Happy Holidays!

As the holiday season approaches, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued partnership. It is Payment Partners like you who make our jobs a pleasure and keep our company successful.

May your holiday season and the new year be filled with much joy, happiness and success. We look forward to working with you in the coming year and hope our business relationship continues for many years to come.

Happy holidays! 

Jay, Don and Poppie

Virginia PTA 90th Annual Convention

We just returned from the Virginia PTA 90th Annual Convention in Richmond, VA.  It was great to meet some of our current Payment Partners, as well as talk to potential partners.  We spoke to some of the schools that already use Pay4SchoolStuffOnline, and they told us their success stories, and how much parents love the web site.  From the PTAs that aren't using the web site yet, we overwhelmingly heard their favorite feature was eliminating checks.  It appears a lot of PTAs are having trouble with bounced checks, either from fundraisers and/or dues, and we are looking forward to helping them eliminate this problem with online payments.

It was also interesting to walk around the exhibit hall and meet some of the other vendors.  Most of the vendors had something in common - online payments.  Apparently we aren't the only ones trying to eliminate forms and checks, and make it easier for parents, teachers and administrators!  The vendor next to us, LoveToGive, provides a way for schools to do online fund-raising.  They have a great product, and if your school is looking for a fund-raiser that has a high profit margin, no selling, and no check collection - you should check them out.  Another one of our favorite vendors were School Supplies and More.  They eliminate parents from having to fight the crowds and visit numerous stores in search of their kids school supplies.  They offer supply kids online, based on school and grade requirements. Parents go online to order the kits, which are then delivered directly to their doorstep! 

And we can't forget Virginia Photobooths and More.  If your PTA is looking for a fun activity for a post-graduation party, Prom or other event at your school, your PTA needs to check them out .  The adults at the convention were giggling non-stop in the photobooth, so just imagine how much fun the kids at your school would have with it.  They even got me in the photobooth at the end of the show.  And, yes, I got a little silly too!

Thank you to everyone that stopped by our booth to say hi at the convention!  It was great to meet you and chat. We can't wait until our next convention and meet even more of our Payment Partners in person!  Not a partner yet and interested in online payments?  Visit us a www.Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com for more information.

Were YOU at the convention?  What was your favorite part?  Learn something new in a workshop, meet a great vendor, catch up with an old friend?  Leave a comment, we'd love to hear from you!

Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Exams: Making it Easier on Parents and Administrators

Does your school offer Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams?  They are coming up this spring will require teachers and school staffs to collect millions of dollars in exam fees for the College Board, almost completely by hand, during instructional time, and on paper.  Pay4SchoolStuffOnline can save hundreds of hours and greatly improve efficiency with its online payment processing and information management system.  It's so easy to organize this huge school responsibility in one place. 



Check out Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com for more information on online payments, and ask us how we can help streamline your registration process!


For more information on the AP and/or IB exams, click here.

What do you look for in a leader?

Are you looking for more people to serve on your parent organization, PTO or PTA?  Here's a great read from the PTO Today blog.  How do you get volunteers to be leaders in your organization?  And what traits do you look for (besides a willing volunteer and a pulse!)? 

 

Does your school offer the PSAT test to students?

The Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) is a program cosponsored by the College Board and National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). It's a standardized test that provides firsthand practice for the SAT^®. It also gives students a chance to enter NMSC scholarship programs and gain access to college and career planning tools. Most schools offer this test to their students.  

There's still time to get your school to accept online payments for the PSAT.  Schools collect thousands of exam fees for the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test that is administered nationwide on October 12.  The burden is put on instructional and support staff to handle checks for these payments.  Pay4SchoolStuffOnline can process all of these payments and give reports for each classroom, test site or venue and save hundreds of hours. 

Please visit our website if you'd like more information on getting the PSAT (or any of your other events) online.  And we wish the best of luck to all students taking the test on October 12!

What is your parent organization called?

Nearly 75% of parent groups are not affiliated with the National PTA (Parent Teacher Association), and are independent parent organizations.   Is your parent organization a PTA, PTO, PTSA, or are you named something else?  Most parent groups are pretty passionate about  their decision, and we'd love to hear why!  PTO Today has a great article about this very topic too.

Where does your PTA get new ideas from?

