The Role of AI in Modern School Admissions

It all starts with one question: Is this the right school for my child?

A mom opens a browser and searches for K-12 schools in her area. She wonders if the academics and extracurricular offerings will work for her child and if the social dynamics will be a good fit. Meanwhile, a dad across town searches for a school that will truly get his child’s behavioral needs and his family’s financial situation.

For K–12 school leaders, enrollment begins in these moments. In today’s digital world, brochures and open houses aren’t enough to reach families. You need insight and agility, which you can achieve by leveraging AI.

The 2025 Future-Proofing School Communications report by NSPRA underscores this shift. Their survey results show that 91% of school communication professionals are already using AI to create personalized content, automate email responses, answer parent questions via chatbot, and forecast enrollment.

AI doesn’t replace the human work of connection; it enhances it. As the competition for family attention grows, schools using AI aren’t just keeping up, they’re standing out. Here are a few ways AI tools can transform your school’s enrollment and admissions process.

When considering integrating AI into your enrollment and admissions process, a simple place to start is adding an AI chatbot to your school’s website. Chatbots are nothing new, but AI chatbots have come a long way since their first iterations. They now use natural language processing to hold conversations that feel real, answer questions 24/7, and even sense hesitation or confusion. Adding a chatbot to your website can also give you valuable data to inform user segmentation and personalized outreach.

There are many AI chatbot options on the market. Here are a few to consider in your search:

• K12 Insight is designed for K-12 and helps districts provide effective customer service and create internal efficiencies.
• Bloombreach isn’t built specifically for schools, but it offers value in its focus on personalization, which can help you give each family the attention and information they need.
• MagicSchool.ai offers various AI tools for K-12 schools, including a customizable chatbot.
• Halda delivers personalized student engagement across channels, including dynamic website chat and automated outreach to help schools break silos and guide prospects.

Enrollment success begins with understanding what families actually care about. Traditional segmentation looks at broad demographics such as age, gender, or ethnicity. While this information is useful, AI can help you go even deeper, analyzing behavior, emotional cues, and preferences to group families by motivations.

Every family has different priorities when searching for a school. Some look for a school that is flexible enough to fit into their schedule, while others focus on academic rigor, college readiness, or extracurricular offerings. AI tools don’t rely on surveys alone. They learn from:

• Browsing behavior: What pages a parent visits on your school’s website, how long they stay, and what content they revisit
• Email engagement: What topics they open and click on, and when they do it (e.g., evenings vs. mornings)
• Chatbot interactions: The questions they ask, the tone they use, or even the urgency they express
• Form submissions: Fields like job role, child’s age, or language preference

Once you know what families care about, the next step is delivering relevant content without overwhelming your staff. AI makes it possible to do both.

For example, if a working parent repeatedly opens your emails at 9:30 p.m. and visits the extended care page on your website, that might indicate that they are a working parent who prioritizes flexibility. You can then leverage generative AI tools like Chat GPT, Grammarly, or Canva’s Magic Write to send them personalized content about your aftercare program, early drop-off options, and accessible communication options like SMS or app-based updates.

Or, if another parent asks your chatbot about kindergarten programs, you can add them to a stream of nurture emails (that you pre-made with your favorite generative AI software) that walks them through a step-by-step guide for applying to school and specific programs or classes of interest, easing their worries.

This type of responsiveness keeps families engaged and moves them closer to enrollment, all while reducing your team’s manual workload.

Want a more comprehensive list of AI software that can speed up your content creation process? Explore 10 AI tools for K-12 schools in our recent blog post.

Not every inquiry will lead to enrollment, but AI can help schools focus their energy where it matters most. Lead-scoring tools like Glide AI and Warmly AI are explicitly built to analyze digital behavior, which can help schools identify the families most likely to take the next step. These tools enable your admissions staff to:

• More accurately prioritize high-interest families
• Increase enrollment by reaching the right families at the right time
• Continuously improve processes as your school evolves and families’ needs change

For example, suppose a parent opens multiple emails, visits your admissions and financial aid pages, and signs up for an open house through a form on your website. AI tools like these can flag them as a high-potential lead and recommend a timely follow-up, like a tailored email from a counselor inviting them on a one-on-one tour.

Glide agents are designed for education, and they focus on streamlining admissions tasks and identifying top leads through engagement data. Warmly is not specifically tailored to the K-12 environment, but it offers predictive modeling that can recommend next steps and improve conversion over time.

Regardless of the tool you choose, the result is fewer missed opportunities and more meaningful conversations with the families most likely to enroll.

AI isn’t just helpful in the here and now. It’s a game-changer for long-term enrollment strategy, allowing schools to look beyond this year’s goals and start planning for the next. By leveraging predictive analytics to analyze historical enrollment data, schools can:

• Identify where prospective families tend to drop off, whether after submitting an inquiry, before attending a tour, or just before the deposit deadline.
• Pinpoint bottlenecks in the admissions process
• Spot patterns based on timing, demographics, or engagement
• Project enrollment trends earlier, allowing for more responsive outreach

For AI tools to do their job effectively, they need access to clean, connected data. That means achieving data interoperability across your SIS, enrollment portal, financial aid software, and communications tools. If your data is disconnected, AI insights remain siloed, and you’ll lose the full potential of prediction.

AI has the potential to reshape K–12 schools’ enrollment approach, making it more personal, efficient, and responsive to families’ needs. From identifying motivated parents to delivering tailored content and forecasting trends, AI gives school leaders the tools to build stronger relationships and effective strategies.

Need even more tips for admissions strategies that work for tight budgets? We’ve got you covered!

Across the world, schools are under pressure to do more with fewer resources: support more students, meet higher standards, and close wider gaps. AI is a powerful tool that’s already helping schools make the most of their resources.

In a 2024 report on how AI is shaping the future of learning, the World Economic Forum identified several opportunities that K-12 schools can leverage. As AI rapidly evolves, so does its potential to make teachers more effective and enhance students’ learning outcomes. They noted that “education systems must adapt to prepare young people for tomorrow’s technology-driven economies and to help students learn alongside these emerging technologies.”

The good news? Implementing AI doesn’t require deep technical skills or expensive software. In fact, many of the most useful AI tools for educators are simple, low-cost, and ready to use right now. If you’re curious about how AI might fit into your school but don’t know where to begin, the team at FACTS is here to help.

Many educators are already finding creative, low-barrier ways to use AI to support instruction and save time. Here are just a few examples of how AI is helping schools around the world right now, based on case studies from Digital Defynd:

• Personalized learning: AI can tailor instruction to each student’s pace and learning style.
• Automatic grading: Tools that analyze and score short-answer questions or essays can cut grading time in half and help teachers give faster feedback.
• Early intervention: By analyzing student data, AI can help identify students at risk of falling behind early in the semester.
• Career counseling: AI can match students with potential career paths based on their academic records, interests, and extracurriculars.
• Creative feedback: Some AI tools can evaluate student artwork and musical performances, offering constructive feedback that helps students grow.

You don’t need a tech degree or a data scientist on staff to benefit from AI. There are many free or low-cost tools available today that are as easy to learn as they are to use. Whether you want to automate lesson planning, generate parent newsletters, or get better insights into student data, there’s likely a tool that can help.

1) ChatGPT

What it does: ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that answers questions, explains concepts, and generates content.

Who it helps: Teachers and administrators

How it helps: It makes daily writing-based tasks like lesson planning, email drafting, and brainstorming more efficient.

Cost: Free (with optional paid upgrades)

Explore ChatGPT

2) Grammarly

What it does: Grammarly is an AI writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, tone, and clarity.

Who it helps: Teachers and administrators

How it helps: It allows educators to quickly ensure communications to coworkers, leadership, and parents are accurate and professional.

Cost: Free (with optional paid premium version)

Explore Grammarly

3) Canva for Education (With Magic Write)

What it does: Canva with Magic Write is an AI-powered design tool for presentations, posters, and worksheets.

Who it helps: Teachers and administrators

How it helps: It enables teachers to create engaging visuals for lessons. And it can help administrators build compelling presentations for leadership or board meetings.

Cost: Free for educators

Explore Canva

4) Diffit

What it does: Diffit converts web content into student-friendly reading levels.

Who it helps: Teachers

How it helps: It adapts reading materials for diverse learners, differentiates instruction, and improves accessibility.

Cost: Free (with paid tiers available)

Explore Diffit

5) MagicSchool.ai

What it does: MagicSchool.ai generates lesson plans, quizzes, IEPs, and more.

