Notify portal-enabled contacts when a new fee is added to Financials
When adding a new fee to a student in Aeries Financials, it would be helpful if there was a mechanism to send an email and/or push notification to the linked portal accounts. As it is now there is no notification, and the fee is not obvious to a parent when visiting the portal in either the browser or mobile app, so it is very easy for the parent to not even realize that a fine was assessed until much much later. This increases the chance that the parent has forgotten the details of the fine or even why there was one, so now site staff have to deal with an irritated parent.
My idea is that a checkmark option be added to the Add Fee screen which tells Aeries to send an email to any portal accounts linked to the student when the fine is added. This could also be useful on the Add Payment screen, as the email notification would serve as a receipt for in-person payments. The Add Fee message could say something like the following:
<School name> has added a new fee for <student name>. The details of this fee are listed below. You can visit Aeries Portal to pay this fee online. If you have any questions please contact <school name>.
Date: 5-17-2021 (pulled from date field on Add Item screen)
Fee Amount: $45 (pulled from amount field on Add Item screen)
Description: (any text added to description field on Add Item screen)
Other elements from the Add Item screen could be included here, but I suggest only including elements that have data provided. For example, we don't use course fees, so including that on all email notifications would be superfluous.
Also, having a simple push notification in the mobile app that says something like "A new fee has been added for <student name>" would be a great way to drive them into the app to pay the fine quickly. Tapping on the notification could take them directly to the Financials screen in the app (which is currently hidden in the More menu). But that's just a cherry on top - simply having the email notification would be a huge help.
vbutler
shared this idea
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Tuan Pham
commented
I would like to have this feature as well. It would be helpful if we were able to email parents their fees instead of mailing it out
