What better use of the quiet school holiday period than to pump out another new feature ready for the busy term ahead. We’ve now released an ‘Electronic Signature’ feature that comes standard with EnrolHQ so parents can electronically sign Enrolment Applications and Acceptance of Enrolment Offers! For schools who are already using our online enrolment system, you can enable it from your School Settings page (under the Settings main navigation menu item).
Just a bit of background before I explain what the Electronic Signature feature does and how it works - this feature is purely for the peace of mind of Business Managers and Principals at schools who wanted to see a physical signature from parents recorded electronically.
EnrolHQ’s previous implementation of the ‘digital footprint’ by recording a parent ticking a checkbox with time and date and IP address and then emailing this record to parents and the school was more than sufficient as an ‘E-Signature’. Our latest feature builds on top of this to add even more integrity to EnrolHQ enrolments.
Now that you know the background - this is how the signature box works. Parents simply get to the end of the Enrolment form now, fill in all their details, tick all the checkboxes and they will arrive at the signature section before they can submit.
They click (or press on mobile/tablet) the little ‘Edit’ icon next to the signature box and it brings up a signature pad they can scribble in. It works particularly well on iPads but you can use a laptop trackpad to scribble your signature into the box. EnrolHQ records it, and prints it out inside the signature box now. The Acceptance Form follows exactly the same process.
After parents click ‘Submit’ their enrolment form is processed. They can log-in to their Parent Dashboard and download the PDF version of their enrolment form. The final page of the PDF enrolment form will contain the text (customised for each school) of the conditions they agreed to followed by any declarations of truth and correctness that the school wants to put there. It also shows the Students name, DOB, Grade of Entry and Year of Entry so there’s absolutely no ambiguity.
You may get a situation where a ‘Sole Parent’ initially submits the enrolment form without both parents signing it, they sign it themselves only. This is ok because at the time of the school making an Offer, you can force both parents into signing separately again (even if they are estranged or divorced) which will bind both parents into being responsible for the payment of school fees and other legally binding conditions.
So there you have it, our schools’ Business Managers came to us and asked for Electronic Signatures, we received your feedback and made it part of EnrolHQ and released it as a standard feature at no extra cost. Stay tuned for more exciting new feature releases to help your schools throughout Term 4.
Published: 11 Oct 2019
