ASBSD Chief Financial Officer Bill Lynch knows that it sometimes takes school districts a while to take advantage of new services.

The long-time business manager for the Hot Springs School District sometimes waited for other districts to try something new before recommending a service to his school board.

“It's scary being the first to try something new,” Lynch said. “If it doesn't work, I put the district in a bad position."

But Lynch thinks PaySchools, ASBSD’s new online payment processing service, will take off now that the Spearfish School District has successfully launched the new program.

PaySchools allows anyone to make school-related payments online by using an e-check or credit card. Parents can load their child’s lunch account, purchase athletic passes, buy prom tickets or make any other payment – all from the district’s web site.

From the user’s perspective, the e-commerce option provides a safe, convenient way to make payments. School districts can create office efficiencies and improve internal controls by forgoing manual check processing and reducing the amount of cash handled by employees.

Those benefits were enough to convince Spearfish Business Manager Craig Crosswait to implement PaySchools.
Without advertising the program, the system already accounts for 20 percent of the districts total volume – a percentage Crosswait expects to increase dramatically once the district pushes the service next school year.

“The parents I have spoken to enjoy the ease of payment and the process seems to be straightforward enough that there have been few questions,” Crosswait said.

And while new technology can sometimes be difficult to implement, Crosswait said getting PaySchools up and running was easy.

“We had a conference call and a webcast that went very smoothly,” Crosswait said. “The two or three individuals that we worked with at PaySchools have been efficient, helpful and extremely polite.”

There’s no up-front costs, but PaySchools collects a 3.5 percent activity fee. In Spearfish, the fee amounts to approximately $250 per month – a sum Crosswait thinks is more than fair.

“In my opinion, that’s not much for what is received and for the time saved not having to handle cash three or four times,” he said.

PaySchools was originally developed by the Iowa Association of School Boards.

The program was so successful - it's being used by more than 170 Iowa districts - that ASBSD worked with the Iowa association to make the program available to South Dakota districts.

For more information on PaySchools, contact Bill Lynch at 605.773.2506 or at blynch@asbsd.org.

Editors Note: Services Spotlight is a series of stories highlighting ASBSD member services.