Where to find it
Finance › Fee Defaulter Reminders. It carries its own permission, so if you cannot see it, ask your school administrator to give you Fee Defaulter Reminders in Users & Privileges. Being a system administrator is not enough on its own.
Nothing is sent until you switch it on
Every campus starts switched off. Opening this screen, changing the settings and even running the preview sends nothing at all. A reminder only ever goes out after somebody has ticked Send reminders automatically and saved.
What the reminder actually says
The wording is your school's own. It comes from the Fee Defaulters message under Admin › SMS Templates, and this screen shows you the exact text it will send. If that message is empty, the switch cannot be turned on — an empty message would send a blank text and still be billed to you.
Tags such as [studentName] and [totalRemPayable] are filled in per family
when the message goes out, so [totalRemPayable] is that family's own outstanding
balance on the morning of the reminder.
Choosing how it is sent
You may tick more than one of App SMS, WhatsApp and Branded SMS. Each tick is a separate message to each parent, so ticking three channels costs three times as much and a parent receives three reminders. Most schools tick one. The preview always tells you the exact number of messages before you save.
Parents app notification is free and can be used on its own, without any SMS channel. But it still needs at least one contact number ticked below — the app notification is delivered against a parent's number, so with every contact box clear it reaches nobody. The screen will not let you save that combination.
Who counts as a defaulter
There are two choices, and they can produce very different lists:
- Anyone with a pending balance — the same rule the Fee Defaulters screens use. A family that has paid part of what they owe is still reminded about the rest. This is the default, so switching this feature on does not change your school's idea of who owes money.
- A family that has paid anything this month is not a defaulter — if any payment at all is received during the month, that family is left alone until next month, even though a balance is still outstanding. Schools that would rather not chase a family who is clearly paying something choose this one.
Only payments count towards the second rule. A discount you gave the family is not a payment they made, so it does not stop the reminder — but the preview tells you how many families were discounted this month so you can see the difference.
Currently enrolled students only
On by default. The Fee Defaulters screens list everybody who owes money, including children who have left. An automatic reminder is narrower on purpose, because a fee text to the family of a child who left cannot be taken back. The preview shows how many families the narrowing removed, so the two numbers always add up.
The preview is the thing to trust
Before you switch anything on, press Preview. It lists the families that would be reminded, by name, with the actual phone number and the amount they owe, and it tells you the total number of messages. It sends nothing and saves nothing. If the preview looks wrong, the reminder would have been wrong.
When it runs
On the day of the month you chose, at the hour you chose. If you pick the 31st, a month that is shorter runs on its last day instead — February is never skipped.
Each family is checked on the morning the reminder goes out, never from a list made earlier. A family that paid yesterday is not chased today.
Each campus is reminded once a month. If the system restarts, or the reminder is interrupted half way through, nobody is texted twice — every family who has already been reminded this month is recorded, and a second attempt skips them.
The history
Every run is listed with how many families were found, how many were left alone because they had paid, how many had no contact number at all, and how many messages were sent. Opening a run shows every family it reached, with the number used and the channel. That history stays even if the settings are later changed or removed.
If nobody is being reminded
Check these, in this order:
- Is the campus switched on?
- Is at least one channel and at least one contact number ticked?
- Does the campus have a Fee Defaulters message under Admin › SMS Templates?
- Is the person the reminder runs as still an active user? A reminder acts as whoever last saved it. If that person has left, the screen shows it in red — open the settings and save them again to take it over.
- Do your families actually have the numbers you ticked? The preview counts families with no contact number at all separately, and those families are never reached by any channel.