Each year PTA/PTOs and schools try new fundraisers, ideas, products and services.  But where do you find about these things?  Do your PTA/PTO Board members go to state and/or local conferences?  Do you rely on new parents for new ideas?  Or do you get new ideas from word of mouth from parents at other schools?  We'd love to hear from you!  Where does your PTA/PTO/school you get information on new products and services for your organization? 

 

Back to School Newsletter - Check out the new form function!

The new school year is approaching (or has already started for the year-round folks), and there are so many forms that need to be created by teachers/administrators and returned by parents.  Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com has just added a new online feature to save time for teachers, administrators and parents! Starting this August, Parent Organizations and Schools no longer need to send forms home for parents to fill out and mail, drop off or backpack to school. The new Form Feature, available as a no-cost item by itself or associated with any payment item, allows Account Administrators (PPC’s) to create any form—with phone, numeric, date, choices, or text format fields—that a parent will be required to complete before checking out. To our existing Partners, log in to your account and check out this exciting new feature in the Item Entry Template.  If your school and/or PTA is not using our web site and would like more information on this feature, please contact us.

Check out our Back to School 2011 Newsletter for more exciting information on Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com and our new features for the fall.

School Fundraisers Made Successful

Does your school and/or PTA do a fundraiser?  Most do, and their success is in the planning.  This past school year, several high schools in Northern Virginia sold mulch and plants to raise funds for their PTA.  And despite the economy, they had record sales!  How??  Parent organizations and Booster Clubs used Pay4SchoolStuffOnline to help them with their sales.  They were able to put their fundraiser online so that parents and friends could order mulch and plants quickly and make their payments online (no more checks!).  Delivery dates and spots where they wanted mulch delivered were able be specified in the online order, and there were no forms to send back.  This saved the PTA and people ordering time, and they were able to raise more funds!

What did your school do as a fundraiser?  How successful were you last year?  Let us know!  And contact us if you interested in moving your fundraiser online.  Online payments are fast, safe, secure, and EASY!  

 

Paying for your kids' school lunch online

Has your child ever lost their lunch money before they even got to school?  Or does your kid come home with a sticker reminding you they are out of lunch money (for several days in a row!)?  Some schools are saving time (and lost money) by moving lunch prepayments online.  More and more public and private schools are considering lunch prepayments for parents for the upcoming school year.  This system allows parents to go online and pay for weekly/monthly lunch menus in advance. Pay4SchoolStuffOnline not only allows schools to offer lunch prepayments online, but all school payments can be made online.  Including field trips, PTA dues, fundraisers, donations, etc.   Listing all school, parent groups and other groups' items on one full menu makes Pay4SchoolStuffOnline the only comprehensive online payment tool of its kind.

Check out Pay4SchoolStuffOnline to find out how your school can save time and money by moving school payments online!

Collect information from parents for free, and without a form!

Are you a teacher and need to collect information from parents?  Or are you a parent who is losing forms and/or forgetting to turn them back in to school?  Pay4SchoolStuffOnline is here to help.  A new FORM feature coming this fall will make the creation of forms a breeze.  And they are FREE! Create your own forms with the fields and formats of your choosing, to gather no-cost (free!) information for directories; after school programs; athletic information and events; registrations; and more. No more forms to find in kids' backpacks or to send back to school.  Saving time for parents and teachers!

School Supply Kits

If you are like most parents, once you get your kids' school supply list, you run around to several stores trying to find everything they need.  Maybe you check out the sales in the Sunday paper, and then by the time you get there, everything is gone.  Some schools are starting to make the school supply buying easier on parents.  Little River Elementary School in Loudoun County, VA now offers fall school supply kits in the spring for various grades at various prices.  Kids will be ready to go this fall back to school with their needed supplies.  And to make the process even easier, school supply kits are available online.  Parents log in to their Pay4SchoolStuffOnline account, order the school supply kits needed, pay, and they are all set.  No more running around and wasting time and gas money!  


Is your school doing something to make it easier to get school supplies for kids?

Our April Newsletter is Available!

Happy Spring and Soon to be End of the School Year.  The staff at Pay4SchoolStufOnline hope you and your family are well and want to thank you for using the website this school year.  We also want to share our Spring 2011 Newsletter with you.  Linked from the newsletter is a short survey to tell us about your experience with P4SSO.  We would really appreciate you taking a few minutes to complete the survey to express your opinion about the site, and how you think we might make it even better.  The Newsletter also contains information on how Coordinators will soon be able to create forms to collect information that they need; how PPC's are currently listing items in creative ways, and how an organization called VolunteerSpot can help groups quickly coordinate their volunteer efforts. 

