If there’s ever been a time to move your parent group online for everything from event sign-ups to spiritwear purchases, it’s now. Parents and families are busier than ever and relying on short bursts of free time plus their smartphones to manage their hectic lives. Moving your parent group online—especially for payments—almost always increases profit and participation. Check out these easy ways to take your group digital.

✔ Get your new board on board

New board members have a lot to learn and adjust to. Using an online platform like Cheddar Up can lighten that load by providing a seamless transition of all payment-related activities. It offers detailed payment and item tracking and saves history for easy handoff—freeing your new board to jump in on other priorities.

✔ Make back-to-school signups seamless

Coordinate with the principal about moving back-to-school registration online—you’ll be glad you did! Parents will love the one-stop simplicity. Plus, as part of the registrations page, you can build in options to recruit new PTO volunteers, collect for PTO-related back-to-school activities, and get newsletter opt-ins. Truly, it doesn’t get any easier. #multitaskmaster

✔ Rock your first fundraiser of the year

Taking your fundraisers online is a big way to ease some back-to-school stress—and increase profit! Set up an online collection page to suit your own events or fundraisers—in other words, create one page that features all events and let parents sign up with one easy checkout, or create a separate page for each event. However you decide to organize it, Cheddar Up allows you to collect payments and information with a couple of clicks. And when you promote your fundraiser and events in advance, you’ll almost always earn more and increase community participation.

✔ Make life easy for room parents

Hey, room parents—what’s the biggest drag of your job? We’re betting most of you will say it’s trying to collect cash from parents for teacher gifts, class parties, and other events and activities. Move it all online (think Halloween party, Teacher Appreciation Week, etc.), then share a link with parents for easy online payment. Cheddar Up eliminates the “please send money with your child” hassles—and increases the donations you’ll get!

✔ Show your school spirit

How awesome would it be to avoid the usual hullabaloo of spiritwear—the setup, staffing the “store” hours, keeping track of inventory manually, and so on—plus make more money? Cheddar Up makes that awesomeness a reality by letting you display your items and even collect sizing information online—a digital spiritwear store! Additional settings allow you to track inventory, so there’ll be no guessing about what’s available—everyone can get something they love.

✔ Go mobile

Because parents do so much on their smartphones these days, accepting electronic payments can dramatically increase profits for many parent group activities and sales: product fundraisers, events, spiritwear, and more. When you use Cheddar Up, your collection pages are mobile-friendly; plus, Cheddar Up’s mobile app lets you manage your PTO business anywhere, at any time—so you can make the most of these times we’re in.

✔ Take payments in person

Accepting in-person payments can significantly increase both profit and participation...but who carries cash these days? Cheddar Up’s app offers point-of-sale functionality, which makes it super easy to transition seamlessly from online payments in advance to day-of, in-person payments—with all tracking and funds in one spot. You can also customize your collection to include any additional items you want to offer. Selling spiritwear alongside game tickets at your carnival? No problem!

✔ Take your banking online

You’ll make your PTO treasurer’s dreams come true when you let her know that Cheddar Up tracks all payments and information. That means no more data entry! What’s more, it’s free to transfer funds directly to your PTO bank account, so she can avoid trips to the bank. Need funds to go to different places? Attach multiple bank accounts with ease.

✔ Automate payment reminders

Fun: after-school enrichment programs. Not fun: managing paper forms, check payments, and late payment follow-up. It’s easy to eliminate the “not fun” by moving the whole process online, on one page, with options you can add like late fees and recurring payments for people who want to pay monthly. Cheddar Up will even automate your monthly payment reminders!

✔ Streamline field trip planning

Who finds the traditional field-trip-permission-slip-and-money-sent-back-to-school-in-an-envelope process more annoying, parents or organizers? It’s a true toss-up, but with Cheddar Up everyone can enjoy the streamlined system of a field trip collection to manage permission slips and field trip fees at the same time. Just share the link and voila—parents can easily pay and fill out the forms online—complete with an e-signature!

✔ Modernize your school play

Think about the traditional workflow of generating revenue for a school play: sales of tickets, program ads, flowers for the performers.... So. Many. Steps. With Cheddar Up, you can set up a simple online collection page to include all of those options—much less hassle for parents and other attendees. Supporters use the same link to order their tickets, flowers, and any other merchandise you want to offer (T-shirts or performance DVDs, for example). You can even set up your page to allow parents and businesses to buy program ads online, making it simpler for you when it comes time to design and print the programs.

✔ Make it ridiculously easy for parents

What could be even simpler than clicking on a link to make an online payment, order spiritwear, sign up for a program, or provide other information? The fact that no one needs to register to do any of it! They just click a link you share and always have the option to pay as a guest.

In a busy, hectic world, finding ways to make life a little simpler for parents and families is a surefire way to earn brownie points for your parent group—and that’s exactly what you can do with Cheddar Up’s online forms and payments. From back-to-school signups to payments for fundraisers and enrichment programs, Cheddar Up makes it super easy for you to make it super easy for your community.