Overview

The Halton Catholic District School Board (HCDSB) serves more than 37,000 students across 55 Ontario schools in Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton, and Oakville. By 2013, more than $11 million in school activity funds were being collected each year, and too much of that money still moved as cash and paper checks that the district couldn’t easily trace. HCDSB adopted SchoolCash Online to bring collection online and feed payments directly into their existing accounting system.

Today, SchoolCash Online at HCDSB handles over $12M a year. Here’s how HCDSB moved most of its school activity funds out of cash and paper and into one system parents actually use.

The Challenge

$11 million is a lot of money for a district to process each year. And every dollar received as cash or check was a dollar they couldn’t easily see or trace. Paul McMahon, then HCDSB’s Superintendent of Business Services and Treasurer, saw that moving collection online would cut the number of cash and check transactions and lower the district’s risk exposure.

“Our Board wanted to eliminate any possibility of fraud and wanted more accountability in the way that schools managed activity funds,” recalls Jo-Anne Tucker, Former School Administration Systems Liaison, HCDSB.

HCDSB had managed activity funds in SchoolCash Accounting since 2004, so it already had one integrated system of record. What it needed was an online payment option that fed straight into that system rather than a standalone tool that only processed payments.

The Solution

Tucker and her implementation team evaluated several options before choosing SchoolCash Online.

“We did our due diligence and evaluated other solutions, but the clear choice was SchoolCash from KEV,” said Tucker. “The online payments module was designed to integrate into our existing accounting module, which we knew would make tracking and reporting a seamless process. Competing solutions only processed online payments; they couldn’t match KEV’s power to automatically write back to the general ledger. Plus, there were multiple payment options, which the competitors couldn’t match.”

HCDSB selected SchoolCash Online in 2014 and rolled it out in three phases over 16 months. The team started small on purpose. And at McMahon’s direction, every school heard the purpose and the benefits before the system arrived.

“Our goal in implementing SchoolCash Online with smaller groups and training school staff was to obtain a smooth rollout,” explained Tucker. “We started them on basic tasks so they could see how activity funds appeared in different areas of our accounting system, such as the general ledger.”

Phasing the rollout meant the district office supported fewer schools at a time, which freed Tucker to talk with and sometimes visit administrative staff. These visits helped identify new opportunities, like using SchoolCash to collect for one of their largest annual fundraisers, the Halloween Dance-a-Thon.

“We educated schools on the benefits of the donations module and how it would result in less paperwork for them,” said Tucker. “And when KEV released the new guest account module that allowed friends and relatives of students to donate, that also helped. It makes collecting donations so much easier and drove up overall usage.”

Leadership carried the rest.

“Our superintendent provided clear direction to the principals and schools,” recalled Tucker. “Once the principals bought in, they encouraged administrative staff who began using it more and more.”

The team also shared parent adoption numbers at administrator meetings, which turned the rollout into a friendly competition among principals.

“Competing solutions only processed online payments; they couldn’t match KEV’s power to automatically write back to the general ledger.”

The Results

Parent adoption has reached 92%, and revenue collected through online payments has grown to $8.3 million. With that shift, close to 70% of the activity funds HCDSB collects each year were now moving through a system that protects them from potential fraud.

And the payoff extends beyond the ledger.

“Now that parents can make payments through SchoolCash Online, our teachers have more time to focus on what they do best: teaching,” said Tucker. “And, with less physical cash being collected, school administrative staff now spend much less time preparing deposits for a trip to the bank.”