Blackbaud Tuition Management vs. Orah

The way Blackbaud Tuition Management handles the charges and how accessible it is makes my job much easier. I love that parents can see the same view of their account as I have when entering/reviewing an account so that it doesn't sound foreign when I try to explain something to them.

This is hands down the best application on the market in terms of making sure parents and staff understand where students are at any given time during the day. It also has done a great job of expanding into buy-in areas for students such as having event sign-ups inside the application. Having parent accounts also does a great job of keeping lines of communication open between the parents, school, and students.

Incentivized

• Website is easy to navigate
• Customer service is very professional and helpful
• Multiple options for making payments and setting up accounts

Incentivized

• Keeping all information organized in one place.
• Having my entire student database at the touch of a screen.

Incentivized

• Divorced parent log in access
• Split family contract processes

• I would like to see all parents having to capture weekend arrangements, whether they are going out or staying in.
• An automatic reminder SMS sent to parents who have not made arrangements by a certain time.

Incentivized

I gave this rating because Boardingware support is unbelievable. They are quick to reply and have a chat feature that they not only are there for most of the day but you can leave a note if they are not available and they get back to you very quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed any conversations I had with support from Boardingware.

Incentivized

I use FACTS in my role at work, and my children's school uses Smart Tuition. I am more familiar with Smart Tuition as a parent, but it seems to be a good solution for the high school. Since we do the financial aid in-house at my school of employment, FACTS works better for us.

Incentivized

Senior Systems did not work as well and the functionality from the administrative side is not as user-friendly. I often felt like it was down and not working properly, or that I could not find where certain documents are. I believe that for a boarding school community Boardingware was much more user-friendly, and did not take as many steps in order to get the job done quickly.

Incentivized

• Online access is key
• Multiple payment options are great
• Since there are so many payment options we receive funds faster

• We were tracking student leave by hand or by an in-house program. Both of these became inefficient and/or unusable. Having Boardingware has expedited the process. It's hard to give numbers, but we're several days ahead of where we used to be in terms of tracking students' leave for Thanksgiving break.
• Parent involvement was always an issue, but with Boardingware parents must approve a leave before we (the school) does. This makes parents take responsibility for their child which happens less than it should.
• Having access to flagged students with health issues makes it much easier to plan field trips. We can easily know who should have what meds or epi pens based on their Boardingware profile. Safety awareness and prevention has gone up due to this feature.

Incentivized