Who it helps: Teachers and administrators

How it helps: It automates paperwork and lesson plan development, saving hours of prep time. It also supports special education documentation.

Cost: Free (with paid plans available)

Explore MagicSchool.ai

6) Khanmigo

What it does: The Khan Academy AI Tutor provides real-time support and tracks student progress.

Who it helps: Teachers and students

How it helps: It personalizes learning with tutoring for students and helps teachers identify student needs faster.

Cost: $4/month or $44/year (free pilot program available)

Explore Khanmigo

7) Curipod

What it does: Curipod creates interactive presentations with polls, quizzes, and visuals.

Who it helps: Teachers

How it helps: It makes lessons more engaging and supports formative assessment.

Cost: Free (premium versions available)

Explore Curipod

8) AIForTeachers.ai

What it does: AIForTeachers.ai supports lesson planning, grading, and analytics.

Who it helps: Teachers and administrators

How it helps: It reduces administrative work and improves productivity.

Cost: Free (with a paid upgrade available)

Explore AIForTeachers.ai

9) Socratic by Google

What it does: Socratic helps students solve problems and understand concepts via text, voice, or images.

Who it helps: Students

How it helps: It supports independent learning with step-by-step explanations.

Cost: Free

Explore Socratic

10) Quizlet (With AI)

What it does: Quizlet uses AI suggestions to assist with the creation of flashcards and quizzes.

Who it helps: Teachers and students

How it helps: It speeds up content creation for teachers and helps students study more effectively.

Cost: Free (with a paid premium option)

Explore Quizlet

AI is already transforming classrooms with simple tools that save time on grading, support diverse learners, and offer data-driven insights.

FACTS is prioritizing AI innovations that support educators, with built-in guardrails, transparency, and human oversight. Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re working on:
• Hub Help AI (live now!) – Get instant answers from FACTS documentation using generative AI, now available in HubHelp.
• Teacher AI Assistant & Student AI Tutor – FACTS is exploring early AI tools to help teachers draft communications, flag at-risk students, and suggest interventions. We’re also working on a student AI tutor that gives students on-demand academic help based on your curriculum.

You don’t need a tech degree to get started. Pick one idea or tool from this post, try it out, and see how it fits. The goal isn’t to overhaul your entire workflow overnight; it’s to take small steps toward a more efficient way to support your students.

Stay tuned as we explore more ways to support schools with AI!

In K-12 education, timing is everything. Whether it’s rolling out applications, re-enrolling families, or launching financial aid plans, each month brings key opportunities to attract and retain students. If your admissions team is constantly reacting instead of planning, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

FACTS recently hosted a webinar that laid out a step-by-step enrollment game plan designed to help schools not only survive the admissions season but thrive all year long. The core message? When you schedule your priorities, you don’t just stay organized, you get ahead.

A well-structured admissions calendar helps schools stay proactive and strategic. Here’s a month-by-month breakdown:

• October–November: Focus on early application advantage. You don’t have to make decisions at this point, but you can give prospective families an incentive to apply early by offering priority consideration for early applicants. Engage sibling families, launch shadow days, and reconnect with prospective families.
• December: Open rolling applications and ramp up recruitment efforts. The holiday season is a great time to show off your school community and invite prospects to experience your special traditions and culture.
• January: When families return after winter break, ensure tuition information is available for next year’s decisions. Collaborate with stakeholders to publish tuition rates, open grant and aid applications, and start re-enrollment campaigns. Early re-enrollment commitments help you understand your needs.
• February: Launch new student enrollment. Even if your school struggles with strong enrollment, it’s still best practice to publicize enrollment dates and encourage people to apply as early as possible.
• March/April: Continue rolling admissions if seats are available. This can, and often does, even go into the summer.
• May/June: Awarding financial aid may also bleed into the summer, but as we’ve mentioned, the earlier the better! This gives you more time to process and prioritize families.
• July: Although dates may vary, most schools activate the payment plans chosen by families this month.

With your admissions calendar in place, the next step is aligning your outreach to match its rhythm for maximum impact.

To make the most of each phase, align your outreach with the admissions calendar. If you follow the suggested schedule above, with new student enrollment beginning in February, your primary recruiting window will occur in September through January. This is when you should intensify your marketing efforts by increasing social media campaigns, hosting open houses, and reaching out directly to prospective families.

While recruiting looks different for every school, here are some things you can do during this crucial period:

• Flood social media with images of joyful families and students, as well as student success stories.
• Notify current parents about priority consideration for sibling applications.
• Invite feeder schools for special tours and open houses.
• Incentivize prospects to apply by a certain date for priority consideration.
• Invite prospects to holiday events to show off your school’s culture and community.
• Host a financial aid Q&A.

No matter what recruitment techniques you employ, consistency and timing are key to keeping your school top of mind. It’s also important to not forget your re-enrollment efforts, which should be happening in the same window.

With FACTS’ integrated admissions and enrollment tool, your school can track every step of the process, engage families more effectively, and simplify workflows from August to July. It’s not just about staying organized—it’s about staying ahead.

Ready to streamline your admissions process? Learn more about our admissions tool today!

Nearly a thousand FACTS users from across the country joined us June 23-26 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to explore new horizons at Elevate 2025. Attendees made connections, got hands-on training, found inspiration from our incredible lineup of speakers, and had a lot of fun.

Inspired by Utah’s beautiful landscape, this year’s conference theme was “Explore New Horizons,” and that we did! From exploring emerging trends in K-12 to hearing what’s on the horizon for FACTS products and improving competency for more efficient day-to-day use of FACTS’ solutions, Elevate 2025 brought valuable takeaways for everyone.

This year, we hosted over 350 sessions led by industry leaders and FACTS experts. Sessions covered a wide array of topics from evolving trends in financial aid to tips for navigating school choice, giving attendees plenty of options to build agendas that fit their unique interests. Throughout sessions, attendees collaborated with FACTS team members and each other to build valuable connections and engage in hands-on learning.

In several sessions, and throughout the conference, we provided users with exciting updates on the FACTS product roadmap, including introducing a new product, FACTS Childcare Management, which is currently in beta testing. We also shared information about new AI features added to our HubHelp platform and a demo showcasing how our Data Insights tool helps schools access actionable information to guide strategic decisions.

Through fireside chats, we gave attendees even more ways to connect with presenters and get answers to their questions in a smaller, more intimate setting.

Olympic figure skating legend Nancy Kerrigan joined us on day three of Elevate to share her story of resilience, growth, and the power of persistence.

She reminded us that success is a journey. It’s okay not to have it all figured out yet and to fail along the way, because often, the journey is even more rewarding than the result.

“Looking back, I did get to go and represent the U.S. at the Olympics, but it was about the journey of putting it all on the line,” said Kerrigan. “That is something I take much more pride in. It’s more about that journey and what you put into something, because we all fail.”

Along her journey as a figure skater, Kerrigan faced many challenges that helped her learn the importance of prioritizing self-care. She concluded her speech by encouraging the educators in the room to do the same.

She said, “Take care of yourselves because it is so important, so that you can keep giving, because I’m sure you’re always giving. If you keep putting it out, you need to also fuel yourself so you can keep being positive role models.”

One of the best parts of Elevate 2025 was hearing from our 2024 Teacher Innovation Award winners! All the winners were invited to attend this year’s event, where they were honored for and presented on their winning projects, including a CSI-style history lab, an interactive library experience that brings books to life, and a project where students apply Newton’s Laws of Motion to design an arcade game. They also got to attend a private lunch to celebrate their achievements!

These awards are just one of the ways that FACTS has committed to fostering innovation in the classroom, as we believe that creative environments create a lasting impact. While our 2024 winners are still reigning, we invite everyone to start thinking of innovative teachers in their life that could become our 2025 winners. The five educators selected receive an impressive prize package, including $5000, $1000 for their school, a free trip to present at Elevate 2026, and more!

Award nominations for the 2025 Teacher Innovation Awards will open September 15th. Keep checking our website for more details!

Not only was Elevate 2025 packed with a lot of learning, but it was also full of fun!

Throughout Elevate, we had several networking opportunities where attendees could connect. These included a reception featuring adoptable puppies from Hearts 4 Paws and a taste of some of Utah’s favorite dishes.

Our exhibit hall had a ton of interesting booths to explore, connecting FACTS users with innovative products and services that could help improve efficiencies, increase tuition revenue, and foster a positive school community. Thank you to our sponsors for all your support and help making Elevate 2025 so great!

