tab in the portal that allows her to e-mail the school, classes, departments etc. The user does not have access to any other Dashboard functionality.
As always, please try it out and give us your feedback.
Sending Text/SMS Messages April 29, 2013
Posted by NeatSchool in Communication.add a comment
We are very excited to announce that the NeatSchool service now supports SMS and text messaging.
NeatSchool administrators love our simple mass e-mail interface that enables them to address the whole school, a class or just a couple of staff members with just a few clicks. Many have asked whether we could use the same intuitive interface to send text/sms messages. This is very useful for urgent communication or communication in case of emergency.
We are very excited to announce that this feature is now live and available as part of our Complete subscription. We attach a couple of images that show how you send a message and how it shows on the smart phone of the recipient.
What NeatSchool parents users say on Yelp! March 4, 2013
Posted by NeatSchool in Checkpoint, Parents Portal.comments closed
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. This excerpt is from a Yelp! review posted by a parent of one of our customers who has deployed the electronic sign in/out & classroom reports module:
Organize your Center with Departments January 24, 2013
Posted by NeatSchool in Record Management.comments closed
For bigger organizations with many classes organized in programs or departments, we today announce a new feature that just exited Beta: Departments. Here are some cool things you can do with Departments:
- E-mail all the teaches in all the classes of a Department/Program.
- Maintain a separate calendar for each Department/Program.
- Rosters and Reports based on a Department/Program
Please try departments in your organization and let us know how it works for you.
Online Payments from a Parent’s Bank Account January 8, 2013
Posted by NeatSchool in Financials.comments closed
NeatSchool has supported online payments from your customers for a long time. Up to now you had two options:
- credit card payments which are very convenient for your customers but very expensive for the bottom line.
- Payments using Dwolla that are very inexpensive but require that your customers have a Dwolla account which many people found rather inconvenient.
Today we announce a third option: an online payment directly from your customer’s Bank Account. We also published two one minute HD YouTube Screencasts that you can share with your customers. The screencasts show how easy is for a parent to pay from their bank account using the NeatSchool online payments system.
Staff Information Management with NeatSchool December 21, 2012
Posted by NeatSchool in Staff.comments closed
NeatSchool helps you manage not only information about students, classes and billing but also information about your staff. Today we posted a new 15 minute HD YouTube screencast dedicated to staff management with NeatSchool. The screencast shows step by step what to do when you hire a Staff Member, terminate a Staff Member or give him or her a raise. It also shows how to download time sheets that contain all the information you need to do payroll.
If you are a NeatSchool subscriber you can find this screencast along with all the others under Help. Otherwise contact us for directions on how to access the video.
NeatSchool with sites like Evite December 9, 2012
Posted by NeatSchool in Communication.comments closed
Ready to create an Evite event or a SurveyMonkey survey but struggling to find all the names and e-mail addresses of parents, students, teachers and staff?
NeatSchool maintains the latest information for your school community. You capture it at enrollment time and the parents and staff maintain it as it changes. The built-in, privacy enhanced NeatSchool mail allows you to reach all or a subset of your community with a few clicks. NeatSchool makes also easy to use the up to date information with other sites like Evite, EventBrite, SurvyMonkey etc. In a online tutorial screencast we published today in high quality 1080p HD format, we show you in five minutes how easy is to send an Evite invitation with NeatSchool.
As always, you can find a link to this online tuorial and all our other screencasts in the help section of the NeatSchool Dashboard.
Tracking Consent for Emergency Treatment November 8, 2012
Posted by NeatSchool in Record Management.comments closed
We strive to make sure we make NeatSchool fit better your organization needs. Today we added two more data elements in the student record that many schools track for each student and you have been asking for.
The consent for emergency treatment field appears as a checkbox in the student’s record. You will find it under the Medical tab. You can use it to track whether the parents or guardians of the student have signed the appropriate form.
The activities waiver and release of liability field appears as another checkbox in a student’s record. Schools usually use this field to keep track of whether the parents of the student have agreed to waive the school’s liability on accidents that happen if field trips and other school activities.
Now, if your organization does not need any of these fields you can easily turn them off from the Settings dialog box. In fact, you have four options there:
- You can turn the field completely off
- You can turn it on so that can be changed in the Dashboard but not by the parents in self service portal
- You can turn it on so that it can be changed in the Dashboard and the parents self service portal but does not appear in the enrollment form
- Finally, you can turn it on so that can be changed in the Dashboard, the parents self service portal and the enrollment form
Next time you downloaded a report you will notice that we have also updated all the relevant reports to show these fields.
NeatSchool Links Widget for your Web Site October 29, 2012
Posted by NeatSchool in Other.comments closed
We have been working on some really exciting features and I will be writing about that soon. In the meantime I want to make sure you are aware of our new widgets.
Last week we introduced a feature that lets you add a widget with all the important NeatSchool links in your web site. The widget is customized with your school’s colors and logo. All you have to add is a couple of line of HTML markup. The whole process is explained in detail in the NeatSchool online help, towards the end in the reference section. There are two formats, a horizontal one that is more appropriate for the bottom or top of your web stie and and a vertical one that is more appropriate for the sidebars.
Enjoy and as always we look forward to hearing your feedback.
How to communicate the balance of an account October 5, 2012
Posted by NeatSchool in Other.comments closed
A new YouTube screencast we made available today, demonstrates
- how the parents can see their account activity
- how you can generate billing statements
- how you can generate a letter with the tuition paid for tax purposes
- how to send an e-mail to all the parents who owe more than a certain amount with their balance.
The High Definition screencast is 24 minutes long. If you are a customer or prospect you will receive a separate e-mail with the link
