We are pleased to announce a comprehensive series of enhancements to SchoolSet, designed to simplify daily school operations, improve communication with families, and provide greater flexibility across academic, financial, and administrative workflows.
This release includes major improvements to academic course management, a redesigned PTA Meetings module, enhanced transportation management, and more detailed family and student profiles. We have also expanded our accounting integrations, improved payment management, introduced new capabilities in Seti and Forms, and refined several reporting and fundraising tools.
Together, these enhancements are designed to reduce administrative work, improve accuracy, and provide schools with a more organized and efficient experience.
Academics & Courses
The academic management tools have been enhanced to give schools greater flexibility in organizing courses, assigning students, and tracking academic performance. Courses can now play a more central role in attendance and testing.
Key Points
Course-based attendance: Schools can take attendance for individual courses in addition to their existing attendance tracks.
Flexible student assignments: Courses can include individual students as well as entire grades and classes.
Course-based tests: Test events can be assigned to courses, automatically including the students enrolled in those courses.
Bulk student actions: Schools can select multiple students and add them to courses, assign fees, or send broadcasts.
Course credits: Assign a numeric credit value to courses for academic tracking.
Course exports: Download course lists in PDF or Excel format.
School year management: The current academic year is automatically determined by the configured school year dates, eliminating the need to select it manually. The active school year remains available in academic year dropdowns.
Where This Is Located
Courses are accessed from Subjects & Courses.
Attendance is accessed from Attendance → Take Attendance.
Bulk student actions are accessed from Contacts → Students.
School years are configured under Settings → Set Up School Structure → School Year and Departments.
Attendance
Attendance management has been refined to provide a more consistent marking experience and simplify the process of completing missing attendance records.
Key Points
Complete missing attendance: Staff can reopen attendance sessions and mark only students whose attendance was left unmarked, without having to redo the entire session.
Custom marking order: Schools can organize attendance marking types using drag-and-drop sorting.
Consistent display: Marking types follow the configured order when taking attendance and generating printed attendance sheets.
Improved attendance sheets: Student names are organized by last name and then first name for easier reference.
Course attendance reporting: Course attendance can be included in attendance dashboards, session history, and downloadable attendance sheets.
Where This Is Located
Attendance settings are located under Settings → Attendance.
Attendance management is accessed through Attendance → Take Attendance, Attendance Dashboard, and Past Sessions.
PTA Meetings
The PTA module has been redesigned to provide schools with a more structured and flexible way to organize parent-teacher meetings. The updated system simplifies scheduling, accommodates family preferences, and gives administrators greater control over meeting arrangements.
Key Points
Flexible meeting setup: Configure PTA meeting dates, start and end times, appointment durations, and required breaks between meetings.
Automatic scheduling: Build schedules for participating families and teachers based on the configured meeting requirements.
Family preferences: Set preferred meeting times, including early, late, or a specific time window, and accommodate families who cannot attend.
Teacher availability: Adjust the availability of individual teachers to accommodate scheduling restrictions.
Manual adjustments: Move, assign, or pin appointments while managing the meeting schedule.
Schedule versions: Save and restore previous scheduling versions when adjustments are required.
Printing and communication: Generate schedules organized by teacher, student, or family, and communicate PTA meeting details to parents through broadcasts.
Where This Is Located
The updated module is accessed from PTA → PTA Meetings.
Note: The previous PTA Events workflow has been replaced. Existing events are not automatically transferred into the new PTA Meetings module.
Transportation
Transportation tools have been enhanced with improved bus change management, more informative reporting, and clearer visibility into active routes and bus tracking.
Key Points
Bus change requests: Schools can record transportation change requests and approve or decline them before applying changes to bus routes.
Phone-based requests: Schools can enable an option for parents to leave a recorded bus change request through the bus tracking phone line. These requests appear for office staff to review.
Improved request management: Bus changes are organized into Requests, Active Today, Upcoming, Past, and All, making them easier to track.
Route exports: Export transportation routes to Excel, including route names, runs, students, and associated route information.
