School Trip Organisation Software: Turn Nightmare to Not-a-Problem with SchoolsBuddy

SchoolsBuddy’s organisation, safeguarding and communication features make SchoolTrips a great deal easier

School trips are notoriously difficult to organise, from getting consent, to collecting fees, to notifying parents of any changes in travel plans. Letters get lost, money gets forgotten, and messages have to get through to the office before they reach parents. Not with SchoolsBuddy though – all of that and more is taken care of on a handy web and mobile platform, making consent, fee paying, and notifications pretty much instant!

Parental Consent
Instead of sending letters home with pupils, SchoolsBuddy requests consent directly from parents, which pops up on a parents mobile via push notifications and in their email immediately. This saves returning those pesky slips, which have a habit of disappearing into the abyss of a pupil’s school bag.

Fees

The giving of consent will automatically trigger fee collection if there’s a cost allocated to the trip, making it not only much easier for the school to collect money for trips, but also for parents to pay quickly, safely, and conveniently. The balance can be cleared online by parents so no more cash or cheques (although you can record these types of payments too)

Payment Reminders

Integrated into our fees module is the ability to chase just the parents with outstanding balances for a particular event or trip, saving even more time collecting this information from a spreadsheet and having to create yet another email list too.

Registers

Taking registers while pupils are out and about is vital, and with SchoolsBuddy this is made so easy. The consent and fee process automatically generates the registers, ready to be taken via a mobile device on the day. If a pupil is marked absent but should be there, an alert is immediately sent to the relevant staff, and the school office. This one of SchoolsBuddy’s innovative safeguarding features.  Off somewhere where there’s no signal or wifi? No worries – the registers can still be taken and saved.

Travel Alerts

SchoolsBuddy even prevents the queue of anxious parents at the school gates when a trip arrives back to school late; travel alerts can be sent from the software straight to parents via mobile push notifications to let them know if there will be a delay in getting home. This saves time and resources; a message would usually have to be sent to the office to then be relayed to parents. SchoolsBuddy negates this process and sets minds at rest.

It’s not just trips that SchoolsBuddy can transform; we’ve revolutionised the way schools deal with their after school club signups with our one click allocation, something that’s already benefiting schools around the world. Other features include parents evening bookings, diary population, sports fixture functionality, and the opportunity to write and publish match reports. There’s also it’s clear, simple interface, and the ease with which it integrates with most MIS’s. Find out even more about the features and benefits of SchoolsBuddy on our website.