We'd Love to Hear From You!

We are constantly evaluating the Pay4SchoolStuffOnline website to see how we can make it more user-friendly and helpful for parents and administrators. We'd love your feedback on the current site and how we might improve it.

To visit our short survey, please click here.

We look forward to hearing from you, and appreciate your time and feedback!

Volunteer Week is Coming Up!

Like you, we have spent many hours volunteering at our children schools.   So naturally, we love the idea of VolunteerSpot - an online tool that helps organize volunteers.  VolunteerSpot makes coordinating parents volunteers the fast and easy with their free online signup forms and calendar (no more reply all emails or clipboard signup sheets - yea!). 

 

And did you know that National Volunteer Appreciation Week is almost here?  Running April 10th -16th, this week will be dedicated to letting your hardworking volunteers know that their efforts are recognized and deeply appreciated.  Check out the blog at VolunteerSpot for some great ideas of how to thank volunteers without breaking the bank!

 

More happy partners!

We love to hear from our Pay4SchoolStuffOnline partners and get feedback on how the online payment system is working for them.  Here are a few of the latest emails we've received.  Keep them coming, and please let us know how YOU like the web site!

"Thank you for your prompt response!  Your company offers a very convenient service and I will continue to use your company for many years."
-Denise

"Thank you so much!  Overall our first experience has been wonderful, and I really appreciate how responsive you have been. Parents are loving the new system :)" 
-Krista

Is your school "green"?

It's great to see schools trying to be more green and ecologically friendly.  And at most schools, PTAs/PTOs are helping out. What is your school (or company) doing to be green? Our company helps schools eliminate checks and registration forms and make school payments online, thus eliminating paper.

We'd love to hear what others are doing to be green and help the environment.

Check out this blog for some great ideas by other PTOs/PTAs!  
http://www.ptotoday.com/planning-and-organization/article/824-how-ptos-are-making-schools-green

Are you still taking checks and registration forms for your school payments?

A lot of schools still are.  School budgets are tight and classroom sizes are getting bigger.  By making teachers collect checks for field trips, uniforms, donations, etc... their valuable classroom time is being taken away by administrative tasks.  If your school isn't using an online payment system, now is the time to think about it!  We are getting numerous calls a day from PTAs, parents and administrators about how online payments can be a reality for their school.  Check out this quick demo to see how easy it is to use Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com, and contact us if you have any questions or want more information.

http://www.pay4schoolstuffonline.com/site/TakeATour.pps

How easy is it to set up your events on Pay4SchoolStuffOnline?

Our partners, and potential partners, often ask us how easy it is to use the system to have parents make online school payments.  It's so easy!  But don't just take our word for it... here's an email we received from a new partner who was setting up her account for the first time.

"Even more success! I was able to get all set up today and I think we will be ready to go well before our Wednesday deadline. The amazing thing is that it took me about two hours to get the whole thing done today, start to finish. The first time we did it online in the other system it took about 20 hours, and don't even talk about what it took to accomplish the paper registrations! Yay!"

Krista

Cool new features for online school payments you don't want to miss! Part 2

Spring is almost here... and so are the AP Exams!  Did you know that you could pay for AP Exams online?  We have an online school payment feature for AP Exams.  Parents can just pick which exam/s their student is taking online, enter their credit card information, and they are done!  Teachers and administrators don't have to handle the checks or have to worry about wondering who is taking the exam, they can pull a quick report from our reporting feature and have an instant list.

Be sure to visit our web site or contact us for more information on this, or any of our other new features!

www.Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com
info@pay4schoolstuffonline.com
1-877-397-2937 (EZPAYER)
 

Cool new features for online school payments you don't want to miss! Part 1

Our school partners often ask "what more can I do with the online school payment website?".  There are so many things the Pay4SchoolStuffOnline web site can do, and once schools start using it and seeing how easy it is, they are always looking to utilize it more.  In the next few blog posts I'll let you know about some cool new features most schools aren't using, but should be!