Customizable route reports: Schools can control which optional fields appear on printed transportation reports.
Improved route details: Designated first and last stops, along with their scheduled times, are included in route reports.
Enhanced bus tracking: Route tracking provides clearer information about started, completed, and missed routes, as well as stops visited out of order or revisited.
Where This Is Located
Bus change management is accessed from Transportation → Bus Changes.
Route management and exports are accessed from Transportation → Routes.
Live bus tracking is available on the Transportation Dashboard.
Phone request settings and route report preferences are configured under Settings → Transportation.
Family, Student & Contact Profiles
Family and student profiles have been redesigned to provide a clearer, more comprehensive view of important information. These enhancements reduce the need to open editing screens to locate details and make related records easier to navigate.
Key Points
Redesigned family profiles: Family profiles provide an organized overview of family members, contact information, and financial details.
Expanded family information: Parents, students, relatives, and emergency contacts are organized into dedicated sections with more detailed information.
Enhanced student profiles: Student profiles display additional personal, academic, medical, and contact information, including available custom fields.
Financial summaries: Family profiles provide clearer visibility into contract totals, payments, outstanding balances, and upcoming payments.
Direct family communication: Staff can open a communication panel directly from a family or parent profile, review previous messages, and send new messages.
Student profile pictures: Photo uploading, cropping, editing, and removal are improved, including during the family and student creation process.
Custom fields: Configured custom fields can be entered or updated directly within family, parent, and student forms.
Contact merging: When merging duplicate contacts, schools can choose not to retain an existing value rather than being required to select one of the available values.
Entity profiles: Entity records have a dedicated details experience for reviewing contact information and related financial activity.
Where This Is Located
These enhancements are available through Contacts → Families, Students, Parents, Staff, and Entities.
Registration & Immunizations
Registration and immunization management have been updated to provide clearer status information, improve data accuracy, and give schools additional flexibility when working with families.
Key Points
Registration exceptions: Schools can allow selected families to proceed with registration even when outstanding financial balances would normally prevent completion.
Registration progress: Family and student profiles display registration statuses such as Complete, Incomplete, or Not Registered, with access to outstanding requirements.
Improved immunization summaries: Student profiles show more meaningful immunization statuses, including Up to Date, Due, and In Process.
Detailed immunization information: Schools can identify outstanding or upcoming vaccine requirements directly from the student profile.
Improved registration performance: The registration dashboard is optimized to handle larger numbers of records more efficiently.
Medical information handling: Improvements help preserve doctor information entered during public registration and maintain uploaded student photos.
Where This Is Located
Registration is managed through the Registration Dashboard.
Individual registration information is available from Family and Student Profiles → Registration.
Immunization information is available under Student Profiles → Immunizations and the main Immunizations module.
Forms & Online Submissions
The Forms module has been expanded to give schools greater flexibility when collecting information, managing submitted data, and setting up customized forms for families and other respondents.
Key Points
Conditional dropdown options: Dropdown fields can display different choices based on information entered elsewhere in the form, allowing more dynamic forms with fewer duplicated fields.
Expanded field mapping: Forms can map data to additional system fields, including legal names, custom fields, relatives, and emergency contacts.
Custom field integration: Forms can work with school-defined custom fields when collecting and saving information.
PDF-to-form creation: Seti can assist with converting an uploaded PDF form into a digital form.
Payment plans on public forms: Forms without a predefined recipient audience can support payment plans, including fundraising payment plans.
Payment visibility: Form submissions provide clearer access to payments associated with the submitted form.
Complete Excel exports: Exported submission data includes all records matching the selected filters, rather than only the currently displayed page.
Improved payment totals: Payment amounts in submissions and exports display using the appropriate currency.
Where This Is Located
Forms are managed through Forms → Form Builder.
Submitted information and exports are accessed from Forms → Submissions.
AI-assisted form creation is available through Seti.
Seti & AI Reports
Seti has been enhanced with more powerful sharing, document-generation, and customization capabilities. These improvements make AI-generated reports and documents easier to reuse and distribute throughout a school.
