Automated Parent Notifications

Beyond bulk messaging and the weekly digest, 1410SMS automatically notifies parents about key events. You decide which events notify parents and over which channels, whether that is email, WhatsApp, app push or any combination, under Settings → Communication → Notification Channels.

What can be sent automatically

• Invoice issued. When a new invoice is raised for a student
• Invoice cancelled. When a charge is withdrawn, and whoever cancels it ticks notify parent
• Payment receipt. When a payment is recorded
• Refund issued. When money is refunded to a family, unless whoever records it turns the notice off
• Fee reminder. Automatic overdue notices at configurable day tiers (7, 14, and 21 days past due by default), which you can also hold in a queue and release yourself. See Fee reminders
• Exam timetable. When an exam timetable is published to a class
• Weekly digest. A weekly summary of each child's attendance, grades, and fees
• Attendance alert. When a student is marked absent for the day
• Weekly grades published. When an academic week's marks are released to a class. See Weekly grades

Where a channel is not offered

A tick box the platform cannot act on is greyed out, with the reason beside the matrix. Today that is one box: weekly grades are not sent over WhatsApp. Families are told in the app, by push and by email instead.

This one is a deliberate choice rather than something still being built. A week of marks goes to every family in the class, and a school marking weekly publishes up to fifteen weeks a term, against three or four fee notices in the same period. Sent over WhatsApp it would become far the largest line on your allowance, and it would be spent on the notification that carries the least: the message names the week and the class, never the marks themselves, so it can only ever say "sign in to read this". The app push already does that, free, and opens the right screen when it is tapped. Putting it on WhatsApp as well would also queue ahead of your invoices and fee reminders, which are the messages a family genuinely needs to receive the day they are sent.

The point of greying it out rather than accepting it is that a preference nothing acts on is worse than one that is missing: it tells you the family was messaged.

It is shown greyed out rather than hidden, on the web and on the phone alike, so an admin looking for WhatsApp finds it and reads why instead of concluding one of the two apps offers less than the other.

Setting the channels from the phone

Settings → Notifications in the mobile app carries the same list of notifications as the web matrix, one row each with an Email, WhatsApp and App push chip, saved in one press. It is the same setting, so a change made on either shows up on the other.

Weekly digest & opt-out

Every Sunday evening, each parent receives a single weekly digest summarising every linked child's attendance, recent grades and fee position. Parents who'd rather not receive it can turn it off themselves from their portal's digest preferences, so an admin never has to manage this per parent. A student with no digest-eligible parent (none linked, or their only parents have opted out) still gets a one-child digest of their own, addressed to the guardian contact on file, or to the student directly if there is not one. Nobody falls through the gap. The digest honours the same school-wide toggle as the other notifications.

The digest also lands in the notification bell, so a parent who deleted the email, or whose school sends the digest by WhatsApp only, can still find it. The bell entry names the children it covers and opens straight onto that child's page, or the dashboard listing them where there is more than one. It is a signpost rather than a second copy of the summary: the figures stay in the digest itself.

Nothing goes out over a break. Before sending, the digest checks your Academic Calendar for the week just ended, and a week with no teaching day in it produces no digest at all. Every figure in one of those would be last week's: no register was marked, no grade entered, and the fee position is unchanged. Parents who receive four identical summaries over a holiday stop opening the one that follows it. A single teaching day in the week is enough for the digest to send as normal.

Its links go where the email was about. A parent with one child at your school lands on that child's page; a parent with several lands on their dashboard, and each child's section in the email carries its own link. Nobody is dropped on a front page and left to find their way back to what they have just read. Signing in is not skipped, only remembered: a parent who is already signed in goes straight there, and one who is not is taken there once they have.

Choosing channels

Each notification type has an Email, WhatsApp and App push tick box. Tick any combination, or none at all to turn that notification off entirely. Every notification defaults to all three, since every plan, including Free, includes a WhatsApp allowance.

A correction is its own row, not a share of the thing it corrects. Cancelling an invoice and refunding a payment are separate lines from Invoice issued and Payment receipt, so a school that settles refunds with a call from the bursary can silence the refund notice without silencing its receipts. Whether a family is told at all is still decided per action as you cancel or refund, this decides how they are told when you say yes.

The in-app notification centre is not one of the tick boxes: it is always on, because it costs nothing to deliver and never leaves the platform. Turning off every channel above stops the emails, the WhatsApp messages and the push notifications; the event still appears in the bell.

In-app notification centre

A notification bell in every portal (staff, student and parent) opens an in-app notification centre with an unread count, mark as read, mark all as read and archive. Nothing there depends on an email or a WhatsApp message actually landing. It is populated by the same events as the other channels and works the same way on web and mobile.

On the phone

A parent's own record of what the school has told them is More → Messaging in the mobile app, listed newest first: bulk announcements alongside every automated notice, so an invoice, a receipt, an attendance alert, a published exam timetable, a weekly digest and a letter from the office are one feed rather than several.

An announcement appears once, whatever it was sent on. A message sent by both email and WhatsApp is one entry here, not two, because which pipe it came down is the school's business and not the reader's. Where a school can see the per-channel breakdown of a send is its own Messaging history.