One of our latest features is the high school transcripts option.  By using this feature, parents can easily send their child's transcripts to all of the colleges/universities they are applying to.  Parents go online, choose the colleges/universities they want their kids' transcripts to go to, enter their payment info... and are done!  Easy for the parents, and easy for the high school that doesn't have to deal with checks and forms.

We'd love to hear from you if your school is utilizing this feature.  Or if you aren't, why not?

What's New This Week?

Several of you have asked what other schools are doing with their account.  Trying to find out what items/activities you haven't thought of yet.  Here are some examples of what schools added last week.  Now parents at these schools are paying for more school stuff online and saving time!

Mulch Sales

SAT Prep Classes

PTA Membership

Practice SAT Test

Practice ACT

Raffle Tickets

T-Shirts

PTA Donations

Make Your Own Pizza Night

Post Prom Donation

Advance Placement (AP) Exams

We want our schools to make the most of Pay For School Stuff Online and to save time for themselves, school administrators, and classroom teachers alike.  What are YOU adding this week to your Pay4SchoolStuffOnline account?  We'd love to hear it, please leave a comment below!

2011 AASA National Conference on Education - Denver, CO - Feb 17-19

The National Conference on Education is the annual meeting of current and aspiring school system leaders in the United States, including superintendents, principals, cabinet members, and directors. The conference will address critical issues affecting public education, including education reform, federal funding for education, budgeting in the new economy and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Education reporters are encouraged to attend for the latest information on national trends and issues affecting education and leadership, including assessment and accountability issues, student achievement, teacher pay, fiscal operations strategies and cost-containment practices, and superintendent/school board relations.

Keynote speakers are:

• Michael Fullan, professor emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
• Diane Ravitch, research professor of Education, New York University; and senior fellow, Brookings Institute and author.
• Darrell Scott, author; founder of Rachel’s Challenge; speaker; and the father of Columbine High School victim Rachel Scott.

We'll be at the conference, will you?  If so, stop by and see us!  

If you can't be at the conference in person, you can follow the conference at www.twitter.com/#NCE11 or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AASApage. Online coverage including photos of the National Superintendent of the Year and keynote speakers will be posted at www.aasa.org.

How are you using P4SSO?

We'd love to hear how you are using the web site for your school!  Any great tips/tricks to share with other users?  Please leave a comment below!

Payment Partners Inc. Becomes School Solutions Partner with American Association of School Administrators

In 2009, American Association of School Administrators (AASA) established the School Solutions Center with two goals in mind: help school districts save money and improve student performance.   Payment Partners, Inc. is pleased to be selected as the online payment processor for AASA and its membership.  Through the use of Pay4SchoolStuffOnline.com, the flagship payment website for PPI, school districts are offered the opportunity to utilize a web-based tool to coordinate all of their school fee and payments in an easy to use, secure platform. Enhanced, customizable features allow school districts to set the dates, cost and limits of payment items, and eliminates the need for postage and the mailing of membership and registration forms.
Follow http://bit.ly/g3WYav for the full press release.

No More Postage!

Many administrators are saving hundreds in postage by posting forms and other documents online as attachments to no-cost items.  Upload MS Word .DOC, Acrobat .PDF, .JPG or .PNG files. Parents can simply login and download the file, and fill out and email or fax back if requested.  What a great way to distribute notices and forms – and it’s all at no-cost!  Who knows, the parents may be so pleased they may make an extra contribution to their favorite booster club?

After School Programs

Many schools are using Pay4SchoolStuffOnline to offer after school enrichment and remedial classes.   By first posting pre-registration for classes as no-cost items, administrators can easily determine if minimum class sizes will be met prior to offering registration for them.  This eliminates the need to handle refunds for classes that are less popular and would have been canceled due to low enrollment.

Inventory and date controls determine seat limits and payment windows, and furnish immediate class rosters—without refunds!

Great idea for the "Choices" pull down menu

A high school in Virginia came up with a great idea for using the "Choices" pull down menu.  They were doing a mulch sale as a fundraiser, and needed to know where to deliver the mulch.  As parents were ordering mulch, they could select one of seven places to deliver the mulch at their house.  Choices included at the end of the driveway, front yard, etc.

Do you have any 'out of the box' ways you've used the Choices pull down to gather information from parents?  Please leave a comment and share it with us!