To add even more fun to Elevate’s conference floor, Owlie’s Outpost offered an opportunity to take a break from the hustle and bustle of conference activities, chat with FACTS team members, and pick up Elevate 2025 merch—including exclusive t-shirts, belt bags, and custom Owala water bottles!

Elevate 2025 was incredible, but we already can’t wait to see everyone again next year! July 6-9, 2026 Elevate will return to sunny Orlando, Florida. Want to join us? Take advantage of our Super Early Bird Registration deal today!

We’re back with the second installment of our quarterly product roadmap series! At FACTS, your feedback continues to guide how we build and improve our solutions, and we’re committed to keeping you in the loop every step of the way. In this update, you’ll get a look at what’s launched recently, what’s currently in progress, and what’s ahead across our product suite. Keep reading for your official Q2 update.

Product Updates:

• Student Information System
• Application & Enrollment
• Financial Aid Management
• Payment Plans & Billing

Student Information System

What’s New with Student Information System

Scheduling:
We launched our first phase of scheduling enhancements on June 9. This release included an update to our general scheduling application, updates to templates and patterns, and our new person locator, which can be used to locate students and staff members according to their daily schedule.

Medical:
Released May 27, our medical enhancements include a brand-new interface along with many at-a-glance features to help school medical staff manage student health records. We also completed key school-requested updates, like removing the ability to overwrite medical notes and allowing staff to select relationship types before emailing parents about medical events.

SIS Main Menu and Navigation Bar:
On June 9, we released our new SIS main menu and navigation bar that includes a more modern look with icons for menu items and better placement of help icons.

What’s Near with Student Information System

Dashboard Builder:
This is a Power BI embedded reporting solution designed for K-12 school users. It enables educators to create, customize, and share dashboards using live data from the SIS. Users will have access to pre-built dashboards such as Student Information, Medical, Behavior, Admissions, or At-Risk. Additionally, school users can export reports for use in meetings or compliance reviews. With Dashboard Builder, we are making data accessible for all users!

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):
We’re excited to share the latest progress on our rollout of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for SIS users.

Since our last update:

• We completed beta testing with a group of schools using Premier Integration.
• We gathered feedback from a broader set of users across our SIS platform.
• Based on that feedback, we extended the authentication window from 4 hours to 8 hours, reducing the need for frequent re-authentication during the day.

What to Expect:

• Rollout Timeline: We are targeting to have all SIS schools enabled by the end of August.
• Advance Notice: Schools will receive at least two weeks’ notice before MFA is enabled. Notifications will come from your Account Manager and appear directly in the SIS via in-app messaging.

For more information on MFA and related changes, please visit: https://www.nbshubhelp.com/

What’s Next with Student Information System

Here’s a sneak peek at some things we’re exploring and building behind the scenes. These updates are on our roadmap, but they might take a little time—good things are worth the wait! Want to share your thoughts or stay in the loop in the meantime? Join the conversation in FACTS^SPACE.

Scheduling:
We continue to work on our large, comprehensive update to scheduling. This project will include an updated interface to make scheduling more intuitive for school staff, added features such as teacher recommendations and the ability to mass update classes, and improvements to reporting to help manage scheduling conflicts and ensure scheduling is complete. The project also includes enhancements to courses and classes that support the scheduling process. This is an ongoing initiative, with features released in phases.

• Phase 1 is now live, and here’s what’s coming next:
• Phase 2 – Course Requests
• Phase 3 – Courses, Classes, and Rooms
• Phase 4 – Manual and Auto Scheduling Enhancements
• Phase 5 – Updates to schedule reporting

Application & Enrollment

What’s New with Application & Enrollment

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):
Our Application & Enrollment teams released all changes needed to be ready for the MFA Launch happening next quarter!

What’s Near with Application & Enrollment

We’re introducing Inquiry Triggers to Email Series Manager, enabling you to automatically send nurturing emails to parents who submit an inquiry. This enhancement also includes an opt-out option for marketing emails, giving families greater control over the communications they receive.

What’s Next with Application & Enrollment

New Look and Experience for Inquiry & Application:
We’re continuing to modernize the Parent Inquiry and Application experience! Over the next year, we’ll transform the look and feel of our platform to provide a more modern and visually appealing experience. But that’s not all: our focus is also on enhancing the user experience with improved, intuitive, and streamlined workflows, all built with a mobile-first design approach to ensure accessibility and ease of use across devices. Expect a smoother, more efficient process that will make your parents’ interaction with our system more enjoyable.

Here is a sneak peek at the design:

Financial Aid Management

What’s New with Financial Aid Management

SIS Current Student Status Integration:
Previously, we added the ability to show the SIS student admission status and new/returning status in Financial Aid Management custom reporting. Now, you can also add the SIS current student status for an up-to-date status throughout the school year.

IRS Integration Updates:
We have added the ability for co-applicants who file separately to get their tax transcripts through IRS integration.

Supplemental Document Enhancements:
Supplemental documents allow you to collect extra documents outside of the FACTS collected and reviewed tax documents.

We added two enhancements to increase flexibility in triggering document requests, ensuring only relevant families see them as a requirement. You now can conditionally request documents based on:

• Family Not Filing Taxes (DNF Status): Request documents from families not filing taxes, such as an attestation of non-filing.
• Internal Tracking Fields selection: This allows you to tie a document requirement to a checkbox or drop-down option for internal tracking, allowing you to add document requirements after reviewing a family’s submitted application. You will be able to leverage all the tools associated with internal tracking, such as being able to assign documents in mass within reports.

New Fund Details Page:
As part of our ongoing modernization, we’ve updated the Fund Detail Awarding page with a refreshed design, full-screen viewing, faster reporting, and an improved user experience!

Student Submit Date/Timestamp as a Reporting Field:
To assist with scholarship organizations prioritizing by submission date and time, we’ve added a student specific submit date and time stamp reporting field that can be added to all custom reporting areas.

Preference School Change Notification:
Scholarship organizations will now get a notification in the Daily Digest when a student’s preference school changes.

What’s Near with Financial Aid Management

IRS Integration:

• Most Recent Year Tax Return: We have added the ability to retrieve the most recent tax documents from the IRS. This will become available as soon as the IRS fixes an issue with the 2024 transcripts, which is scheduled to be released July 20.
• W2s: We will be adding the ability for applicants and co-applicants to get their W2s directly from the IRS in addition to the tax returns. This will include both the prior year and most recent year W2s as they become available through the IRS. We expect to release this on July 28.

Turn Off W2 Wage Adjustment & New Year Document Override:
Currently, our system automatically adjusts a family’s income based on the most recent W2 when paired with a prior year tax return and will use the most recent tax return when submitted by a family.

Some of our schools and scholarship organizations have requested the ability to turn off this automatic adjustment, allowing them to receive more recent year’s W2 without it affecting the family’s assessment, or still request and use the prior year tax return in the assessment even when the most recent year has been received. This will be an optional setting.

What’s Next with Financial Aid Management

Prefill Custom Questions for Returning Users:
To continue to make the applicant process easier for returning families, we are adding the ability to select if the responses to a custom question should be pre-filled based on last year’s responses. This can be chosen per custom question, and applicants will still have the ability to update the response if something has changed from last year.

Payment Plans & Billing

What’s New with Payment Plans & Billing

3rd Party Payment at Institution:
We’ve added the ability to record a Payment at Institution from a third party, such as payments from school choice programs. This will give you better reporting on the money received from school choice programs and ensure the parents’ payment summary is accurate, as it will not include these payments.

What’s Near with Payment Plans & Billing

3rd Party Payment at Institution Phase 2:
Following the initial release of this enhancement, we received valuable feedback that highlighted opportunities for greater flexibility. As a result, we will be adding support for multiple editable third-party adjustment reasons.

What’s Next with Payment Plans & Billing

Auto-Replenish Prepay Accounts:
We will be working on adding the ability for families to have their Prepay Account automatically refreshed from a saved account when the balance reaches a certain threshold. Love this idea and want the most up-to-date news? “Like” the idea in FACTS^SPACE and you’ll be among the first to know!

Mass Transfer of Funds & Credits:
We are excited to announce that we will soon be adding the capability to transfer funds and credits in mass. Previously, we introduced this feature for balances due and received valuable feedback indicating a need for similar functionality for funds and credits.

Parent Invoices for School Choice Programs:
To meet state requirements, we aim to provide parents with compliant documentation that supports state-level funding processes. This ensures regulatory adherence while simplifying the experience for families.

