Online Payments

If your school are using Payments, you will be able to see Payments as an option in your parent feed on either your computer or through the ParentMail App. If you have a notification, it means your school have invited you to pay for something, or have notified you of a new payment item which is now available for you to buy or pre-order. Please see the screenshot shown below:

Once in Payments, you will be able to view items “To Pay” or visit the “Shop”. Automatically, you will be in the “To Pay” page, as shown below:

Here will be able to view items which you are due to pay. Items here are divided into the following sections:

Overdue Items: These are items where a payment is overdue or you are below the low balance set for dinners.
Upcoming Items: These are items for which the due date is approaching within a week or two. This will also list items that need to be paid.
Part Paid Items: These are items for which a partial payment or subsidy has already been made.

When you click into “Shop” you will be able to view items which your school have set up as available payment items, which you can buy at any time. Usually, you will find the payment item here.

Once you have found an item you want to purchase, simply click on it, and go through the options – such as quantity, size, colour etc.

You can then choose to ‘Add to Basket’ and continue shopping, or click ‘Pay Now’ to check out straight away. You can view your basket at any time by clicking the basket icon in the top right hand corner. This will display all the items that you have added so far. To make a payment, go to the Checkout screen where you will see a summary of the items you are buying, and available payment options. Please be aware, these payment options are decided by your school.

Please choose your selected method of payment, then click confirm payment. You will then need to enter your payment details as you would with any online purchase.

You can then choose to ‘Add to Basket’ and continue shopping, or click ‘Pay Now’ to check out straight away.

You can view your basket at any time by clicking the basket icon in the top right hand corner. This will display all the items that you have added so far.

To make a payment, go to the Checkout screen where you will see a summary of the items you are buying, and available payment options. Please be aware, these payment options are decided by your school.

Choose your selected method of payment, then click confirm payment. You will then need to enter your payment details as you would with any online purchase.

If your school are using +Pay, you will be able to see Payments as an option in your parent feed on either your computer or through the ParentMail App.

If you have a notification, it means your school have invited you to pay for something, or have notified you of a new payment item which is now available for you to buy or pre-order.

Once in Payments, you will be able to view items “To Pay” or visit the “Shop”.

(Click on the screenshots to view them in full size) 

In “To Pay” you will be able to view items which you are due to pay. Items here are divided into the following sections:

Overdue Items: These are items for which payment or an instalment is overdue
Upcoming Items: These are items for which the due date is approaching
Part Paid Items: These are items for which a partial payment or subsidy has already been made.

In “Shop” you will be able to view items which your school have set up as available payment items, which you can buy at any time.

Once you have found an item you want to purchase, simply click on it, and go through the options – such as quantity, size, colour etc.

(Click on the screenshots to view them in full size) 

You can then choose to ‘Add to Basket’ and continue shopping, or click ‘Pay Now’ to check out straight away.

You can view your basket at any time by clicking the basket icon. This will display all the items that you have added so far.

To make a payment, go to the Checkout screen where you will see a summary of the items you are buying, and available payment options. Please be aware, these payment options are decided by your school.

(Click on the screenshots to view them in full size) 

Choose your selected method of payment, then click confirm payment. You will then need to enter your payment details as you would with any online purchase.

If you need to get a refund for an item, or a Dinner Money balance for whatever reason, you will need to contact your school to discuss this. Please contact them directly for assistance.

Please make sure you are looking in the “Shop” tab to view available payment items. If you still can’t see the item you are looking for, please contact your school. It may be that they have made some items available for specific users only, or for a specific ‘purchase window’.

Please check that the card details you have entered are correct, you also need to check that the expiry date is entered as MM/YY and not MM/YYYY. If you are still receiving the error message, please contact the school directly; they will be able to confirm if the payment has been successful. If it has not, please try and make the payment again – if the problem persists, please log this with your school who can get in touch with ParentMail directly for further assistance.

If you need to remove an item from your basket you will need to click on the basket symbol, as shown below:

Under Basket Items, you will find the item that you have added. Within this, you will find a drop-down field as shown below:

You need to click into the drop-down field and change the quantity to 0, as shown below:

Immediately, a warning message will appear requesting if you wish to remove this item from your basket or not, as shown below:

If you are still able to see the trip in ‘To Pay’, you will still be able to make the payment. If you are concerned, please contact your school who will be able to provide further information.

If you are using a computer, click on the Payments tab. On the top left hand corner, you will be able to see a magnifying glass in the top left hand corner that you need to click onto, as shown below:

You will then be able to see a search box at the top or filter by the categories/school as shown below:

If you are using the ParentMail App/School Branded App via an iOS device, please click into the Payments tab and then click on the symbol in the top right hand corner as shown below:

You will then be able to see a search box at the top or filter by the categories/school as shown below:

If you are using the ParentMail APP/School Branded APP via an Android device, please click into the Payments tab and then click on the symbol in the top left hand corner as shown below:

You will then be able to see a search box at the top or filter by the categories/school as shown below:

On a Computer:

When you are ready to checkout and have chosen the Card method to pay by, you will need to click the ‘Confirm Payment’ Button. Another tab will open for you to enter in card details as shown below:

When you have entered in your card details, you can see ‘Save My Card’ is defaulted to be enabled. This means that the details will automatically be saved. If you do not wish to save the card details, you can untick this box.