Key Points
Share AI-generated content: Users can share AI reports, tables, charts, and maps with selected staff members or the entire school.
Shared reports: A Shared With Me section gives staff access to reports that other authorized users have shared.
Permission-based access: Shared reports continue to respect each user's access permissions.
Reusable reports: Staff can create their own revised versions of shared reports without changing the original.
Attendance filters: AI-generated reports can support single or multiple attendance-track filters, with available tracks based on the selected academic year.
AI documents in label formats: Seti can generate documents using existing Lists & Labels formats, automatically fitting content into the selected label dimensions.
Simpler image attachments: Images can be pasted directly into the Seti composer.
Improved file matching: Enhancements to file association allow Seti to use names contained within documents when identifying related records.
Where This Is Located
AI reports and sharing features are accessed through Seti → AI Reports.
Document creation and attachments are accessed through the Seti composer.
Label formats use the existing Lists & Labels formats.
Broadcasts & Communications
Communication tools have been enhanced to give schools more control over scheduled messages, improve recipient selection, and simplify communication with parents and students.
Key Points
Edit scheduled broadcasts: Modify scheduled broadcasts before they are sent, including their content, recipients, attachments, and scheduling information.
Cancel scheduled broadcasts: Cancel upcoming broadcasts that are no longer needed.
Duplicate broadcasts: Create a new broadcast using an existing message as a starting point.
Student broadcasts: Broadcasts can be directed to students in addition to existing recipient types.
Multiple forms: Schools can include more than one form within a single broadcast.
Improved recipient selection: Selecting parents, students, or donors from different audience categories no longer clears recipients that were already selected.
Clearer required fields: Broadcast composition screens identify required information more clearly.
Improved attachment descriptions: Financial statement attachments are identified as Family Account Statements to distinguish them from contract documents.
Large document delivery: Large generated documents can be shared using download links instead of oversized email attachments.
Conversation filtering: Communication history can be filtered by date to locate previous conversations more easily.
Failed payment notifications: Payment failure messages include the attempted payment amount and relevant payment details.
Where This Is Located
Broadcast management is accessed through Broadcasts / Communications → Broadcasts.
Conversation history is accessed from Communications → Conversations.
Family communication is also available directly from the Family Profile.
Payments & Payment Plans
Financial management tools have been refined to give schools greater flexibility when allocating payments, managing installments, and handling future charges.
Key Points
Flexible installment allocation: Payments and credits can be distributed evenly across installments rather than automatically applying the full amount to the earliest installments.
Convert manual payments to automatic charges: A pending manual payment can be changed into a scheduled charge using an eligible saved payment method, with a confirmation before saving.
Apply existing payments: Previously recorded payments can be applied toward upcoming payment plan installments.
Combined payment workflows: Payment entry is streamlined to support allocation to fees and payment plan installments in the same workflow.
Improved allocation selection: Select or deselect all allocation rows more easily, with clearer visibility of currently allocated installments.
Independent fee payments: Independent fees can be included in the Parent Portal, and schools can send payment links for these fees.
Clearer installment lists: Payment plan schedules display amounts in a more compact layout with less unnecessary scrolling.
Accurate payment dates: Successful retried payments show their actual charge date, with the original scheduled date available when applicable.
Where This Is Located
Payment management is accessed from Financial → Contracts → Payments & Credits.
Payment plans are managed from the related Contract Details.
Payment reporting is accessed from Reports → Payments.
Parents can access eligible independent fees through the Parent Portal.
Statements & Contracts
Statements and contract-related reporting have been refined to improve financial clarity and reduce repetitive work when generating documents.
Key Points
Automatic statement defaults: When generating an individual statement, the relevant contract is preselected and the date range defaults to the contract's academic-year start through the current date.
Editable statement periods: Staff can adjust the selected contract and date range before generating a statement.
Separate Charges and Payments columns: Statement activity can display charges and payments in separate columns, making financial transactions easier to distinguish.
Previous-year balances: Custom statements can include balances carried forward from prior school years.