Payment Plan Modernization:
Modernizing the payment plan enrollment experience enables parents to sign up for a payment plan from any device, streamlining and simplifying the enrollment steps, and enhancing existing processes. The updated experience will include compliant disclosures and leverage a design system to ensure a modern, accessible, and user-friendly interface.

We know that managing school data across multiple systems can feel like an uphill battle – which is why we recently hosted a webinar for FACTS schools to explore how seamless data integration can drive better outcomes for students, educators, and administrators alike.

Hosted by our Directors of Software Development, Jeff Fry and Brittany Wilson, the webinar broke down what data interoperability really means, why it matters, and how schools can benefit from a well-integrated ed-tech ecosystem. Here’s a quick recap of the key takeaways from the discussion.

What Is Data Interoperability?

At its core, data interoperability refers to the ability of different systems and software to communicate and share information in a standardized and meaningful way. In a school setting, this means that student information, enrollment details, financial aid records, and academic performance data can flow seamlessly between platforms without requiring tedious manual entry or reconciliation.

Without interoperability, schools often face discrepancies in data reporting. For example, one system might list 152 enrolled students while another lists 160 – creating unnecessary confusion and extra work to align the numbers. When data is interoperable, these inconsistencies are minimized, and administrators can focus on making informed decisions rather than troubleshooting mismatched records.

The Benefits of Interoperable Data

Data interoperability isn’t just about convenience; it’s a game-changer for schools looking to enhance collaboration, improve efficiency, and personalize learning. Some of the key benefits discussed in the webinar include:

Seamless Collaboration: When departments across a school or district have access to the same accurate data, communication and decision-making become much more efficient.

Personalized Learning Experiences: With integrated data, educators can tailor instruction based on a holistic view of student performance, attendance, and engagement.

Efficiency and Cost Savings: Reducing manual data entry and reconciliation efforts means less time spent on administrative work and more resources directed toward student success.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Schools can leverage data dashboards and insights to track trends, monitor student progress, and make informed strategic decisions.

FACTS’ Commitment to Interoperability

FACTS is continuously enhancing our product suite to improve data integration. In the webinar, Jeff and Brittany highlighted several initiatives we’re working on, including:

– OneRoster integration to streamline data exchange between systems.

– An external developer portal offering API-based access to school data.

– Ed-Fi certification for FACTS SIS, aligning our platform with industry-wide data standards.

– Advanced reporting solutions, including our new Data Insights product and Dashboard Builder powered by Power BI, providing administrators with easy-to-use visual data tools.

These advancements are designed to ensure that schools using FACTS can seamlessly access and utilize their data, making their operations smoother and more effective.

See Interoperability in Action

During the webinar, we also shared a sneak peek at our Data Insights dashboards, which help schools visualize key metrics like enrollment trends, financial aid distribution, student demographics, and more. By integrating data from multiple sources, these tools empower schools to make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Want to dive deeper into how data interoperability can transform your school’s operations?

Watch the full webinar on-demand to explore these concepts in greater detail and see firsthand how FACTS is leading the charge in data integration for K-12 education.

With data breaches on the rise in K-12 education, the team here at FACTS knows it’s more important than ever to ensure that our schools feel their information is protected. As part of our commitment to data security, FACTS IT Director – Cybersecurity Erik Brown recently led an insightful webinar discussing evolving cybersecurity threats to K-12 education, new strategies from attackers, how schools remain vulnerable to risks, and ways you can make cybersecurity a more significant part of your school’s day-to-day activities.

Understanding the importance of protecting your school’s data is the first step in creating a safe space. Let’s recap what was covered in this webinar and how to discover what threats are lurking for K-12 institutions – and how you can establish a process that lowers risk and gives everyone at your school peace of mind.

Cybersecurity Challenges Schools Face

K-12 systems host a wide range of valuable data for attackers on the dark web. Your students, staff, and parents’ personal identifiable information (PII) are in high demand, and ensuring your cybersecurity system is ready to handle incoming attacks is a necessity. However, every school faces challenges beyond online attacks that make it difficult to keep your school’s information safe.

Some of the most prominent challenges schools may face when it comes to securing their data from attackers are:

• Staffing: Many schools lack a dedicated cybersecurity team or don’t have a large enough team to tackle an influx of cybersecurity attacks. With staffing shortages, it becomes even more challenging for some schools to maintain a full and robust team of cybersecurity professionals.
• Exploitation: Exploited vulnerabilities make up 29% of the cybersecurity compromise rate. Your faculty and staff are busy and may become overwhelmed, and attackers may take advantage of these vulnerabilities with targeted cyberattacks.
• Budget Issues: While the industry-standard budget for cybersecurity is 5-8%, K-12 institutions set less than 1% of the IT budget for cybersecurity on average, giving schools fewer resources to get the security systems they need.

These internal issues only enhance the risks and boost those safety concerns. Combined with other external factors, managing your school’s cybersecurity becomes more complicated.

The Ransomware Surge

On top of school-wide issues when it comes to cybersecurity, ransomware attacks on educational institutions have become even more prominent, especially gaining attention in May and June of 2023. Even with the takedown of ransomware attackers like Lockbit and Rhysida, these pressures remain.

As ransomware continues to be an issue for educational institutions everywhere, developing your cybersecurity system to combat these attacks is crucial.

Navigating the Risks

Throughout the webinar, listeners were able to learn about how cybersecurity is a critical factor in protecting your school and how schools may struggle with it. Now, it’s time to take your school toward a safer future with better cybersecurity tools and practices.

Make cybersecurity a bigger priority for your school and enhance training and education to keep everyone aware, engaged, and ready to help protect your school from unwanted cyberattacks.

Explore our other webinars for more on cybersecurity and to learn more about how FACTS is your resource for thought leadership in K-12 education.

The hospitality industry is evolving, with job growth projected to reach 17.4 million by 2033. As businesses expand and adapt, so must their approach to training—helping employees not only start their careers but thrive in them.

Offering consistent training, high-quality training from day one and throughout an employee’s tenure sets the stage for a confident, engaged workforce. Especially in times of change and growth, investing in the right training can be the key to higher employee satisfaction, stronger retention, and an exceptional guest experience.

So, how can hospitality businesses keep pace with industry shifts and ensure their teams have the skills they need to succeed? Here’s how to overcome today’s top training challenges in the world of hospitality.

For 17% of employees, their biggest challenge is inconsistency in tools and technologies used across the company. This lack of uniformity extends to training—when employees receive different instructions depending on location, your brand experience suffers.

No matter where an employee trains, they should receive the same clear, standardized guidance to ensure consistency in service, operations, and expectations. Without a unified training approach, employees may struggle to perform their roles effectively, and customers who frequent multiple locations might receive inconsistent experiences, damaging brand loyalty.

By standardizing training, all employees—from new hires to senior staff—are prepared to deliver high-quality service no matter where they are. A centralized training platform ensures that every team member has access to the same learning materials, reinforcing brand consistency, employee confidence, and customer satisfaction.

Operating across multiple locations or jurisdictions means keeping up with the varied health safety, and legal requirements — a challenge that can quickly become overwhelming. Compliance isn’t just a one-time training event: it requires ongoing awareness and up-to-date record-keeping to ensure employees are following the latest regulations.

A centralized compliance training and management system helps reduce risks, streamline processes, and ensure audit readiness. By integrating all compliance requirements into a single platform, your team can stay current with mandatory training, track certifications, and avoid costly violations. With a more efficient system in place, employees can focus their time on delivering great service and maintaining operational excellence, rather than chasing down compliance updates.

According to a study by Cornell University’s School of Hospitality Management, turnover costs hospitality companies an average of $5,864 per employee. For a company with 500 employees and an industry-average turnover rate, that equates to over $2 million annually. Retaining top talent not only reduces these costs, but also improves your employee satisfaction and strengthens your company’s reputation.

Providing more effective training solutions can create a more engaged and committed workforce. 72% of employees have experienced career progression thanks to their company-provided training and 66% of employees acknowledge that continuous skill development is essential for career growth. By offering personalized learning paths, upskilling opportunities, and leadership development, you create a culture where employees see a long-term future with your organization. When employees feel valued and supported in their growth, they are far more likely to stay.

To successfully navigate the challenges of running a hospitality business, leveraging modern training technology is key. A well-designed learning platform can:

• Simplify compliance management.
• Save on costs by maximizing efficiency and reducing turnover.
• Improve employee retention.
• Enhance customer satisfaction with consistent service.

