The introduction of automatic low balance notifications means that Schoolcomms automatically reminds those whose Dinner Money Balance has fallen below a specified amount, to top up.
To turn on Automatic Notifications please follow the below instructions:
- When creating a Dinner Money or Club payment request within the Create Payment Request screen, there is a section for automatic notifications.
- Tick the checkbox to display an amount field and the notification content.
- Type an amount in the ‘When the balance falls below’ box (if the low balance notification is set to zero, it will only target pupils that are in debt).
- The notification content is for information purposes only and cannot be amended
- Complete the Payment Request and click Save
How to configure the notification send route
- On the Payment Settings screen, click Notification Settings within the left-hand menu
- Select whether you are happy for notifications to be sent via Text message, App message or both
Low Balance notification FAQ
- Notifications are sent to prime parents and staff self-contacts (if the payment request requires consent, it will only go to parents with parental responsibility).
- Notifications are sent once per day (between 08:00 and 20:00).
- FSM students are excluded from the notifications, providing a current FSM eligibility period has been imported from section 6 of SIMS.
- UIFSM students are not excluded, so these students should not be included in the payment request.
- For SIMS Dinner Money, even if a child only has packed lunches (and is not FSM), if their balance is below the threshold, the parent will still be sent a notification as the packed lunch meal is still counted as a transaction.
- Notifications won’t appear in the school’s Sent Items folder; however, they can be seen in a report via Management Reports (web version) > Messaging > App and SMS messages sent about students in the past month. Click here for information to assist you with this.