Improved balance communication: Statement messages distinguish balances on the current contract from the total amount due across multiple academic years.
Clearer statement attachments: Family Account Statement wording makes it easier to identify the correct financial document when sending communications.
Where This Is Located
Statements are generated from Financial → Contracts and related contract details.
Individual statements are also available from supported Family, Student, and Collection pages.
Statement defaults and preferences are managed under Settings → Statements and Contracts.
QuickBooks & Deposit Management
SchoolSet's accounting capabilities have been expanded with enhanced QuickBooks integrations and improvements to the deposit management process.
Key Points
QuickBooks Online integration: Authorized staff can connect a QuickBooks Online company to SchoolSet when the integration is enabled for their school.
QuickBooks Desktop integration: Schools can configure a QuickBooks Desktop connection and send deposit batches through the desktop connector.
Multiple accounting connections: Schools can maintain QuickBooks Online and Desktop connections and choose the appropriate destination for eligible deposit batches.
Deposit batch statuses: Track accounting activity through statuses such as Not Pushed, Queued, Sending, Pushed, and Failed.
Bulk deposit management: Select multiple deposit batches to mark eligible manual batches as deposited or export deposited batches to IIF.
Improved deposit filtering: Sort and filter deposit batches more efficiently, including searching for payments by amount.
More accurate deposit records: Improvements reduce unnecessary empty gateway batches and help saved-card charges match their settlement batches correctly.
Improved accounting downloads: IIF exports use a more consistent file download process.
Where This Is Located
Accounting connections are configured under Settings → Accounts.
Deposit batches are accessed from Financial → Deposit Batches.
Note: QuickBooks options may depend on the features enabled for the school and the user's accounting permissions.
Fundraising & Donors
Fundraising tools have been enhanced to provide a clearer picture of donor activity, improve donation tracking, and simplify credit and pledge management.
Key Points
Redesigned donor profiles: Donor pages provide a more organized overview of donor details, related contacts, and financial activity.
Giving summaries: View pledged amounts, payments toward pledges, outstanding balances, and upcoming payments from the donor profile.
Alumni donor classification: Donors can be identified as alumni, while retaining applicable parent classifications.
Complete payment visibility: Donor and donation pages can display failed payments alongside accepted payments.
Credits and pledges: Schools can apply credits toward outstanding pledges and associate donations with related credits.
Improved donation actions: Donation payment actions are aligned more closely with the Payments Report, including applicable transaction history, refunds, and voids.
Donor data management: Improvements to importing donors, managing linked family files, and preventing duplicate donor records help maintain cleaner information.
Receipt improvements: Updates address donor merge-tag accuracy in donation receipts.
Campaign payment handling: Improvements help maintain the correct selected merchant account when creating campaigns.
Where This Is Located
Donor management is accessed through Fundraising → Donors.
Pledge management is accessed through Fundraising → Pledges.
Donation activity and campaign details are available from their corresponding Fundraising pages.
Lists & Labels
Lists & Labels has been improved to offer more control over layouts and produce cleaner, more readable printed materials.
Key Points
Customizable row spacing: Control vertical padding to produce more compact lists and fit additional records onto each page.
Drag-and-drop column ordering: Rearrange columns directly while configuring a list.
Combined fields: Multiple fields placed in the same list cell can appear on a single line rather than automatically stacking vertically.
Clearer column headers: Table headers use more distinct backgrounds to improve readability.
Improved class and grade headings: Larger group headings make printed lists easier to navigate.
Refined PDF layouts: Reduced unnecessary spacing below letterheads and improved alternating row contrast create more professional-looking lists.
Admission card formats: Admission card output options are adjusted to use card-oriented sizes.
Where This Is Located
Lists and labels are created from the Lists & Labels module.
These updates represent an ongoing effort to make SchoolSet more efficient, flexible, and easier to use. From everyday contact management and attendance tracking to advanced financial workflows and AI-powered reporting, our goal is to provide schools with tools that simplify administration while maintaining accurate, accessible information.
We welcome feedback as we continue improving SchoolSet and expanding its capabilities.