With the right technology, you can create a a training system that benefits your entire team—from HR and administration to customer-facing employees. When staff feel confident, prepared, and supported, they’re more likely to deliver great service and stay with your company long-term—leading to happier employees and more satisfied guests.

The FACTS Learning Platform, empowers hospitality businesses with a flexible, scalable training solution designed to keep employees engaged, compliant, and ready to deliver exceptional service. Modernize your training with:

• Centralized Compliance Training: Simplify compliance with automated reminders, real-time tracking, and centralized resources for all locations.
• Consistent Training Across Locations: Standardize onboarding and role-specific training to ensure brand consistency and operational efficiency. Monitor progress in real time, identify gaps, and keep employees on track with their learning.
• Personalized Learning Paths for Employee Career Growth: Adapt training to meet the needs of both customer-facing and behind-the-scenes roles. Offer upskilling and professional development opportunities that boost motivation, engagement and retention.

Now is the time to rethink hospitality training and equip your team with the skills they need to thrive in a competitive industry. A modern training platform doesn’t just prepare employees for their roles—it enhances service quality, streamlines operations, and drives business success.

From ensuring exceptional guest experiences to giving your back-end staff the tools they need for maximum efficiency, leveraging the right technology is the key to overcoming today’s biggest hospitality training challenges.

Learn more about the FACTS Learning Platform and discover how you can transform training, improve efficiency, and elevate both employee and customer experiences.

Consultation is a vital opportunity for private schools to collaborate with their Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to ensure equitable access to federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). For your students and teachers to benefit from these resources, it’s important to understand the timeline, process, and your role in advocating for their needs.

The consultation process must be timely, meaningful, and ongoing by law. While discussions may happen throughout the year, late winter to early spring is a key time to watch for your LEA’s outreach. This is when LEAs will likely send Intent to Participate forms to private schools. Responding promptly to this form is critical, as it determines your eligibility to access services for the next school year.

We strongly encourage every private school to check “Yes” on their Intent to Participate form. Here’s why:

1. These Are Your Students’ Funds: Federal funding, including Title I and Title II allocations, is intended to support your students’ academic needs and your teachers’ professional needs.
2. Equity and Opportunity: Participating ensures your students and teachers receive the resources they are entitled to, leveling the playing field for their success.
3. Flexibility in Use: Responding “Yes” does not commit your school to a pre-defined program. It opens the door for meaningful discussions with your LEA about tailoring services to meet your school’s unique needs.
4. Maintain School Autonomy: Checking “Yes” also ensures access to essential services while maintaining your school’s autonomy. It does not mean you’re relinquishing control or inviting unwarranted government interference into your school’s operations or decision-making.

Once you’ve confirmed your intent to participate, the next step is to schedule a planning meeting with your LEA. This meeting is a crucial step in the consultation process, ensuring that your school is fully prepared to maximize the benefits of federal funding. Here’s what to expect and prepare for:

• Consultation With Your LEA: The LEA will usually contact your school to schedule this meeting. During the consultation, they will explain the program specifics, ensuring your school understands the expectations, obligations, and opportunities associated with federal funding.
• Program Planning: Collaborate with the LEA to develop a detailed plan outlining how the federal funds will address the specific needs of your students and teachers. During this discussion, you can also request to use a trusted third-party provider, like FACTS, to implement programs, ensuring the services are tailored to your school’s unique needs and requests.
• Data Collection and Reporting: Be prepared to provide data on student demographics, academic performance, and other relevant metrics. This information will help demonstrate your school’s eligibility and track the progress of the funded programs.
• Compliance Requirements: The LEA will review federal compliance regulations with your school. This includes ensuring that appropriate procedures are in place to meet the funding program requirements.
• Establish Clear Goals: Work together to set measurable objectives for the program’s outcomes, such as improving academic performance, offering targeted interventions, or enhancing teacher professional development.
• Clarify Roles and Responsibilities: Define the roles of your school and the LEA in implementing and managing the program. This ensures accountability and smooth coordination.

Participation in the consultation process is your chance to advocate for the resources your students and teachers need to succeed. By responding promptly, preparing thoroughly, and engaging actively with your LEA, you can ensure that federal funds are used effectively to support your school community.

At FACTS, we understand that navigating the consultation process can be complex. Our team is here to provide guidance, support, and tools to help your school make the most of the opportunities available. To make it even easier, we’re offering a free consultation checklist designed to help private schools prepare and stay organized throughout the process. Don’t leave funding on the table—take the first step by saying “Yes” and partnering with us to plan for a successful school year ahead.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist your school during consultation season.

Parents value flexibility and convenience when it comes to paying for their student’s tuition. By offering payment plans at your school with tools like FACTS Payment Plans, you can simplify tuition payments for current families and stand out to new families looking for the right school for their student.

But how? Here are some ways implementing an efficient tuition management system can elevate your school’s marketing and bring in new families while remaining effective and efficient for your school staff.

Offer an All-in-One Experience

Your families are busy. Make it simple for families to manage their tuition finances with a tuition payment solution where they only need one login to access both student information and financial details, showing your school’s commitment to convenience and efficiency. Families can handle everything from tuition payments to extracurricular fees all in one place and on their own time, maximizing convenience for them and reducing time spent by your administrative staff answering their questions.

Reduce Enrollment Barriers with Comprehensive Options

Integrating tuition contracts and payment plans into your enrollment process eliminates friction and makes it easier for families to commit to joining your school community. Give parents the option to pay for their student’s tuition over a longer period rather than all up front, giving them more room to breathe and peace of mind. Offering these plans alongside features like incidental billing and prepay accounts also reduces enrollment barriers for prospective families, positioning your school as flexible and accommodating to families with various needs.

Let Your Team Focus on What Matters

Leverage easy-to-use dashboards and make it simple to stay on top of payments, allowing for better budgeting and improved cash flow that can be invested back into the school. Automated payment processing and advanced accounting features also free up your administrative team to focus on building relationships with families and students.

Strengthen Family Relationships

Reduce misunderstandings and foster trust with transparent, consistent communications regarding tuition and fees between your school and families. Clearly outlined enrollment contracts and tuition agreements set shared expectations from the start, minimizing confusion and building confidence in your school’s processes. Offer flexible payment options within these agreements to reflect your school’s commitment to understanding and supporting diverse financial situations. When families feel informed, respected, and supported, they’re more likely to stay engaged—helping improve student retention and reinforce the strong, lasting connections your school community is known for.

Offering tuition payment options that are flexible and affordable can be a crucial part of making your school the right choice for more families. Learn more about FACTS Payment Plans to see how.

The role of the school business manager has always been diverse and demanding. Covering a wide range of functions and dealing with many stakeholder groups, school business managers wear many hats – and the demands on them are growing as the education sector evolves.

In a day, a business manager may find themselves reconciling accounts, dealing with staff issues, negotiating supplier contracts, acting on behalf of the principal, arranging a board meeting, supporting the fundraising committee, and more. For this reason, they must have skills in a range of areas including finance, management, project management, and compliance.

Equally important is that they’re supported by a comprehensive and intuitive payment platform that allows them to manage payments flexibly, securely, and efficiently. Purpose-built school payment software like FACTS enables schools to simplify and streamline their approach to payments, providing more control, visibility, and convenience to both administrators and families.

Managing tuition payments effectively is a key challenge for schools. Many still take a manual approach which is time-consuming and inefficient.

Schools without a flexible, centralised payment system will often have teams of staff who take many weeks to coordinate the payment process at the start of each school year. Managing year level or subject-specific pricing, discounts, and any credits or debits to be applied to an account becomes labour intensive and error-prone. Additionally, neither the school nor families have visibility of their financial position.

FACTS supports K-12 schools to deliver a better payment experience for families while reducing the workload of their administrative team. Our world-class billing engine gives both user groups real-time visibility of payments made, scheduled and missed, 24/7, wherever they are.

Paper-based forms and payment slips are unpopular with administrators and families alike. Easy to forget or misplace, it’s inconvenient for families to manually record information the school already holds about them – and collecting payment information on paper forms is not PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant.

FACTS’ flexible online forms allow simple and efficient management of permission and payment for extras like school excursions and trips. FACTS forms collect information via a secure and encrypted platform, with any costs automatically added to each family’s account, so no cash or manual payments are needed. It’s a more flexible, convenient, cost-effective, and secure way for schools to manage permissions and payments required throughout the year.

