Saying goodbye to cash and cheques

From saving school staff time, to allowing parents to quickly and efficiently manage their contributions to schools, cashless payment systems are revolutionising the way schools operate. The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) finds out more.

With cash becoming increasingly obsolete and many of us preferring the convenience of online payments, the thought of parents putting money in an envelope to pay for a school trip, or physically giving their child lunch money seems completely out of touch with today’s digital world.

In today’s digital era, the shift towards cashless school systems is therefore helping reshape educational environments. This transition not only streamlines operations but also enhances equity and student wellbeing by providing a more inclusive and secure experience.

At the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), we spoke to our members Access Education and Community Brands on some of the benefits of using a cashless system – from saving their IT and finance teams tons of time, to allowing parents to quickly and efficiently manage their contributions to school requirements.

Beyond initial benefits

Providing his insight on the topic, BESA executive council member and NetSupport CEO Al Kingsley said: “Cashless school systems, particularly cashless catering, offer significant advantages beyond just faster lunch lines. Originally they were adopted predominantly for this reason, efficiency, not just for the school but easier for parents to top-up lunch credit when needed.

“But the key benefit is equity – it levels out the perceived playing field for every child, creating a more inclusive environment. The anonymity of cashless transactions hides a student’s budget, but also how those meals are being funded i.e. perhaps via free school meals funding. This not only reduces stigma for students from low-income families but also helps reduce bullying by avoiding singling out those students who would otherwise have had to verbally explain how they are paying for their lunch. Every child is treated consistently, even though the funding model might be different behind the scenes.

“Going cashless also supports wellbeing. From removing potential targets for students who might try to intercept lunch money from others (which is something we can all think of anecdotally), to working as a handy alert, warning students if there is something on their tray what could trigger an allergy they have. Now the norm, it’s hard to imagine a school without an effective tool in place.”

Transforming financial management

Community Brands’ WisePay and SchoolMoney are two of the market leading platforms that exemplify the numerous benefits of cashless systems. These systems have empowered Moyle Primary School and Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School, revolutionising their financial management processes.

Thanks to comprehensive reporting tools, Moyle Primary School can now track payments accurately and maintain consolidated records, eliminating the need for manually written notes and reducing the risk of errors.

Moyle Primary School’s transition to a cashless system began with their adoption of SchoolMoney. This decision was driven by the challenges they faced with cash payments, which included cumbersome record-keeping and reconciliation issues. The implementation of the payments platform addressed these concerns effectively and introduced a suite of features that streamlined their financial processes.

Lyndsay, a representative from Moyle Primary School, highlights the significant impact of the system, particularly the cashless catering feature. “It’s great,” she says, “it facilitates the smooth operation of our school meals every day. The ability to organise orders, track payments, and ensure accurate records are maintained has been particularly helpful and has saved multiple people around the school lots of time.”

The synergy between Access Education’s school comms and payments systems, Teachers2Parents and SchoolMoney, has also enhanced the overall administrative efficiency of the school. The seamless integration between these platforms ensures that data entry is not duplicated, and accurate, up-to-date information is always available. This harmonious connection between communication and financial management tools has significantly improved the school’s operational workflow.

Saying bye to cash and cheques

Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School’s commitment to innovation extends to its financial management, where the adoption of a cashless system like WisePay has been transformative.

Denise Knapp, finance manager, recounts their previous reliance on cash and cheques for handling payments. The new system met and exceeded expectations, with features like its Trips module. This feature has simplified the process for parents to book and pay for school trips, even allowing for instalment payments, which has been a significant convenience for families.

One of the standout benefits of the system has been its role in boosting the school’s commercial income through the Chromebook scheme. Utilising the recurrent payments feature, the school has successfully collected parental donations for Chromebooks, generating significant revenue to offset the scheme’s costs. This financial boost has been instrumental in supporting the school’s technological initiatives.

Smoothing out the glitches

However, for many schools this transition has required a complete overhaul of systems and processes and it wasn’t something that could happen overnight. Below, Sarb Singh, head of ITSS at Brentwood School, explores the benefits of going cashless.

Having faced an array of problems with their previous cashless catering system, the decision to upgrade was an easy one.

From technical glitches and unreliable data transfer between the payment system and the cashless catering system, to parents struggling to log-in and becoming increasingly frustrated, their IT support team was getting inundated with requests. This was always worse at the start of a new academic year, when the school would typically handle around 80 queries in the first few weeks of term.

This led to the decision to implement Access Education’s My School Portal back in 2020, a ‘one stop shop’ platform for parents which led to integrating the cashless system in 2022.

Previously, all top-ups went directly to the school – so if a parent topped up £10, the school would receive the full £10 – regardless of what the child actually spent. As you can imagine, this caused significant challenges for our finance team, if a child were to leave the school or a parent requested a refund.

Now, with unspent funds staying in each individual account, refunds are simple. Parents simply request a refund from the cashless provider, and the provider can easily issue it from the same system.

This eliminates extra work for the finance team and ensures complete accuracy.

Communication

It’s not uncommon that a child might forget to tell their parents if their account is running low and have to message them mid-morning, and this can be a cause of great frustration if top-ups don’t appear in the account straight away.

With solutions like My School Portal, funds appear within 30 minutes of being topped-up, eliminating the frustration of insufficient balances and the stress this causes parents. Parents also have access to a full list of what has been purchased and when.

Before the start of a new academic year, new parents are also introduced to the system with an internal video guide. This means that before their child starts school in September, they are fully prepared to use the software – significantly reducing the number of queries our support team has to process and ensuring an overall better experience for parents.

As schools look to navigate the changing expectations that are part and parcel of today’s increasingly digital world, the implementation of easy-to-use cashless systems needs to be prioritised. Since introducing new cashless software, Brentwood School has not only seen a reduction in queries from parents, both the IT and finance teams now also enjoy a lighter workload.

About BESA

BESA is the trade association for the entirety of the UK educational suppliers sector. It has a 90-year legacy serving the UK education sector, and represents almost 400 educational suppliers in the UK, including manufacturers and distributors of equipment, technology, ICT hardware, digital-content related services, materials, books, furniture and consumables to the education market.

BESA has a Code of Practice to which all members must adhere, along with a stringent membership process, both of which assure buyers of a high standard of quality in both product and customer service, after which they feature on our Supplier Directory.