What schools send
| Message | Type | How it is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Fee balances and due dates | Transactional | Spreadsheet upload, one row per pupil, merge fields for name and balance |
| Exam and term results | Transactional | Spreadsheet upload with subject or grade columns |
| Attendance and late arrival alerts | Transactional | Daily upload, or API from the school management system |
| Closures, timetable changes, emergencies | Broadcast | Send to the whole-school or class contact group immediately |
| Open days, events, admissions | Marketing | Campaign to opted-in parents and prospects, scheduled |
| Transport and bus notices | Transactional | Group per route |
Personalised fee reminders, step by step
- Export from your fees ledger: a column for the parent's phone number and columns for pupil name, class, amount due and due date.
- Upload the file in Bulk Upload. Every row is validated — invalid numbers and duplicates are reported before anything is sent, and numbers on your blacklist are skipped.
- Write the template once, using the column names as merge fields.
- Preview a personalised message, confirm the credit cost, and send now or schedule for the morning.
- Watch the delivery reports; failed numbers are usually wrong or inactive numbers to correct in your records.
Reaching every parent
Parents rarely share one channel. Some are on WhatsApp, a few on email, all of them have a phone that receives SMS — including basic handsets with no data. That is why schools default to SMS for anything that must be seen: a fee deadline, a closure, a bus that is running late. Messages deliver to MTN, Airtel and Zamtel numbers alike, with a delivery report per parent so the bursar can see who received the reminder and who needs a call.
Sending as the school
Request a sender ID with the school's name (up to 11 characters — KABULONGA, CHALOTRUST) and upload an authorization letter on the school's letterhead. Once approved, every message shows the school's name instead of a number, which matters when you are asking parents to pay.
Groups, classes and routes
Organise contacts into groups — a whole-school group for closures, a group per class for teacher notices, a group per bus route for transport alerts — and import from CSV when the register changes. Contacts carry custom fields, so a parent's record can hold the pupil's name and class for merging without a fresh upload each time.
Integrating with a school management system
Schools on a management system can automate the routine messages: an attendance alert when a pupil is marked absent, a receipt when a payment posts, a reminder a week before fees fall due. The system calls the SMS API for each event and stores the message ID against the pupil record.
Paying for SMS as a school
There is no contract or monthly fee. The bursar buys SMS credits by MTN MoMo, Airtel Money or Zamtel Kwacha from the dashboard, sees the volume rate before paying and receives a receipt by email. The credit cost of each send is shown before it goes out. Universities and school groups with high volumes can arrange enterprise terms through info@ontech.co.zm.
Data protection for pupil information
Keep the message to what the parent needs: a name, an amount, a date. Avoid putting medical or disciplinary detail in an SMS. Phone numbers and message content are personal data under Zambia's Data Protection Act 2021; the platform's Privacy notice describes how they are handled and Ontech Solutions is registered with the Data Protection Commission (DP000394).