Many schools without a comprehensive payment system lack a strong understanding of their current financial position. Managing tuition fees, fundraising efforts, and incidental expenses in separate spreadsheets can make it impossible to get an accurate real-time view of a school’s financial health.

School payment software allows administrators to view key financial metrics at a glance. Business managers can build customised reports and schedule these to be created and shared with key stakeholders on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Powerful analytics let the administration team identify and manage arrears, hardship, and other financial aspects with confidence the latest information is at their fingertips.

Keeping personal and payment information safe is imperative for all schools. The traditional approach of sending forms home in schoolbags to be completed and returned presents many opportunities for this confidential information to be lost.

Tools like FACTS allow schools to collect and store this information securely and give families the opportunity to update their information at their convenience via a secure online portal, 24/7. This means no need for the school administration team to chase forms and payments or enter data manually. It’s also more efficient for families, who won’t be asked to provide the same information each time there’s a camp or excursion.

FACTS is PCI level 1 compliant, the highest level of validation given by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

FACTS supports a seamless flow of information between a school’s administration team and its teachers, students, and families. From enrolment to graduation, it allows information to be captured and stored securely – meaning no manual data entry for schools, and no need for families to provide the same information time and time again.

A complete school payment platform supports business managers to meet the competing aspects of their role with agility, and give families and the administration team better flexibility, control, and visibility.

Sending your child to school can be a significant investment. While school tuition fees vary considerably across Australia, the average total cost of education for a child starting at an independent school could be more than $340,000.

For families that choose private schooling, tuition fees are likely to be a large portion of their household budget. For this reason, the way your school manages tuition fees is likely to be a key decision factor for many families.

Schools generally put a lot of time and effort into ensuring their word-of-mouth, website, social media channels, and presence on review sites such as the Good Schools Guide position them as an attractive choice for potential students. However, once families have narrowed their choices down to their top two or three schools, aspects like the ease of the enrolment process and a flexible approach to tuition fees can be critical differentiators.

So, is the way your school manages tuition fees part of your marketing arsenal? Here’s how to highlight payment plans in your school’s marketing efforts and give families confidence that you’re there for them if times get tough.

Publicise that you provide flexible payment options and due dates. Rather than expecting the year’s tuition up front, consider offering weekly, bi-weekly, quarterly, monthly or term-based payment plans. You should also let families choose from a selection of regular due dates so that they can pick one that reflects their payroll schedules.

Give families the flexibility to get ahead on tuition payments by allowing them to make online payments ahead of the due date. When you give families options, they’ll feel more confident that they can afford to send their child to your school.

Specialist tuition payment solutions like FACTS allow you to provide this level of flexibility without creating reconciliation nightmares. FACTS lets you simplify fee tracking and management and gives you real-time visibility of payments and cash flow projections.

When families contact your school to request a tour, it’s fair to assume that they’ve done their research and know about your school’s ethos, how your results rank against other local schools, and how much it costs to attend.

Be transparent about tuition fees on your school’s website and include information about families’ options when paying fees and applying for financial aid. Tuition fees will be one of the first aspects families consider when researching and comparing schools, so you should make it easy for them to find this information and give them comfort that you offer affordable and flexible payment plans.

Fee affordability can be a challenge for families throughout their time with your school, not just at enrolment. Don’t let financial constraints become a reason students leave. Check in with families each year or semester to ensure they’re comfortable with their payment plan and know that there’s a range of payment options available to them.

Offering flexible tuition payment plans is a great way to attract new students and support existing families. It does more than give families another payment option – it builds your reputation as a school that cares and is willing to work with families to keep them enrolled.

Marketing the affordability options your school offers shows that you’re willing to let families take control of their finances and open to adapting to meet changing situations and needs. By making families’ lives easier, you can build a strong and supportive school community.

Late tuition fees are a reality for most K-12 schools. However, the way they’re handled can be the difference between a growing arrears balance that’s hugely time-consuming to control and a small number of late payers who are generally managed automatically without any work from your administrative team.

Here are four tips for optimising your school’s approach to late tuition fees.

If you don’t already have an automated system managing your tuition payments, this is an absolute game changer. Automating tuition fee payments means significantly less administration for your school to manage and makes things simpler and more convenient for families.

Tuition payment solutions like FACTS help schools to streamline and simplify tuition fee management while giving them complete oversight. With school fees securely transferred on pre-agreed dates or frequencies and automatically matched to the correct student account, there’s no data entry, manual reconciliation, or record-keeping required.

Schools that manage late tuition fees successfully usually have a clear tuition fee policy that’s regularly shared with the school community and accessible via the school’s website or family portal.

Your school’s tuition fee policy should make your approach to late fees clear and be signed whenever a new student is enrolled. Ensure it covers what happens if a regular fee payment is missed, the amount of time families have to catch up on any overdue payments, and next steps if the missed payment is not received within the stated timeframe. It’s best not to formally communicate any grace periods within your fee policy as this could encourage delinquency.

A tuition management solution that sends automatic reminders to families when fees are due (and if payments are missed) will significantly reduce the number of late payments your school receives. However, you should also have a trigger point for where manual intervention is required if an account is slipping into serious delinquency.

Chasing money is never fun, but proactively reaching out to families who are falling into serious arrears, particularly if they’re usually prompt payers, will allow you to understand their situation and agree on a payment plan to recoup these funds.

If a family is experiencing hardship, work with them to create a tailored payment plan that sees them make a regular contribution towards their tuition fees. Depending on their situation, you might push due dates out by an agreed period, split their arrears balance across the remaining payments due in that school year, or simply extend their existing payment schedule by a month or two.

Providing a range of payment options also makes it easier for families to pay their fees. Ensure you accept credit and debit cards and online and phone payments. Even if you don’t usually accept cash payments for tuition fees, you might consider making an exception if this will make it easier for certain families to catch up on their payments.

Your school’s approach to late tuition fees should be clear, consistent, and professional. By letting families know what to expect, following the same process each time an account falls into arrears, and managing overdue payments with empathy and a commitment to get things back on track, your school can ensure late tuition fees don’t become an unpleasant matter for your administration team and impacted families.

FACTS Payment Plans is a powerful platform that supports a best practice approach to managing tuition fees. Automated payments let staff and families spend less time and effort managing tuition and enjoy better convenience, transparency, and security. With FACTS, managing late tuition fees is simple and straightforward.

Tuition payments are at the heart of your school’s operations. Without a solid approach to tuition management, managing school fees can be a time consuming and error-prone process. Tuition payment solutions like FACTS help your school streamline the way you handle finances by simplifying tuition fee payment tracking and management.

With tuition fees remitted on your preferred dates, both your administrative team and school families will save considerable time and effort compared with a manual approach.

Here are five of the most significant benefits of automating tuition fee payments.

Automatic payments mean that the bulk of school fees will arrive on time and in full – without any work from your administrative team. A digital approach means all payments are automatically matched to the correct family account, meaning no data entry, manual reconciliation or record-keeping is needed. FACTS offers the highest data security standards in the industry, providing peace of mind that all transactions are encrypted and secure.

Life is busy. Between work, running a home, and managing children’s schooling and extra-curricular activities, there’s a lot for parents to stay on top of. Automated tuition fee payments take one big thing off the to-do list for busy families, giving them peace of mind that school fees are taken care of without anything for them to do.

A tuition management solution that provides families with automatic reminders that fees are due to be debited will dramatically reduce the number of late payments your school receives. However, there will always be occasions where payments are declined due to a lack of funds. When this happens, your tuition system should provide families with automatic notifications of failed payments and overdue reminders, ensuring a streamlined process with no manual intervention from school staff required.

Automatic payments provide your school with consistent and predictable income each month. Your administrative team will always have a clear view of your current and expected school fee income, taking the guesswork out of budgeting and managing cash flow.

Automated tuition fees provide better transparency for all school stakeholders. The administrative team, school principal, and families have a real-time view of payment status and account balances, with one source of truth meaning no missed payments or payment disputes. External stakeholders can be given access to view your school’s financial position and expected income at a glance.

FACTS lets you monitor important financial metrics and create custom reports for your school, and schedule daily, weekly, or monthly notifications to send to key people.

Automated fee payments allow staff and families to spend less time and effort managing tuition and more time focusing on students. Automatic billing will help your school take a more structured approach to financial management while providing better convenience and transparency for families.