Screenshot showing when you deselected to save your card:

Via iOS App

When you are ready to checkout and have chosen the Card method to pay by, you will need to click the Confirm Payment Button. Another window will open for you to enter in your card details as shown below:

When you have entered in your card details, you can see ‘Save My Card’ is not enabled. This means that the details will not be automatically saved. If you wish to save the card details, you can tick this box.

Screenshot showing when you have selected to save your card:

Via Android App

When you are ready to checkout and have chosen the Card method to pay by, you will need to click the ‘Confirm Payment’ button. Another window will open for you to select whether you want to pay with a saved card or pay with a new card:

Pay with a saved card is automatically ticked. You will need to tick the pay with a new card option to enter in your card details, as shown below:

Here you can select the option to ‘Save card for future payment’ which will then appear in ‘Pay with a saved card’ for the next payment you make.

We do not store the saved cards anywhere within ParentMail. You will only be able to see the saved cards when you are processing a payment via card.

To delete a saved card, simply click the Delete button next to the card details.

You can only have up to 5 cards saved on ParentMail, if you need to save another card you will need to contact the school to either manually process the payment for you or you need to pay via PayPal instead.

If your school have enabled these payments methods, they will be visible to you when you click into Checkout. For you to be able to pay via PayCash, please click the “Other ways to pay” option, as shown below:

Please note, you can only pay with a PayPoint barcode if the item is above £5 and below £149.99.

When you make a PayPoint payment, your account and your school will be notified by 3pm the following day. For this reason, we advise if you are paying for something  on a first come, first served basis, that you pay online or through PayPal to avoid missing out.

It is up to your school which payment methods they accept for their items. ParentMail offers schools a full range of payment methods, including credit and/or debit cards, PayPal, PayPoint or PayCash. Your school can choose which payment methods they make available to you at any time. If you wish to discuss this further, please contact your school directly in the first instance.

No, the recently announced changes to Credit Card surcharges that come into effect from January 2018 relate to consumer payments where the retailer adds a supplementary charge to the original purchase price to cover card fees.

ParentMail does not operate in this manner and does not charge parents for making payments.

On 6^th June, Pay360, our card payments gateway provider, updated their server security.

This means that certain browsers and devices are no longer able to process card payments due to their low level of security.

If you are unable to process a card payment, it may be because you are using an older Android device or an unsupported browser, as follows:

• A browser which does not support TLS 1.2
• An Android device which does not support Android 5.00 or higher

If you are using one of the above to make card payments with ParentMail, please use an alternative browser or device to make card payments.

Supported browsers include:

• Google Chrome – version 30 or higher
• Mozilla Firefox – version 27 or higher
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
• Microsoft Edge – any version
• Apple Safari – version 5 or higher

How do I check my browser version?

Below are instructions on finding out which versions of your web browser you are running on a Windows operating system.

Which version of Firefox?

• Open Firefox.
• Click on the three horizontal lines on the right-hand side of the search bar.
• Click ‘Help’ in the menu.
• In the drop-down menu, click ‘About Mozilla Firefox’ to open a window as shown below.
• The version type will be shown as circled above.

Which version of Google Chrome?

• Open Google Chrome.
• Click on the three vertical dots on the right-hand side of the search bar.
• Click ‘Help’ in the drop-down menu
• Click ‘About Google Chrome’ to open a window as shown below
• The version type will be shown as circled above.

Which version of Internet Explorer?

• Click on the cog symbol on the right hand-side of the search bar.
• Click ‘About Internet Explorer’ in the drop-down menu to open the below window.
• The version type will be shown as circled above.

Which version of Microsoft Edge

• Open Microsoft Edge.
• Click on the three horizontal dots on the right hand-side of the search bar.
• Click ‘Settings’ in the drop-down menu.
• Scroll down – your version is visible at the bottom of the menu, as shown below.

Finding your browser version on an Apple operating system

Which version of Safari?

• Open Safari.
• Click ‘Safari’ in the top menu.
• Click ‘About Safari’ in the drop-down menu.
• The version will be shown as below.

Which version of Google Chrome?

Please refer to the instructions shown for a Windows operating system above.

Which version of Firefox?

• Open Firefox
• Click ‘Firefox’ in the top menu.
• Click ‘About Firefox’ in the drop-down menu.
• The version will be shown as above.

What Android version do I have?

Depending on the type of phone (Samsung, HTC, Windows etc) or Android device you are using, the way in which you identify which version of Android you have will be different.

However, you should be able to find which version you have by going into your device ‘Settings’ and finding an option within the menu which refers to ‘About phone’ or ‘Device information – or a variation of these!