At the beginning of each new academic year you will have to create activation letters for all of the new pupils joining your school. This guidance shows how to create activation letters for preadmissions but you could also wait until the new academic year when you have completed a pupil upload from your MIS and the children are on roll as pupils - see guidance How to create activation letters for your new intake of pupils
Note: The children must first be uploaded to ParentPay as preadmissions with genuine UPN's. If genuine UPN's are not used, the preadmission accounts will not convert to pupil accounts when the first upload of the new academic year is processed. Duplicate accounts will be created causing confusion for parents and a lot of work for school staff to rectify the issues.
1. Within your ParentPay manager account, navigate to Communication > Create letter
2. Select the Message/Template type drop-down menu to view all the letter templates
3. Select the activation template to use
- Activation Letter Dinner Money – Letter refers to school meals only.
- Activation Letter All Services – Letter refers to school meals, trips, and music lessons.
- Activation Letter Dinner Money PayPoint – Letter refers to school meals only, and contains a PayPoint barcode for payment.
- ParentPay: Activation letter – additional accounts– Used to send log in details to secondary payer account (additional parent).
- Staff Activation Letter – Used to send log in details for staff payer accounts (not manager accounts).
4. Select the template that best suits your requirements
Please note: It is not recommended to send out activation letters containing a PayPoint barcode in the first instance. Having a PayPoint letter may discourage payers from activating their ParentPay accounts. If payers do not activate their account, they cannot provide verified email addresses and mobile numbers used for communication.
5. Click on the template title to enter the template set up screen
6. If required, edit the message name in the Template name field. This will be used once the letter has been created to easily identify it should it be used again
7. Ensure the Send as a printed letter check box is the only one selected
8. The letter template will be displayed below the check box. Select Edit Letter to make changes to the template.
9. If required, drag and drop any of the field codes listed on the right side of the window to pull in details of individuals such as name or class. Field codes can also be used to add headers, signatures, or logos onto emails or printed letters. A list of the field codes and an explanation of their use can be found in the guidance document How to use merge fields.
10. Once the changes have been made, select Continue
Note: Leaving the Communication centre at this point will lose all progress of the message. If you require a Header OR Signature you can only have one of these NOT BOTH.
11. Click Continue to Message options
12. Set the Priority to Normal
13. Set Send to as Primary payer only: one message/child. This will ensure that each child is issued a letter containing their unique activation codes
14. Select Continue to Add people
15. In the Add people/payment items section, use the Add group drop down box to select All preadmissions. Click Add
16. Details of who has been added will be displayed in the Selected people/payment item section. (You can click View recipients to de-select anyone who does not require a letter then click Update list). Select Continue to Preview
17. Select View recipients and preview messages
18. Click on Preview
19. Check the content of the letter then click Close preview
20. Click Send messages
21. Click View and print PDFs
22. You can then print the letters and distribute.