FACTS is a powerful tuition management solution that supports a best practice approach to tuition fees. It expands payment options for families and simplifies billing, budgeting, cash flow management, and financial reporting, empowering school staff to spend more time on the things that matter.

As business offices evaluate their processes in the wake of changing school policies and ever-evolving technology priorities, keeping payment compliance top of mind is critical. Maintaining compliance for software applications that process payments is demanding, requiring regular audits and reports as well as knowledgeable staff.

The security of cardholder information is of the highest importance. Schools face a choice: Install a software application on premise and maintain PCI DSS compliance for all payments processed at your school or partner with a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor or Application Service Provider (ASP) who maintains the software to meet PCI DSS compliance, reducing the school’s compliance scope.

Payment processing applications are governed primarily by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), which maintains security policies and procedures based on requirements from the major payment brands, like VISA.

“PCI DSS covers the security of the environments that store, process, or transmit account data,” said IT Manager for Cyber Security at FACTS. “This includes requirements for the security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, secure software design, security awareness training, and other critical protective measures.”

The Payment Application-Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), established in 2008, is derived from the PCI DSS, and details payment application requirements to be PCI DSS compliant (and therefore what a payment application must support to facilitate the school’s PCI DSS compliance). PA-DSS requirements are intended to help software vendors develop secure payment applications that support PCI DSS compliance when installed within their customer’s PCI DSS environment.

“In other words, PA-DSS validated payment applications must facilitate – not prevent – PCI DSS compliance,” FACTS IT Manager continued. “When a school purchases a PA-DSS validated product, they receive a software application and the responsibilities for the infrastructure support and maintenance that will support the application; installing the application in a PCI DSS complaint manner; and maintaining, administering, and supporting the application, all within their PCI DSS environment.”

This entails a lot of work for the school. IT staff will use the vendor’s implementation guide to install the application on premise in a PCI DSS compliant manner. The PA-DSS software is required to meet applicable PCI DSS requirements, including:

Compliance requirements vary depending on the number of transactions processed annually by an institution. A smaller school with a limited number of transactions per year may be able to complete a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ), a self-validation tool to assess security for cardholder data. Large schools that process high volumes of payment transactions may be required to work with a PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) to complete more in-depth assessments.

FACTS is PCI DSS Level 1 assessed based on the number of transactions processed annually.

A PCI DSS assessment can take around two or three months, and will evaluate evidence for compliance with PCI standards that covers an entire year. This validates that their business as usual activity — the activity throughout the year, not just during the evaluation period — supported PCI DSS compliance requirements.

The PCI QSA annually confirms you are meeting both technical and non-technical requirements throughout the year. In order to accomplish this, the PCI QSA requires evidence, interviews, and also some hands-on reviews of devices, files, and procedures during the assessment period.

The PCI QSA assures that you meet all PCI DSS requirements.

“Many people are unaware that there are many non-technical requirements that are evaluated, including hiring practices; security awareness training; assigning roles and responsibilities to meet the requirements; maintaining and testing incident response; and creation of policies, standards, and processes to support the intent of the requirements,” FACTS IT Manager said. “There are also many technical requirements, including periodic reviews of firewalls and routers, file integrity monitoring, anti-virus and malware protection, backup and restoration validations, logging activities, meeting retention requirements, timely patching of devices, operating systems and applications, and vulnerability management – including internal and external quarterly scans and annual penetration tests. Those are just some of the many technical requirements that will need to be maintained and will be reviewed by the PCI QSA.”

On the other hand, schools that choose vendor-hosted solutions or SaaS software find that they have reduced their compliance scope, since the application software provider is then responsible for ensuring that the hosted environment is secure.

“The PCI SSC does not require that an entity use a PA-DSS validated application. An application with the PA-DSS certification only denotes that the application can be configured to meet PCI DSS requirements,” FACTS explained.

When a client decides to use our PCI DSS validated SaaS solutions, they know that FACTS adheres to industry-leading PCI standards to manage our network, secure our web-based applications, and set policies across our organization. FACTS has its own cyber security group, which works closely with the corporate cyber security group of parent company Nelnet, Inc. Together we employ an array of experts in compliance and security. We are assessed as a Level 1 PCI DSS Service Provider, which means FACTS is responsible to ensure that:

FACTS ensures that PCI compliance is part of our business-as-usual process by monitoring security controls, reviewing hardware and software technologies to ensure they are supported by the vendor and meet security standards, evaluating changes to the environment or the organizational structure, performing periodic reviews and communications to confirm all PCI DSS requirements continue to be in place and personnel are following secure processes, and verifying that appropriate evidence is maintained to assist in the PCI DSS compliance assessment.

While protecting cardholder data is key, schools must take into account the full scope of their compliance responsibilities. This becomes especially important as many institutions are facing tighter budgets. In order to continue to best serve your students and the broader school communities of alumni, sports fans, donors, and neighbors, institutions must be able to provide flexible payment options that are mobile-friendly and secure.

Knowing that FACTS is taking the above responsibilities provides customers assurance that we are taking the proper steps to secure the data they have entrusted to us.

The cost of living in Australia is rising rapidly and expected to continue to grow throughout 2023. Nine consecutive interest rate hikes and the highest inflation rate in more than 30 years have put families under significant financial pressure as the cost of everything from groceries to petrol, utilities, healthcare, rent, and mortgage payments skyrockets.

With household budgets stretched and no relief in sight, many families are finding it challenging to meet their tuition fee commitments. According to Finder’s 2023 Parenting Report, 17% of Australian parents are considering moving their children from private to public schools to reduce their education expenses.

For this reason, it’s vital that schools manage tuition fee payments in a way that’s sensitive to families while ensuring their collection rate is maintained.

Your school’s tuition fee policy should be communicated regularly and available online for families to review anytime. It should be transparent and actively enforced. Your hardship policy should only be shared on an as-needs basis with families in genuine need.

Each family’s financial situation is unique and should be managed accordingly. However, skipping an entire term or semester’s fees can make it challenging for struggling families to catch up. If possible, it’s best to negotiate for reduced payments to be made on the regular due date.

Tuition management software with a self-service portal makes it easy for families to manage their fee payments in a way that suits them. By offering flexible due dates within predetermined parameters and accepting a wide range of payment methods, your school can make it more likely that fees will be paid in full and on time.

One of the most compelling benefits of tuition management software is that it automates arrears management. Automatic reminders when payments are missed means most late fees are paid without any manual intervention from your business office, giving them more time to work with families experiencing hardship.

FACTS offers powerful tuition management capability that empowers schools to implement a best practice approach to tuition fees. More than 11,500 K-12 schools globally trust FACTS’s suite of school and financial management solutions to help them elevate the education experience.

You don’t have to work in the education sector to know that the last few years have been tough for teachers. The pandemic had a seismic impact on educators in Australia and New Zealand, with a 2022 Monash University study finding that teachers’ satisfaction with their roles dropped from 66% in 2019 (pre-COVID) to 46% in 2022.

The same report found that one in four teachers don’t feel safe at work, less than 14% report that their workload is manageable, and only three in ten plan on staying in the profession.

A high workload and poor work-life balance are key drivers of the current teacher exodus. And, with the number of teachers burning out and leaving the profession growing, this places even more pressure on the teachers who remain.

While there’s no magic cure for burnout, one of the best ways to combat it is to raise the profile of wellbeing at your school. Encouraging teachers to invest in their wellbeing and letting them know that it’s okay to admit they’re struggling or need support is increasingly as important as allocating time for lesson planning or report writing.

Here are some ways your school can promote and prioritise teacher wellbeing.

With technology allowing us to work anytime, anywhere, many teachers feel they can never entirely switch off. Chances are the teachers at your school are responding to emails, lesson planning, and assessing student work into the evening.

Let staff and families know that work-life balance is a priority at your school, and give educators permission to disconnect during their time off. Set schoolwide expectations that emails sent after a certain time don’t have to be answered until the next day – and ensure families are aware that after-hours emails won’t be dealt with immediately.

A common source of stress caused by the teacher shortage is educators regularly being asked to do things they’re not trained to do. Teachers are increasingly expected to take on roles they have no experience in, often with limited support.

Ensure your school is setting educators up for success by investing in professional development and coaching to help them take on new responsibilities with confidence. Whether they need support with new technology or mentoring to deal with specific learning difficulties more effectively, championing a continuous learning mindset at your school will drive teacher satisfaction and improve learning outcomes.

