Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review We often had students who came and took a class or completed a program, left, and then came back for something else at a later time. It was nice to be able to have someone in Jenzabar SONIS with multiple statuses. They could be in as a Student for the current class while still being in as an Alumni for the program they had graduated from. Most of our programs are set up so the students within that program are all taking the same courses at the same time. The bulk registration feature made it easy to enroll one student and then use that student's enrollment to quickly enroll all of the others in the program. That was a huge time saver. We had letters and emails that we wanted to send out at specific times in the application process. The Activity tool in Jenzabar SONIS made it easy for us to have some things that were automatically added to a person's record and others that we could add as needed. We could then run timed letters or emails and get our communication sent out. We had some challenges with Jenzabar SONIS because we have a number of certificate programs that are only one semester in length. We often had students who would complete one certificate (program) in the fall and then complete another one in the spring. Many of the reports pulled data only for the active enrollment so we had to go back and manually pull the data for the enrollment from the other semester if we needed something for the full school year.
Read full review Pros Website is easy to navigate Customer service is very professional and helpful Multiple options for making payments and setting up accounts Read full review Great value Built in reports are great, but it also has add on reporting that is fantastic. Hosting they offer is phenomenal nearly no downtime, ever! Read full review Cons Divorced parent log in access Split family contract processes Read full review SONIS sorts my advisees by class and then by name. This is NOT useful. There should be an option for sorting by name only. I advise almost fifty students. It wastes my time looking for them in the sophomore listing, then the junior listing...... When registration of a student for semester courses is complete, there should be an option to print out only the courses scheduled, NOT the entire page which shows available courses at the bottom. SONIS sometimes kicks me out for no reason. Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review We changed databases in 2011 because the company we were with was going to quit supporting our software. We evaluated a number of different SISs available at the time and felt Jenzabar SONIS provided the best tools for our school. Most of the others were either geared more for adult education, individual course offerings or for schools that primarily had degree-seeking students. We needed something that could address both needs.We felt Jenzabar SONIS did that best of the ones we reviewed.
Read full review Return on Investment Online access is key Multiple payment options are great Since there are so many payment options we receive funds faster Read full review Facilitates grade input by faculty. Facilitates course enrollment by students. Facilitates viewing student records and determining progress to program completion. Read full review ScreenShots