Most private schools send the reminder from one app and collect the money in another. Sycamore does both from the same place. A family gets the notice on their phone, taps through to their balance, and pays without logging in anywhere else. Your business office sees the balance update right away.
Schools post fees in the Sycamore platform. The business office adds a one-time or recurring charge on the web, and the families assigned to it are notified in the app. This is the real screen your office would use.
For a private K-12 school, it's education management software that runs messaging and billing on the same family record instead of two tools stitched together. That's how Sycamore works. Schools reach families by email, SMS, and push from the same system that bills them, families pay by card or ACH in the free Sycamore Parent App, and every payment lands in the family's account with a receipt already on its way. Sycamore is $4 per student per month with communication, the parent app, and payments included, and there's no monthly fee for payments themselves.
Whatever you end up choosing, these are the things we'd check first:
We hear a version of this on most demo calls. The school sends a tuition reminder through its messaging app. A parent reads it in the pickup line, then has to find a different website, remember a different password, and pay there. Some do it that night. Plenty don't, and by the fifth of the month someone in the business office is making phone calls.
Neither tool is the problem on its own. It's that they don't know about each other. The messaging app can't see balances, so everyone gets the same reminder. The billing portal can't message anyone, so overdue accounts sit until somebody exports a list and starts emailing.
Put communication and payments on one family record and most of that goes away. A new fee goes out as a push notification to the families it's assigned to (not the whole school). The parent taps the notice and pays in the same app. The receipt goes out by itself, with your logo on it.
Same app for the parent. Same record for the business office.
Here's what happens when the business office posts a fee. Nobody exports anything, and nobody re-types a payment.
Add a title, amount, and due date in the Sycamore platform. Make it one-time or recurring. Watch how
A push notification goes to the families assigned to that fee. Email and SMS are there for everything else.
Card or ACH, one charge or several at once, or autopay so they never think about it.
Branded with your school's logo, sent automatically after every payment.
The family balance updates in real time, and QuickBooks Online stays in sync.
All of this comes with the standard Sycamore license. Payments don't carry a monthly fee; you only pay processing when a transaction runs.
Message the whole school, one class, or a group you've built, from inside Sycamore. No separate messaging contract.
Payments, attendance, grades, and school messages on one screen. It's free for families on iOS and Android. More on the app
Post a fee and the families assigned to it get a push notice. Smart Notifications let you nudge before a late fee kicks in.
Recurring payments, automatic drafts, and tuition payment plans you set up once. Tuition, the field trip, and after-care can sit on one bill.
Receipts go out on their own with your logo. Parents pull their own statements and can filter charges by child, which cuts down on "can you resend that?" emails.
Direct QuickBooks Online integration, reconciliation support, and downloadable reports for anything else your accountant wants. Payments in detail
And you've probably been burned by a piece of education technology that went down the week school started. Sycamore has a 100% uptime record on a public status page, and the login that sends Friday's update is the same one that shows a family's attendance and grades.
Teachers already take attendance and keep the gradebook in Sycamore, so there's no extra app for them to learn just to reach parents.
Families who read school messages in the app are one tap from paying. You set the fees, the plans, and who covers processing, and the balance updates when they pay.
When the board asks where receivables stand, it's a report you pull, not a spreadsheet you rebuild.
One license covers the platform, communication included. Payment processing is per transaction, and your school decides who pays it.
| Item | What you pay |
|---|---|
| Sycamore license | $4 per student per month. Includes the SIS, admissions, communication, the parent app, Sycamore Academy training, and US-based support. |
| Payments platform fee | None. You only pay when a transaction processes. |
| Credit card | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, plus a 1% Sycamore convenience fee. That's 3.9% + $0.30 in total. |
| ACH bank transfer | 0.8% (capped at $5) plus a 1% Sycamore convenience fee, for 1.8% in total. Only the 0.8% banking portion is capped. |
| Who covers processing | Your call. The school absorbs it, families pay it, you split it down the middle, or you mix by method (say, the school covers ACH and families cover cards). |
| Contract | 18-month minimum. Longer terms lock in your per-student rate. |
| Onboarding | A low standard fee based on school size, discounted further for schools in a district, diocese, or group. |
Volume discounts start above 400 students. Full pricing lives on the Sycamore School page.
Card and bank payments are processed by Stripe, a PCI DSS Level 1 certified processor. Access is role-based, so parents, students, teachers, and administrators each see what their role allows and nothing more.
Our uptime is public on the Sycamore status page, and so is our data processing agreement. When something does need a human, you'll reach a US-based support team on the phone.
It's the system a school runs on: student records, attendance, grades, admissions, billing, and communication with families. Some schools buy those as separate products. Education management software like Sycamore puts them on one record per student and family, so the office isn't copying data between systems.
Yes. The Sycamore Parent App shows payments, attendance, grades, and school messages on one screen. It's free for families on iOS and Android, and they can also pay through the web portal.
By email, SMS, and push notification, sent to the whole school, a single class, or a group. When the business office posts a fee, the families assigned to it get a push notice automatically.
No. Processing is charged per transaction, and that's it.
The school decides. You can absorb the fees, pass them to families, split them down the middle, or mix by payment method, for example covering ACH while families cover card fees. Card processing is 3.9% + $0.30 per transaction in total, and ACH is 1.8% in total with the 0.8% banking portion capped at $5.
QuickBooks Online, yes, directly. QuickBooks Desktop isn't integrated, but you can download Sycamore's reports and import them.
Yes. Schools can set up recurring payments, automatic drafts, and tuition payment plans, and enroll families in autodraft. Once a plan is set up in accounting, it shows up in the family's app.
Often, yes. Sycamore serves schools in over 40 countries. Whether card and ACH processing is available depends on Stripe's support in your country, and PayPal is an option in some places, so we check yours on the first call.
We’ll walk through the basics: posting a fee, what a family sees in the app when it’s due, and how you choose who covers processing on card and ACH.
Sycamore Leaf Solutions, education management software for K-12 schools since 2001.
Processing rates shown are current as of October 2026. Payment availability outside the US depends on processor support in your country.
