Digitising school payment and permission systems saves time and money

By digitising manual payments processes, Australian schools could save more than 2000 hours of teacher and admin time and take up to $2.6 billion in cash out of the system, according to new report.

Deloitte measured the impact of digital payments technology on the efficiency of schools’ admin systems and their processes in the Digital Payments in Education report, and found that educators have been actively digitising the classroom experience but not so much the administrative services.

“What happens in the front end administration of schools has a big impact on teachers, the admin staff and importantly parents. We found that there are a lot of payments being made in schools that have little to do with delivering the learning outcomes of schools, but are part of running a typical school.

“School lunches are an excellent example of this. There are various systems on the market that take what used to be a paper process, and by digitising it through an app, turn it into a service that parents find convenient to use to order and pay for their children’s lunches online,” said Richard Miller, Payments Practice Leader, Deloitte. 

“If schools in Australia digitised the estimated $2.6 billion worth of payments a year, they could realise efficiencies averaging $84,000 a year per school. More importantly, they could save teachers and admin staff 2,145 hours on average a year to refocus on learning outcomes.”  

By looking at the schools which had transitioned to a digital payment system, the report found that as well as saving time and money, the move to digital payments also reduces the risk of fraud and cash losses, as well as improving parents’ experience of dealing with school fees, lunch orders and excursions.

Digital payments services for schools include online payments, mobile apps and real time data feeds to suppliers and administrative staff. Some schools are also exploring innovations such as e-permission excursion slips and automated notifications for teachers.