School Store
Sell uniforms, books and kit to your own families — from a storefront inside the portal they already use, with the money landing on the school’s ledger.
What this module is
The school shop is a real business that most schools run as a favour. A parent queues at a window before assembly; somebody writes the size in a book; the cash goes in a tin; and at the end of term the bursary tries to work out what was sold and what is left. Meanwhile the thing that actually causes the queue — a parent not knowing which exercise book their child needs — was never addressed.
The School Store makes that a storefront inside the portal the family already signs in to. The school manages one catalogue with prices, stock and categories; the parent shops it from home; the order is fulfilled at a collection point rather than a counter, with the parent able to see exactly where it is. Staff can recommend the specific kit a named pupil needs, and it appears in that family’s storefront rather than in a letter.
The module divides into five surfaces for the school — overview, products, categories, orders and recommendations, with settings behind them — a full storefront for parents, and a browse-and-ask view for pupils. What follows walks each role through the screens they actually use.
What you get
One catalogue, every portal
Products, prices, stock and images are maintained once by the school and rendered to parents and pupils from the same record — no separate shop site to keep in step.
The queue moves online
Parents order from home and collect. The window before assembly becomes a collection point, and “which exercise book” is answered by a product page rather than a member of staff.
Stock that decrements itself
Checkout draws down tracked inventory, so the catalogue stops offering a jersey the store does not have and the low-stock threshold does the reminding.
Money on the school ledger
Payments are recorded against the order as receipts and posted to the school’s finance ledger, so store income reports beside tuition rather than in a tin.
Recommendations, not letters
A teacher recommends the calculator a named pupil needs next term, and the family finds it waiting in their storefront with the reason attached.
Parents get told what is happening
An order moving from pending to ready-for-collection notifies the person who placed it, so nobody makes a wasted trip to the school gate.
How School Store actually works
Everything below is the real application, running live on this page with sample school data — not screenshots. Each screen is the same one your team would use.
Store manager / school admin
One person usually runs the shop — a bursar, a storekeeper, or whoever has the uniform cupboard key. These screens are the whole job: see how the shop is trading, keep the catalogue right, organise the shelf, fulfil what is ordered, and push the right kit to the right families.
See how the shop is trading
The overview is the shop’s trading position: what is selling, what is owed and what is waiting to be handed over.
Keep the catalogue right
Products are the shop. Each carries the commercial detail a parent needs and the controls a school needs to stop a shop becoming a support burden.
Organise the shelf
Categories are what make a storefront navigable to a parent on a phone. They are small to maintain and disproportionately decide whether the shop gets used.
Fulfil what is ordered
Orders are the operational half of the module — the queue that used to be a physical one. Every order carries its line items, its money and its state.
Push the right kit to the right family
Recommendations are what a school shop can do that a high-street one cannot: name the pupil, name the item, and say why.
Set the shop’s rules once
Behind those five screens, the store’s settings decide how it behaves: whether the shop is open at all, the currency it trades in, whether it is collection-only, a daily order cap per family, and whether the school is notified on each order and when stock falls below its threshold.
Parents & guardians
The parent is the customer, and the whole module stands or falls on whether they can find the right item, buy it without a phone call, and prove they paid for it. That is four screens.
Shop the school store from home
The storefront is the school’s own catalogue, browsable by category, with live availability — so an out-of-stock jersey is obvious before the trip rather than after it.
Check the basket and place the order
A familiar cart: the items, their quantities, unit prices and a running total, reviewed before the order is placed.
Track it to the collection point
Every order the family has placed, with its number, its total and its state — so “is it ready yet” is answered in the portal instead of at reception.
Keep the paper trail
Receipts are recorded against each order as the school takes payment, and are the family’s own record of what has been settled.
Students
Pupils do not hold the payment card, but they are the ones who know their shoe size and that their PE shorts no longer fit. Their view is browse-and-ask: see what the shop has, and put an item in front of the person who buys.
Browse the shop
The same catalogue the parent sees, with availability — so a pupil can check whether the shop stocks what they have been asked to bring.
What has been recommended for them
The items staff have recommended for this pupil, with the reason — and the ones the pupil has asked for themselves, so a request has somewhere to go other than a conversation at home.
How it connects to the rest of the platform
Customers are the school’s existing families
Shoppers are the guardians and pupils already on the platform. There is no separate shop account, no second password, and a leaver’s order history stays with their record.
Payments post to the school’s finance ledger
Recording a payment against an order writes a receipt and a ledger entry attributed to the store, so shop income appears in the school’s financial reporting rather than being reconciled from a cash book.
Order updates use the platform’s notifications
A change of order status notifies the person who placed it through the shared notification service — the same one that carries results and attendance alerts.
Recommendations reach the pupil’s own family
A recommendation is attached to a pupil record, so it surfaces to that pupil and to the guardians linked to them, with no addressing to maintain.
Access control treats the store as its own module
Store actions live in their own permission namespace, so a storekeeper can run the shop without access to fees, results or staff records.
Common questions
Can parents pay online at checkout?+
Not yet. Checkout places the order, reserves the stock and clears the basket; the school then records the payment against the order — online, manual, cash or bank transfer — which produces the receipt the family sees. A card gateway at checkout is on the roadmap rather than in the product.
Do we have to post orders?+
No. The store can be set to collection-only, which is how most schools run it: the parent orders from home and collects at the school. Shipped and delivered states exist for schools that do post.
Does the shop know how much stock we have?+
Yes, for products with inventory tracking switched on. Checkout decrements the quantity, the catalogue stops offering out-of-stock items unless backorders are allowed, and the school is notified when an item falls below its low-stock threshold.
Can we stop one family buying everything?+
Yes. Each product carries a maximum per order, and the store can enforce a cap on how many orders one family places in a day.
How do teachers tell a family what to buy?+
By recommending the product to the named pupil with a note. It appears in that family’s storefront, and the school can see whether it was viewed, added to the basket, bought or dismissed.
What currency does the store trade in?+
The school’s own. Products, the basket and every payment must use it — the module refuses a mismatch rather than converting silently.
Other specialized modules
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.