Yes. Admissions › Fee Defaulter Reminders sets the day of the month on which EDUBase texts every family that still owes fees, so nobody has to remember to do it.
Each campus is set up separately, and every campus starts switched off. Nothing is sent until somebody enables it and saves.
What you choose
| Setting | What it means |
|---|---|
| Reminder date | the day of the month the reminders go out |
| Hour | the hour of that day, not an exact minute |
| Channels | App SMS, WhatsApp, Branded SMS, Parents app notification — tick one or more |
| Recipients | whose numbers to use: father, mother, student |
| Who counts as a defaulter | see below |
Each channel you tick is a separate message to each parent, and each one is billed separately. Ticking all three SMS channels for 50 families is 150 messages, not 50. The screen warns you when you do this.
A Parents app notification still needs at least one contact number ticked, because the notification is delivered against a number. With the app box ticked and every contact box clear, nothing reaches anybody — so the screen refuses to save that combination.
The two definitions of "defaulter"
- Anyone with a pending balance — the default, and the same rule the Fee Defaulters screens already use.
- Ignore anyone who has paid any amount this month — for schools that do not treat a family as a defaulter once they have paid something, even if a balance remains.
Strict is the default on purpose: switching this feature on must not quietly change your school's idea of who owes money. The Preview shows both numbers side by side so you can see the difference on your own data before choosing.
The "paid this month" window is the month the reminder runs in. A reminder on the 1st or 2nd will behave almost exactly like the strict rule, because almost nobody has paid yet.
Discounts are not payments. A discount is the school waiving money, not the family paying it, so a discounted family is still a defaulter under both rules. The preview reports the discounted count so you can see it.
Only currently enrolled students
The automatic reminder covers currently enrolled students only — narrower than the Fee Defaulters grids, which count everybody who owes money including children who have left. A fee text to the family of a child who has left cannot be taken back. The preview always tells you how many rows this narrowing dropped, so the two numbers can be reconciled.
Preview sends nothing
The Preview button lists the exact families, phone numbers and amounts, and sends nothing at all. Use it before switching anything on.
Preview also separates families it cannot reach into two buckets, because they need different things done about them:
- no number at all — the contact field is empty;
- the number cannot be dialled — a placeholder such as
00000000000or a single0. These are counted and skipped rather than messaged, so you do not pay for messages that cannot arrive.
There is deliberately no "Send now" button
There is no button that texts everybody this minute, and that is on purpose. Nothing anywhere refuses to deliver the same SMS twice, so a manual re-run could text a school's whole parent body a second time. Each campus is reminded once a month, and a retry can never text the same parent twice.
If you want to text defaulters right now, use the existing Fee Defaulters grid and its Send SMS button. This screen automates that path; it does not replace it.
Before it will switch on
- The campus must have a Fee Defaulters message set under Admin › SMS Templates. The wording comes from there, not from this screen, and the reminder cannot be enabled while it is empty.
- At least one channel must be ticked.
- At least one contact must be ticked.
Every family is checked on the morning it runs
Payment status is read on the day the reminder goes out, never from an older list, so anybody who has paid in the meantime is left alone.
If you cannot see the screen
It carries its own permission. Ask your administrator for Fee Defaulter Reminders in Users & Privileges — it is listed under Finance there. On the day this was released nobody held it yet, including the school's own admin login.
Common confusion
"I set the date to 31 but February has no 31st." The day is clamped to the last day of a short month, so a 31 runs on the 28th or 29th in February and on the 30th in April.
"I saved it but nothing was sent." Check the enable switch itself — saving numbers and channels is not the same as switching the reminder on. Also check the run history on the screen: it names the reason in plain words when a run refused.
Watch
📺 HOW CHECK AND SEND SMS TO FEE DEFULTARS — https://youtu.be/3x4VCEAGAFE