In addition to professional development opportunities, schools should also take advantage of technology that streamlines administrative tasks for teachers. For example, a school management system should have features that automate regular and repeatable activities. Things like taking attendance, recording assessments, and communicating with families should be simple to manage in one secure platform, enabling teachers to focus on learning delivery and student wellbeing.

New teachers are especially susceptible to stress and burnout, especially those who began their teaching careers during the pandemic – one of the most chaotic periods in the history of education.

Take a structured and thorough approach to onboarding your school’s new teachers, prioritising wellbeing. Build regular formal and informal check-ins with new starters into your school’s wellbeing plan and connect them with mentor teachers who have the knowledge, experience, and personal attributes to build rewarding relationships with new educators.

Recognition is a crucial driver of employee engagement and satisfaction across all sectors. Everyone wants to be celebrated for a job well done, whether it’s via a shoutout in a meeting or something more formal.

Make awarding teachers with small tokens of gratitude something your school leadership team does regularly and encourage teachers to recognise their peers in the same way. Be specific about why you’re acknowledging them and remind them that you know they’re doing work worth being celebrated every day.

As managing enrolments becomes a year-round task, many schools are reflecting on their enrolment process. While the start-of-year intake is the major enrolment event for schools, managing enrolment is an admin-heavy task that requires close management at all stages of the year.

Enrolments are particularly complex to keep on top of because different families will join the enrolment pipeline at various times throughout the school year – and will enter the workflow at different points. Students with siblings already at the school will follow a different communication pathway to those on the waitlist, for example.

Responding to expressions of interest, coordinating school tours and processing enrolment applications is a time-consuming and labour-intensive job that can leave prospective families with a negative first impression if it’s not managed professionally.

So, how does your school perform in the following key areas?

Capturing and managing prospective student data digitally is foundational to providing a modern and efficient enrolment process. From collecting expressions of interest to communicating with prospective families and enrolling accepted students, a digital enrolment process ensures all data is stored and managed centrally.

With a digital enrolment process, your school business office has complete visibility of all enrolment information and can send individual or bulk communications to prospective families and collect tuition fees without creating any physical paperwork. And, of course, a hosted solution lets staff work remotely from any device.

Managing enrolments is a substantial task, particularly at schools with a large volume of applications. Without a well-structured process, it’s easy for enrolment-related activities to slip through the cracks during busy periods. And, with the soaring cost of living putting family budgets under pressure (Finder’s Parenting Report found that 17% of families are contemplating moving their child from a private school to a public school to reduce their expenses) schools are having to work harder to convert prospective students to confirmed enrolments.

Families are no longer willing to print, scan, and return paper-based forms – they expect an online enrolment process and clear, sequential communications that keep them engaged in a process that’s often many years long. It’s vital that your school makes it easy for administrative staff – and families – to track the progress of each student application from an expression of interest through to confirmed enrolment.

Enrolling a new student creates plenty of work for a school – but also for that student’s family. There are forms to complete, documents to provide, and payments to manage.

Your student onboarding process should comprise an efficient workflow for administrative staff that offers a superior enrolment experience for families. Making it simple for parents to submit the information your school needs and make tuition payments online shows them you value their time and creates a positive early impression. Automated reminders and notifications ensure that they always know what’s required of them and the next steps.

FACTS School Management empowers schools in Australia and New Zealand to manage the complete student lifecycle seamlessly. We partner with leading education brands like Digistorm and 2Go for Schools to support a best-practice approach to managing enrolments.

Transitioning to a new school management system (SMS) can feel daunting. Your SMS is the backbone of your school’s operations and plays a crucial role in many aspects of school management.

In our experience, it’s not uncommon for schools to continue using a school management system that’s not quite right for them for years due to concerns about the difficulty of moving to a new solution. Transitioning to a new SMS takes significant research, planning, communication and cooperation – it’s a large project that’s not for the fainthearted.

However, if your current SMS isn’t offering the functionality, access, or performance your school needs to operate efficiently and grow, it’s probably time to move to a new school management platform.

In this blog, we share seven steps to make your school’s transition to a new SMS smooth and successful.

Once you’ve decided to move to a new SMS, it’s important to clearly define your motivation for making a change and the outcome you’re seeking. How does your existing system fall short? What do you need from your new school management system? Consider these questions from the perspective of all SMS users – administrative staff, teachers, families, and students. What does your new platform need to provide to offer a best-practice user experience for each of these groups?

Speak to local and aspirational schools about their SMS journeys. Attend conferences and networking events and speak to those you come across at training and personal development days about the student management system their school uses. If you’ve shortlisted a handful of SMS providers, do your own research into which schools are using their system, then reach out to these schools to ask what they like and dislike about the platform. This is also a great opportunity to ask for any transition tips!

While budget shouldn’t be the only deciding factor in your decision, it’s a crucial consideration – there’s no point identifying the perfect SMS for your school if it’s just not affordable. Look at how much you spend on your current school management system and identify and quantify additional savings your shortlisted platforms would provide. Share these calculations and a breakdown of what each system offers with your leadership team to make your case.

Moving from one SMS to another can take weeks or even months. Records, workflows, reporting, and more must be carefully reviewed and transferred to ensure no data is lost during the transition. Time for staff training and staggered communication with students and families should also be factored in. Your new school management system provider should provide an indicative timeline based on their experience with similar schools; it’s also worth checking in with other schools about their experiences.

Your SMS impacts and is used by a range of different groups, so it’s crucial to involve all areas and stakeholders in transition planning. Schools often establish a committee that’s responsible for considering the entire scope of the platform – from defining different user groups and their needs to system access and permissions, how historical data will be transferred, and, importantly, how the system will be maintained once implemented.

Bringing stakeholders on the journey is an important part of transitioning to a new SMS. If you’re committed to moving to a new student management system, let staff, families and students know a change is planned and keep them updated throughout the process, focusing on each group’s unique need-to-knows.

Your new SMS will only be as effective as the people who are using it. Replacing a crucial operational system often causes anxiety and change resistance, so starting early with training is a sound strategy. If staff aren’t trained, confident, and willing to use the system, it’s unlikely to deliver the expected benefits. Targeted training designed to meet the needs of different user groups will encourage teachers, administrative staff, and the leadership team to get behind the new system and contribute to a smooth transition.

Moving to a new SMS is a big change for any school – but using the right school management system can be completely transformative. A structured approach to the changeover that gives sufficient attention to tasks including research, planning, communication, training and implementation will give your school the best chance of making a successful transition that delivers the expected benefits.

In recent years, schools have embraced digital technology for education delivery. While they’re successfully going digital to improve learning outcomes, the opportunity to revolutionise the school business office technology isn’t always exploited. Many administrative teams are still stretched managing tasks like enrolment, communication, and tuition fees manually.

Below are challenges schools face when managing payments manually and the compelling opportunities that going digital presents.

Managing fee payments manually is a time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone process. Generating invoices, tracking payments via spreadsheets, and managing arrears manually add significant burdens to the business office.

Tuition management software like FACTS simplifies and automates the way they manage tuition, with no manual reconciliation required. Payments are received on time and automatically matched to the correct family’s account. Missed instalments are promptly collected without work from your team.

Paying school fees is one of many to-dos for busy families. By enabling families to understand their fees, track payments, and make online payments, tuition management software simplifies their administrative tasks and increases the likelihood of timely payments. Families have 24/7 visibility and the flexibility to manage their payment plans (within the school’s parameters).

Collecting payment information in the office exposes schools to potential data breaches. Accepting cash or cheques also carries the risk of misplacing money, making errors in payment attribution, theft, or fraud. FACTS provides level-1 PCI DSS certification, ensuring the highest level of data compliance and giving schools confidence in the security of payment information.

Tuition fees are a primary source of income for most schools. Therefore, having an accurate, real-time view of finances is crucial for effective budget and cash flow management.

Tuition management software allows stakeholders to monitor current and expected fee income at the individual family level. Custom reports can be generated and shared with key personnel without waiting for manual payments to be processed or banked.

A manual approach makes it difficult for schools to manage arrears proactively, as human error or processing delays may mean payments aren’t accurately or promptly reflected.

An automated approach dramatically reduces late payments and allows the schools to manage arrears with confidence armed with accurate information. System-generated failed payment notifications and overdue reminders makes difficult conversations infrequent.

Automating fee management allows your business office to run more efficiently, improve collection rates, and provide certainty around tuition income. It also makes it easier for families by giving them oversight and the flexibility to self-manage via a secure payment portal.

FACTS Payment Plans gives families a convenient way to pay and strengthens schools’ financial management.