How to Become a Cashless School

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You may have heard the term “cashless school.” What does it mean? Briefly, it means schools offer cash-free payment opportunities for families. Cash-free systems are becoming more and more popular for schools because they offer students and parents convenient ways to pay for school fees, events and activities online. At the same time, they free up valuable time and resources for school administrators.

About cashless schools

As with so many businesses and organizations today, transitioning to digital payment methods and tools can make transactions faster and easier for students, parents and staff.

Students and parents can pay for activities and items online through a secure system, instead of using cash and checks. For school systems, making the move to a cashless school means streamlining in-person, manual transactions. This reduces the need to accept, store and secure cash and checks. In fact, cashless payment systems for schools are fast becoming the default method for collecting payments for all kinds of fees, services, events and even donations.

A cashless school can help reduce risk while maintaining faster and better recordkeeping. But despite the benefits, many schools haven’t made the transition to cashless systems. Why? The process might seem complex, but implementing cashless systems might be easier than most administrators imagine.

In fact, following this 7-step process can help make the move to cashless payment systems for schools manageable.

How Vanco and Skyward can help

To help more schools move toward cashless processes, Vanco — a leader in online payments for K-12 schools — has partnered with Skyward. Vanco is now a Skyward Preferred Payment Partner, meaning you’ll enjoy real-time synchronization between your Vanco payment systems and Skyward.

Vanco RevTrak Web Store integrations create a central location where parents can make all their school payments online. There’s no need to add an extra login step — parents simply manage payments directly from their existing Skyward accounts. Parents can rely on this one-stop shop to pay for food service, before- and after-school care, registrations, music programs, event ticketing, fundraising and more. They can be confident their payments and account information are secure and accurate.

For school administrators, the Vanco/Skyward integrations can help make cashless schools a reality, with faster reconciliation, easier revenue tracking, and consolidated reporting on the back end. These integrations mean you can bundle all payments online and eliminate the need to use multiple vendors and technology platforms.

How it works

Making payments is easy and seamless. Parents simply use the customized school Web Store site on a desktop or mobile browser, using a single sign-on from their Skyward accounts to log in. From there, it’s fast and easy to make payments.

Behind the scenes, real-time API integrations help staff take advantage of automated reconciliation rather than manual entry to post payments and identify missed payments. Users can track revenue from end to end and generate consolidated reports covering all fees and payments made in the Vanco Web Store and Skyward.

The bottom line

Transitioning to a cashless school can have many benefits. Students can pay for activities, services and products faster. Parents can manage their accounts directly and securely with a single password. And staff can save precious time and resources and spend them where they matter — on learning — rather than on processing cash and check payments and answering questions about account and payment status.

Discover the ultimate solution for cashless schools: the Vanco integration with Skyward

Ready to transform your school into a cashless institution and reap the benefits of streamlined transactions, enhanced security and reduced administrative workload? The Vanco and Skyward integration offers an innovative solution for schools to make the transition.

Click here to discover how this powerful partnership can help your school become a cashless school.