ParentPay

As you may be aware, we operate a cashless payment system at St Joseph's Catholic Primary School. ParentPay enables parents to pay for school lunches and other items such as trips, books and school concert tickets. Parents register for ParentPay online and then select the payments they would like to make. Each student has an individual ParentPay account and their parents can add funds to the ParentPay account via the ParentPay website.

Please find below frequently asked questions and more information about the scheme.

What does ParentPay do?

• Offers a highly secure payment site
• Gives you a history of all the payments you have made
• Allows you to create a single account login across all your children who attend a ParentPay school
• Shows you all items available for payment relevant to each of your children
• Emails a receipt of your payment to the email address you have registered
• Offers you the ability to set automated email/SMS payment reminders

How does ParentPay help you?

• Gives you the freedom to make payments to school whenever and wherever you like
• Stops you having to write cheques or search for cash to send to school
• Gives you peace of mind that your payment has been made safely and securely
• Helps with budgeting; payments are immediate, there is no waiting for cheques to clear
• Payments for many of the larger trips can be made by instalments up to the due date
• You never need miss a payment or have insufficient credit with automated email/SMS alerts
• ParentPay is quick and easy to use

How does ParentPay help St Joseph's Catholic Primary School?

• Reduces the administrative time spent on banking procedures
• Keeps accurate records of payments made to every service for every student
• Payments do not bounce
• Reduces paper ‘waste’
• Allows for easy and quick refunds to be made back to the payment card
• Improves communication between the school and parents concerning payments
• Offers a more efficient payment collection process, reducing the amount of money held on school premises
• Helps us improve school-home communication with its integrated email/SMS messaging centre

How do I get started?

• Parents of existing pupils have been issued with a username and password
• Parents of pupils who are new to the school will be sent an activation letter containing their activation username and password to enable them to setup your ParentPay account

The activation letter will contain a personal activation username and password to enable you to login to ParentPay During the activation process you will be guided through changing your username and password to something more memorable; if you have more than one child at a ParentPay school/s you can also add children to a single account providing one login for all children at ParentPay schools.

How do I mange my account?

In order to manage your trip payments you are able to see the payments you have made on ParentPay by clicking on the "Transaction History" tab and following the prompts.

If you cannot see the trip or service which you require you can click on the "Pay for more items" tab which will show you all the remaining services linked with you. For trips that are a one-off payment, once you have made a payment the trip will be deleted from view.

PLEASE BE SURE TO UPDATE ANY PERSONAL DETAILS UNDER 'MY PROFILE' IF THEY CHANGE. THIS WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY BE UPDATED BY THE SCHOOL. THANK YOU.

My child is entitled to free school meals, what should I do?

Nothing, your meal allowance will be added each day and will be ready from 9.00am.

How soon will my account be updated when I make a payment?

It takes up to 48 hours for funds to be shown on your account. Please remember to plan in advance when topping up.

Can I auto top up my child’s dinner money?

In short the answer is no - however you can set your account so you receive an alert email to say the dinner money balance is low. To do this go to the Communication tab, click on Alert Settings and scroll down to Balance Alerts. Complete the "Threshold" box. Unless you have paid ParentPay to receive text alerts, you must click the email tick box only. You will then receive an email every time the balance hits or falls below that limit.