Parent Pay

[HardHatForTesco]

We are at the very early stages of considering moving to parentpay - can anyone offer any insight as to the pros/cons. We have a demo booked for January but if anyone could give me information on the running costs it would be really appreciated.

[Star21]

Our school pays 1.29% fee on each transaction, I believe that is the norm with talk of it coming down to 1.19%, we have found it saves a lot of admin time banking cash and cheques and would like to go completely cashless at some point, some schools have managed this.

[RoseDog]

My kids School uses parentpay as did their primary school, much easier for me as a parent as long as you don't try and top it up on a Monday morning, I find it always either takes ages or crashes as it must be the busiest time it's used.

[TriGirl007]

My DDs school use parent pay for school dinners, school trips permission and payment and for breakfast club. There were some niggles to start with but as a working parent who doesn’t do the school run a lot, I find it brilliant that I can pay and book from my phone without going into the School office for everything like we did 4yrs ago! We re-set our own passwords and I also load childcare voucher payments in for breakfast club payment.

[WildwestWind]

I use Parentpay and am very happy with it - especially useful for telling parents we are having snow days like today

[WildwestWind]

I use Parentpay and am very happy with it - especially useful for telling parents we are having snow days like today

[DriveInSaturday]

My son's school has just started using Parentpay and I definitely set my own password. The school gave us a registration password, but that was just to use initially and then you make up your own password.

[shouldwestayorshouldwego]

Parent pay is ok, just don't use it for preordering lunch choices as then it is a temperamental beast!

[NorthAlways]

Between my kids we use parent pay, SIMS AGORA and gateway

[BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou]

DS's school uses parentpay and, as a parent, it is easy to use.

My last school used SIMS Agora for a while. It was easy to use as an administrator BUT after the first year the price shot up and we calculated that we would be paying more in fees than we were getting paid in. The area we were in meant a 'Client base' that were reluctant / unable to use anything that wasn't an envelope already filled in for them to put cash in.

In many areas it will work but you need to know your clientele.

[isittheholidaysyet]

Only used for school dinners. Primary.

It's fine, but so much more complicated that writing a cheque or bunging some cash in an envelope and sending with child.

It is far better than squid, as siblings are linked, so you only have log in once for the family.
With squid I had to login 4 separate times, it easily took half an hour to do.

[ja9r]

I love parentpay as a parent. Love it.


As a teacher... occasionally it doesn't work when I need it.


On the whole I heartily recommend it.

[SlickBubbles]

Much prefer parent pay over school gateway, or squid.

I have children at different schools, yet one parent pay account, and it's swift and easy to use, for anything from school lunches, to uniform, trips, to after school care.