Single database--multiple systems for independent schools
January 05, 2021
Single database--multiple systems for independent schools
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Veracross
Veracross is our one-stop shop for managing our student, faculty, and parent information. They enter the database at their first inquiry and travel seamlessly from inquiry to applicant to student to alumnus. Flexible online portals allow us to enable parents to gather needed information as well as pay bills and manage permissions online. Veracross is used by all departments in our organization--student billing, accounting, admissions, learning management system, academic documents and philanthropy. We also utilize their API for a few home-grown web apps.
- We have our own account manager who knows our school and its configuration
- Parent, student, and faculty portals (as well as news portals) are designed and configured by us--we can control what content goes where
- Infinitely configurable queries, which meet all of our needs for extracting data
- We would like to see more functionality in the learning management system
- We would like the ability to order the admissions files for our online reviewers
- Veracross has streamlined our systems because everything is in one database
- Eliminated the need for outside systems for smaller tasks (online giving, online admissions, etc.)
We have been with Veracross now for 10 or 11 years. Our previous student management system was Education Edge, Financial Edge, and Raiser's Edge by Blackbaud. The support at Blackbaud was probably what drove us away, as well as the fact that we had three different databases to keep in sync despite the fact that we were using the same vendor! Blackbaud was slow to implement any sort of database sync.
Do you think Veracross delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Veracross's feature set?
Yes
Did Veracross live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Veracross go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Veracross again?
Yes
Using Veracross
250 - The only business function not represented is payroll.
1 - Bi-weekly meetings with our account manager, monitoring for duplicate records, approving address updates, configuring and publishing report cards, managing the calendar, helping teachers with their portals, helping students and parents with their needs, among other things. This comprises approximately 1/2 of my job responsibilities.
- Admissions
- Business services
- Academic records
- We use the API to authenticate parents and students in some home-grown web apps
- We use the API to connect directly to our textbook vendor
- We use it to call kids down for carpool
- Sync with our payroll management system
- Hoping for ability to do online tests in the LMS
Veracross Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - Yes!
At the beginning of this year one of our divisions decided a week before school that they needed to switch to a different grading period to meet the needs of faculty and students during the pandemic of 2020. Veracross was able to make this happen!