New Self-Paced Gradebook

Azroy Kandan4 Comments

We’ve introduced a new way for entering grades into your Gradebook on QuickSchools. This new style of data entry is by student instead of by subject, and should prove useful for schools that provide self-paced learning for students that are on a similar curriculum. It should also help one-on-one tutoring programs where multiple students undergo the same lessons, but at different times. We’re calling it the new Self-Paced Gradebook.

Here’s what the new screen looks like:

Self-Paced Gradebook
Self-Paced Gradebook

You can now maintain a single Gradebook for all your students undergoing the same curriculum in the same subject/course. After completing a lesson with a student, instead of selecting the subject you teach, you can now instead select the student, and update the grades accordingly. You can also maintain a different set of gradebook dates that is specific to the student. Everything else works pretty much the same.

To turn on the Self-Paced Gradebook, you’ll need to access the “Features” page and click on “Configure” next to the “Report Cards / Gradebook” Module. The Configuration pop-up now has an option to enable the Self-Paced Gradebook:

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Parents Making Payments Online

Azroy Kandan2 Comments

Late last year, we introduced the ability for Parents to Pay Online via Stripe (along with Family Billing). Just to re-iterate, schools are free to charge any amount to parents/students via the Fee Tracking module. But also, parents can pay any amount via their QuickSchools portal:

Parents Paying Online
Parents Paying Online

So for schools that want to charge for the year, you can enter a yearly fee, and have parents pay monthly. The system will always show the amount outstanding. Alternatively, for schools that want to work on a prepay system, parents can pay any amount upfront, and then the school can charge monthly based on usage.

If you have any questions about the Online Payments module that we offer, please leave a comment, or come chat with us online. We look forward to any feedback you may have for us.

Consolidated Gradebook

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Most of our schools create new Gradebooks for each academic term. However, if you’re looking to use a single gradebook for the whole year, here are some recommendations on how you’d do it on QuickSchools:

1 – Academic Terms

In QuickSchools, you automatically get a new gradebook whenever you activate a new academic term. So if you’re going to use the same gradebook year-round, you’ll need to make sure that you only have ONE academic term linked any academic year. You’d probably want to name the academic term the same as the academic year, to minimize confusion. Here’s an example (under “New Semester Setup” > “View All Semesters”):

Setting up Academic Terms for Consolidated Gradebooks
Setting up Academic Terms for Consolidated Gradebooks

2 – GradeBook Categories

Even though you’re using the same gradebook year-round, you’ll probably want to still separate Gradebook entries by academic term. So we recommend controlling this via the Gradebook Categories (under “Grading Setup”). So for example, if you typically have 3 categories for “Assignment”, “Homework” and “Test”, you would now create separate versions of the 3 categories like “T1 Assignment”, “T2 Assignment”, “T1 Homework”, “T2 Homework”, and so on. You’ll see how this is relevant as we show you how the Gradebook will work with these categories:Read More »

QuickSchools for Home Schools

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If you’re a home school and you’d like to produce high quality report cards and transcripts for your students to take to college, then QuickSchools is for you. For as little as $50 a month on the Apollo Plan, you can manage all the data that a more established school tracks, which they probably paid tens of thousands of dollars to use.

Here’s a summary of benefits for Home Schools using QuickSchools:

  • Customized Report Cards and Transcripts: Our Report Cards and Transcripts are REALLY easy to use. There’s a multitude of templates to choose from, each with its own set of configuration elements.
  • Keep track of other important data: You can create custom fields, and track other information like attendance and discipline. If you have State Reports to produce, we can help you with that as well.
  • Full access to our fantastic online Chat Support: Our online Chat Support is available nights and weekends, to help you set up your account, and your report cards.
  • Minimum charge is less than fifty bucks a month!

If you haven’t tried us out already, sign up for a free trial today, and come chat with us for advice. We’d love to hear from you.

Standard Charges for Specific Students

Azroy Kandan5 Comments

The QuickSchools Standard Charges module is actually a very powerful tool for applying discounts and charges based on group of students. For example, you may have a discount for siblings, or a discount for veterans, or a discount for employees. Although the Fees Tracking module may not know automatically if a student is deserving of one of these special discounts, once you include a student into a standard charge, the Fee Tracking module remembers this, so you can re-apply the same discount/charge in the future.

Let’s go through an example:

Creating a Standard Charge

First you’ll need to go to the “Fee Tracking” > “Standard Charges” menu and click on “+ Add Standard Charge”:

List of Standard Charges
List of Standard Charges

Give the standard charge a name, like “Discount for Employees”. Then use the “+ Add Item” to add transactions for this standard charge. Remember that each standard charge can have more than one transaction if required. And you can enter a negative amount for discounts:

Adding / Modifying a Standard Charge
Adding / Modifying a Standard Charge

One you’ve saved the Standard Charge, it’ll appear in your list of standard charges.

Applying a Standard Charge

When you’re ready to apply the charge, click on the “Apply” button. The following pop-up should appear:Read More »

QuickSchools Training Packs

Azroy Kandan7 Comments

Good news for schools looking for an easy way to get administrators and staff quickly ramped up with QuickSchools. We’re now offering training packs which will include two separate 1-hour training sessions. The first session is for school administrators, while the second training is for teachers and staff.

How it works

The training will be conducted via an online meeting / webinar (We typically use GoToMeeting, Fuze, or Join.me). If you’re interested in the training pack, contact us to arrange times for your admin training and your teacher training (they don’t have to be at the same time, or on the same day). We’ll send you a link for the webinar, and the training will be done online.

We recommend having a projector ready for training sessions with a lot of participants. It helps if each participant has a laptop, so they can walk through the various parts of the software, as we’re explaining the features and modules.

Once the training sessions are completed, you will see a bill for the training pack on your Account page. If you’re on a credit card subscription, you will be charged automatically in your next billing cycle.

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