Mobile app 1.2.0: pay fees from the app, a redesigned look, and the rest of the finance workspace

Version 1.2.0 is out on Google Play. Parents can now pay a child's fees without leaving the app, the interface has been through a second design pass, and the finance features that shipped on the web over the past month are all here.

The iPhone and iPad app is coming soon.

Parents can pay from the app

A parent could pay a child's invoice from the web portal but not from the app, which was the wrong way round: the parents most likely to pay on a phone were the ones who could not.

Checkout opens in an in-app browser tab rather than an embedded webview, so the real address bar stays visible and you can see exactly who you are giving card details to. Coming back lands you on a screen that confirms the payment itself rather than waiting on a background notification, reports success only once the invoice is genuinely credited, and states any amount that could not be applied, because that is money the family is owed back.

A redesigned look

The first redesign left every surface sitting the same distance from the page, so an overdue balance read at the weight of a class name. Depth now carries that job.

• The number you need is the one you see. Cards lift off a brand-tinted ground, and the figure that matters most on a screen is set at display size in figures that line up down a column.
• Settled reads calm, and an exception reads loud. A paid invoice, a class with nobody absent and a pupil with nothing outstanding no longer shout as loudly as the rows that need work. A count of zero is not drawn at all.
• The attendance register leads with its own progress. A completion ring, absences and lateness shown only when there are any, and a stripe against each row marked as an exception.
• Attendance colour means one thing. Four screens had drifted onto two different thresholds. They now share one, and a pupil missing a day a week no longer reads as green.
• Parent and pupil screens follow the same rule. The parent home, a child's detail and a pupil's own profile lead with the live position, with the reference details underneath.

Money, corrected

• Refunds. Money genuinely paid and genuinely given back is now recorded as a refund rather than by voiding the receipt, which says something different: that the payment entry was a mistake and nothing was ever received. Record a refund from a payment, or browse the Refunds screen from the Fees menu.
• Cancellation notices. Cancelling an invoice now carries a choice about whether the family is told, rather than assuming one. It is off by default, and the sheet says why.
• Backdate a payment. Cash taken on a Friday and entered on the Monday used to be dated Monday, which put it in the wrong week on the school's own cash flow, reconciliation and collection trend. The date now defaults to today and can be moved back, but never forward.
• A payment taken twice is now prevented. Each attempt at recording a payment carries its own identifier, so a request that dies on a patchy connection after the school's server has already saved it is recognised as the same attempt rather than charging a family twice.

Knowing who to chase

• A chase list. The Outstanding screen now opens on the families worth ringing today, ranked by how overdue they are and whether they have stopped responding, rather than by who owes the most. The largest debt is often owed by a family who always pays in the end.
• The reminder queue. Schools that ask for overdue reminders to be reviewed before they are sent can now approve or dismiss them from the phone.
• Statements. A monthly cash flow statement, the bank settlement reconciliation and a ledger integrity check, on one date range that drives all three. Every month in the window is shown, including the quiet ones, because a month with nothing in it and a month that is missing read the same otherwise.

Faster invoicing

• Fee templates. Save a named set of fee lines and start an invoice from it, rather than retyping six lines each term and hoping this term matches last term.
• See the charge before you raise it. Ask what an invoice would actually charge, line by line, with each reduction and the reduced total, for one child or a whole family.
• Award a discount to many pupils at once. One discount, one scope, one reason, as many pupils as you select, and a report per pupil rather than a batch that fails on the one who already holds it.
• Eligibility rules suggest, and never award. Ask who qualifies as a second or later child, or as the child of a member of staff, then untick anyone who should not have it before awarding. Nothing is reduced without a person deciding.
• Discount rates read the same everywhere. A reduction is now captioned against the fee line it applied to, exactly as it appears in the browser and on the PDF, so a parent looking at a phone sees what the office sees.
• Staff children are recorded, not assumed. A parent who also works at the school can be linked to their staff account, which is what lets a staff-child waiver be checked rather than typed.

Lists that behave

• Saved filters. Name a way of reading the invoice or payments list and come back to it. The names are shared with the web, so a set saved on a phone works on a laptop.
• Import a term of payments. Bring takings already received onto the platform from a spreadsheet, validated before anything is written.
• Tests, exams and messages page properly. The CBT results screen used to fetch up to sixty pages on open. Messaging history was capped at twenty with no way past it. All of these are now ordinary lists that load as you scroll, with the same filters as the web.
• Classes keep the school's own order. Nursery before Reception before Year 1, in every list, set once.

Grades

Grade breakdowns are whole on the phone at last. A mark split into components can be entered on both grade forms and is shown as one chip per component on every result, where before the split was recorded and then never displayed.

Recording several subjects at once now reports what was actually saved rather than what was sent. A duplicate is skipped rather than overwritten, so a teacher correcting a mark used to be told it had been recorded when nothing had happened.

Fixes

• Saving notification settings from the app could switch the in-app notification centre off for the whole school, from a screen that never mentioned it. Fixed, and refunds and cancellations join the list of notices a school can control separately.
• A school's headline takings could be shown in the wrong currency, because the figure was taken from whichever currency code sorted first rather than the currency the school actually runs on.
• The dashboard's collected figure now names its own period, having previously read "this period" over a session total while a term filter was set.
• Longer messages, including the one explaining why you cannot approve your own payment, now stay on screen long enough to read.
• Several bottom sheets had content sitting hard against the screen edge. All sheets now get their gutters from one place.