Recently, I had the chance to meet with Cathy Anderson, Assistant to the Superintendent of Yorkville Community Unit School District. In search of a new payment provider, Cathy discovered MySchoolBucks through her district’s use of Synergy for their Student Information System. Their district is a new MySchoolBucks customer and we were excited to hear from her about the experience so far. 

To start our conversation, I asked Cathy a bit about her time at Yorkville and learned that she’s been with the district for 20 years. For much of that time, the district didn’t have a way to accept credit card payments from parents. So, Cathy decided she would find a platform that helped them do just that. The district initially worked with another vendor but decided it was time for a change to a solution that met all their payment needs. I asked Cathy to share more about the challenge her district was looking to solve.

“A lot of our teachers and coaches were looking for ways to take credit card payments for anything and everything. So they started using their own personal Venmo or different types of third party software. Which meant there was a lot of cash flying around classrooms, that sometimes ended up going missing. It's just not safe for teachers to carry around that money. It's amazing to see the amount of money we're collecting now that we're collecting payments online with MySchoolBucks. It's also convenient for parents—parents just don't carry cash anymore.”

Yorkville also utilizes Synergy for their Student Information System. Our integration with Synergy was another reason they looked into MySchoolBucks. With this integration, parents are able to view their fees right in their ParentVue portal and quickly navigate to MySchoolBucks to make payments. Payment details are synced in real-time back to Synergy so parents always know what fees are owed and what has been paid right in a platform they’re already familiar with.

“The integration is working really well. I like when parents pay in MySchoolBucks. It doesn’t take long at all for it to show up in Synergy, which is really nice because parents want to see it right away and to see their payment went through.”

It was clear that Cathy had been very involved in picking a new payment platform and advocating for the needs of her district. I wanted to learn more about how onboarding went once they decided on MySchoolBucks. Cathy worked closely with one of our implementation team members, Bonnie Bennett, and it was easy to see the strong relationship they had formed. 

"Bonnie was amazing. She was really great at explaining and answering all of my questions. And she made it interesting! She customized the training for our district and our needs. She just really understood when you asked a question and how to answer that.

Cathy also shared that it was important that she, and her district, were able to ‘get comfortable’ with MySchoolBucks before they went completely live with the program at start of school. With Bonnie’s expertise and guidance, Yorkville was able to collect fees for their Summer School program, ensuring that they were completely prepared and ready to expand to other fees for the year.

“It was great because I got a lot of experience with the back end. So when we started our school year, we were 100% on MySchoolBucks and it was a really easy transition.”

Bonnie was also on the call with us and emphasized how valuable it is to have a person on the district side, like Cathy, who is so committed to learning the platform. She attributed much of the success to Cathy's willingness to learn the system and ask important questions along the way. Bonnie shared:

“It was great having somebody on the district side who embraced the implementation and really wanted to learn it and use it. It was a perfect marriage.”

Although they are a relatively new MySchoolBucks customer, Yorkville has jumped right in and utilized many different aspects of the software. 

“So far with MySchoolBucks, we've used it to invoice for our registration payments. I've also used the ticketing system, MSB Tickets, and I've used MSB Anywhere to collect payments in person. So, we pretty much have been using everything.”

They have found their MySchoolBucks School Store to be a great resource. They’ve been able to use their Store to collect fees “across the board,” as Cathy says.

“We have a bunch of items in our School Store for sale, like the yearbook. We have some gym clothes. We have some fundraisers on there. So, I mean, our music department is usually using it to purchase instrument rentals. Really all across the board, all areas have been using MySchoolBucks already within just a few months. We've been having a lot of additional sales and registration, which has been so great.”

With MSB Tickets, they have been able to sell event tickets online and customize to each events’ specific needs. 

“It was really important that we had multiple ways to sell tickets for our events. The staff really likes to be able to sell for our auditorium, where they were able to let people pick their own seats, like how you would with Ticketmaster. For prom, it was a really great thing where they have scannable tickets for coming into the event. Students were able to pick out their table that they sat at, at prom. So that was a really big thing.”

Cathy also spoke about how her district needed a solution that could support taking in-person credit card payments at their events, specifically for their concession stands.

"We were really interested in a concession piece, for football games and things. They were losing a lot of money because parents didn't carry cash. So we were losing all those sales. Our previous platform didn’t really have a concession component. MySchoolBucks has MSB Anywhere, which is amazing.” 

When I asked Cathy how the school staff was doing with this change, she said that the teachers and staff were excited. They appreciated the ease of no longer needing to collect cash and track payments on their own. It’s been a smooth process for the entire Yorkville team. 

“The staff is loving the convenience of being able to take electronic payments and not having to create spreadsheets. The fees are created for them—so they're loving that. They're wanting to use it more.”

According to Cathy, students and their families are adjusting quickly to the new process. The district has continued to call it a “payment portal,” as they did with their last program, and has made it easy for parents to access MySchoolBucks right from Yorkville’s district website.

“Moving to a new payment platform hasn't been bad at all for parents. The login process is really easy for families to create an account. So that's been really good. They go to the same spot in our website, that they did before. So we wanted to keep that consistent.”

As their time with MySchoolBucks progresses, the district continuously thinks of new ways to utilize MySchoolBucks. The long-term goal is to no longer need to accept cash for any school-related fee. Until then, Cathy says, “Now that it's become common in all of our schools, more people are going to use it or inquire about how to get started.”

About the author

Emily Schoeneck is the SEO and Content Marketing Manager at Heartland School Solutions. She has six years of experience in the content industry. When she's not busy writing articles for Heartland's blogs, you can find her at home, reading a good book or out for a walk with her husband and Golden Retriever, Bella.