Moving payments and sales over to an on-line shop
Moving payments and sales over to an on-line shop
I’ve recently come across a number of schools that are looking at moving more directly into the world of commerce by selling product on-line. This can be anything from school uniform through to pens, pencils and the like.
The number of schools doing this is small, but the number of schools looking into the issue seems to be large – not least because once you have an on-line shop it can be very easy to add new products. It also allows you to take payment for school visits, etc, on-line. This can reduce the amount of administrative work over money collection enormously – and also reduces the number of visits to the bank to pay in cash or cheques.
Of course, not every parent can pay by credit card, but even if just half of them do (and I suspect the number will be a lot more once the parents gets used to the system) that can reduce one more administrative burden quite considerably.
The one company I have found offers what is known in the trade as an “e-commerce shopping cart” known as INCO-SHOP from INCO Software Solutions – which also has a stock control system built in, along with secure on-line payment processing.
There is also the benefit that this is another way of encouraging parents to interact with the school’s website – where of course more and more information is being presented.
The company that supplied me with this information also makes the following point…
“Should the school wish for us to develop their website and address online payment processing then we are able to provide an all inclusive system that not only handles the updating and maintenance of the school website but also a “web shop” module for online payments of events.
“We can also “close off areas of the website” to restricted user groups. e.g. when a Year 10 student’s parent is requested to make a payment for a school trip online , they can access the relevant “closed section” of the site once logged in and make the payment as well as accessing other Year 10 specific information.
“ALL of our web systems conform to the legal requirements around “web accessibility” – part of the Disability Discrimination Act.”
The whole notion of moving payments and sales over to an on-line shop does seem to me a most interesting one, in terms of making schools more efficient (the government’s current hot topic).
You can find out more about this service from www.inco-education.co.uk or call 01902-784800.