March 2021

If your school is approaching the 3rd quarter report, then these functions in FastDirect might need to be addressed.

Opening up teacher input for 3rd Quarter Report Cards will require:

  • Confirming the 3rd quarter dates in ‘Grades’ then ‘Report Card Input Controls’
  • Changing input for 3rd quarter Report Cards from ‘Not Yet’ to ‘Allow Input’ in ‘Report Card Input Controls’
  • Having teachers go through the 3rd quarter report card input process
  • Closing the input process by changing ‘allow input’ to ‘input complete’

Registration is an important part of the school year and FastDirect can help make the process easier.  In FastDirect, you can track new student applications, re-registrations of returning students, as well as the charging and depositing of registration fees. Here is some of the information that is tracked in the Registration report:

  • The number of students for each grade level
  • The number of students returning in each grade level
  • The number of new student applications in each grade level
  • An estimated number of spots available in each grade level
  • A breakdown of each existing family and their re-registration status

Here are some other features involved in registration through FastDirect:

  • The ability to allow your parents to re-register their child online
  • Time stamps for when parents re-registered their child
  • The finance account for Registration 2021-2022
  • A report showing all families and if they have been charged their registration fees
  • A report showing all families and if they have paid their registration fees

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in MP4 format

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in Youtube

Registering students for next year often means forms and paperwork.  With the file upload function, you can add these forms to the Links page, send them as attachments or create links to them on the login screen.  Making these forms available online means you won’t be spending your time making copies and mailing them out. Additionally, by allowing your parents to upload files, you can have a paperless process!  After you have uploaded the forms and made them available online, your parents can fill the forms out and send them back to you through our secure FDmail eMessaging. Here is how to turn on file upload for your parents and ways to help get your parents started:

You can activate this feature either for parents or students or both. To do so, you’ll go to Settings and click on FDmail in the left hand navigation menu. Check mark the option to Allow Parent File Upload and click ‘Save Changes’.  To allow students, repeat these steps and check mark the option for Allow Student File Upload.  To learn more about file upload, click on your FAQ Icon (the blue question mark), click on the “Look in: All categories” drop-down menu, select File Upload/File Attachment and click “View FAQ”. To help teach you parents and/or students how to use the file upload tool, you can point them to the FAQ section under the heading of ‘File Upload/File Attachment’. HelpDesk would like to help you get your Registration processes set up in FastDirect. Please send an FDmail message or give HelpDesk a call when you are ready to get started.

If your school is on trimesters, March may be too soon to be preparing for mid-trimester reports.

Registration is an important part of the school year and FastDirect can help make the process easier.  In FastDirect, you can track new student applications, re-registrations of returning students, as well as the charging and depositing of registration fees. Here is some of the information that is tracked in the Registration report:

  • The number of students for each grade level
  • The number of students returning in each grade level
  • The number of new student applications in each grade level
  • An estimated number of spots available in each grade level
  • A breakdown of each existing family and their re-registration status

Here are some other features involved in registration through FastDirect:

  • The ability to allow your parents to re-register their child online
  • Time stamps for when parents re-registered their child
  • The finance account for Registration 2021-2022
  • A report showing all families and if they have been charged their registration fees
  • A report showing all families and if they have paid their registration fees

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in MP4 format

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in Youtube

Registering students for next year often means forms and paperwork.  With the file upload function, you can add these forms to the Links page, send them as attachments or create links to them on the login screen.  Making these forms available online means you won’t be spending your time making copies and mailing them out. Additionally, by allowing your parents to upload files, you can have a paperless process!  After you have uploaded the forms and made them available online, your parents can fill the forms out and send them back to you through our secure FDmail eMessaging. Here is how to turn on file upload for your parents and ways to help get your parents started:

You can activate this feature either for parents or students or both. To do so, you’ll go to Settings and click on FDmail in the left hand navigation menu. Check mark the option to Allow Parent File Upload and click ‘Save Changes’.  To allow students, repeat these steps and check mark the option for Allow Student File Upload.  To learn more about file upload, click on your FAQ Icon (the blue question mark), click on the “Look in: All categories” drop-down menu, select File Upload/File Attachment and click “View FAQ”. To help teach you parents and/or students how to use the file upload tool, you can point them to the FAQ section under the heading of ‘File Upload/File Attachment’. HelpDesk would like to help you get your Registration processes set up in FastDirect. Please send an FDmail message or give HelpDesk a call when you are ready to get started.

The ability to mark a student as Virtual or Virtual Due to Covid-19 has been added to Monitor, as well as the teacher’s attendance form. Phase I of our Virtual Attendance Update included changes to Monitor, the homeroom teacher’s Attendance Form, and Census.  The goal is to give you the ability to record your daily attendance with virtual instruction or distance learning in mind.

We plan to release our Virtual Attendance features in a few phases so that we can add functionality as it’s created rather than wait to release all updates at once. Phase II of our Virtual Attendance Update will include changes to the Individual Attendance Record and ways to facilitate the editing of past attendance data. In other words, we we will create ways to edit past attendance in more efficient ways.

Important!  Do NOT mark Virtual students as Absent

  • Unless the student is truly not attending virtual classes or doing their distance learning as outlined in your policy.
  • This update is mainly focused on marking attendance for today and moving forward.
  • It is possible to edit past attendance, but we will create ways to edit past attendance in more efficient ways. This will be part of the next update.

Here are some FAQs to help you get started:

As Registration opens for many schools, updating parent information is an important step. There is a batch print option and individual print option for all parent/guardian information to help with that process.

During registration season, we know printing parent forms is sometimes needed. Whether you print parent information for registration or to keep for a paper copy,
these printing options should make things easier. There is a batch print option and individual print option for all parent/guardian accounts. To print an individual parent’s information, you will pull up a parent account. In the top right of the page will be the ‘Print’ button. Here are some specifics to keep in mind regarding printing a parent form:

  • While we have tried to condense the form so that it will fit on one page, there will be some circumstances when all of the information may require a second page. One factor that will contribute to a longer page print would be the number of WildCards for the parents or students.
  • If a parent or student WildCard has been marked as ‘Hide Information’ (in Settings), then that WildCard and its information will not appear on the printed form.

Here are the steps for how to batch print the parent information forms (with one parent per page):

  1. Go to People, then Parents
  2. Click ‘Print’ next to the very last option that reads ‘Print All Active Parent Information Forms’
  3. A new internet tab will open with each parents’ information displayed per page and then you print through your browser’s print commands

There are many reasons why a student may switch from one course to another mid-year.   If a student has transferred out of your course but must remain in the roster, you can ‘hide’ his name from the grade book roster to avoid confusion when entering in grades.  Here are the steps to ‘exclude’ a student’s name from a grade book roster:

  1. Open the grade book for one of your courses
  2. In the menu on the top right, click ‘Preferences’
  3. Select the option for ‘Exclude Student’
  4. In the drop down, select the student’s name
  5. Click the ‘Exclude’ button
  6. To reinstate the student, just repeat these steps but use the ‘Reinstate’ option instead

Tax season is here and FastDirect has a tax report for parents. This report can be found when parents click on the Finance icon in the top menu bar.  In the left hand menu will be a Tax Report option.  Once you click on Tax Report, you will select the tax year and then click ‘Tax Year Printout’.  A new window will open with the report for easy printing! The tax report will have the following information:

  • The Federal Tax ID Number
  • The tax year
  • A breakdown of deposit transactions for each account
  • A total deposit amount for each account
  • A total deposit amount for all accounts

Watch this video tutorial to find out more about the admin controls in the parent information form.

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