FACTS

Vorteile

RenWeb is School Information System software. It allows the user to take attendance, track grades, generate report cards, as well as a HOST of other features. Very feature-rich. In years past, RenWeb sort of lost its way with not really understanding who its core customer was - K-12 schools. After the acquisition by FACTS, RenWeb has really turned the ship around.

Nachteile

I do not like that FACTS is completely re-branding RenWeb as FACTS SIS. It doesn't sound as good. It looks like they're admitting failure. My preference would simply to be a major revision overhaul and re-branding with the same name.

Vorteile

FACTS handles tuition billing. collections, and integration with Quickbooks Online.

Nachteile

Some features are tricky to use, but we are able to adapt to the software in order to achieve desired results.

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The SIS system is definitely what has been developed the most.

Nachteile

When FACTS took over renweb, it would appear they didn't know as much about how to build the educational component (LMS) that makes it user friendly for teachers and students.

Vorteile

I liked that it has theoretical flexibility to meet school needs.

Nachteile

Despite the theoretical flexibility of the platform, it's plagued by poor design, dead ends, and does not meet the immediate needs of our faculty or staff. The front office has indicated that the attendance tracking is a nightmare. As a teacher, it does not have logical tools that allow easy navigation; rather, each tool requires a separate click and opens a new tab. That's just poor design.

Vorteile

What I like most is, it keeps student information, up-to-date, and accessible

Nachteile

There’s nothing I like least about the site

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I do not like anything about FACTS except having access to lesson plans for our hybrid homeschool

Nachteile

I have been forced to use FACTS since the 20teens when my two older daughters were in school. At that time it was only for financial purposes, and I hated it then. It was cumbersome and difficult to use, and figuring out how the math was done was an exercise in frustration. Fast forward to the mid 20 twenties when my younger sons' school uses it for both class/assignment/grade management and financial management, and I know why I hated it then and still do. The class assignment section is ugly and outdated looking. And now with the financial 'upgrade', we have to login in AGAIN within the website to review the financial portion. I understand from the school that they also can't put in manual changes from their end, so basically everyone is at the mercy of unseen software administrators. Having to pay $25 to pay my balance in full is also really annoying, when I know the school is also paying for the 'privilege' of using the system and being paid. Last year they charged $.85 PER TRANSACTION! To draft money out of my account! So not only do they charge you, but you literally have no option but to give this company your sensitive financial information for them to store 'securely'. I guess? So far so good on that front, but who's to say how long that will last. The app costs as well, in addition to the school paying, and me paying for the privilege of paying tuition, we also have to pay for the app.

Vorteile

We at our school love the fact that Facts is now integrated with Renweb. This allows for us to keep all of our student information in one "basket". The cafeteria cash register has completely allowed us to go cashless, which has been wonderful!

Nachteile

Keeping up with all the charges and fees can be confusing for our families. We tend to get several calls weekly having to explain what the charges are for.

Vorteile

I love having a software that takes care of the tuition collection. It's great for parents to be able to monitor their accounts online and make online payments. They can also set up auto payments.

Nachteile

I don't like the automatic late fees that FACTS imposes. I'd rather have a date I could add them manually. I'd like the tax statements for parents to have a button to click instead of having to navigate through menus to find it. I think sometimes the emails to parents are not clear about what they owe and why.

Vorteile

So far from the experience I have had with FACTS, is that is it an excellent program for educators and education, tuition management and other forms of management! It’s very in innovative and sun synchronizes well well other programs.

Nachteile

The only thing that bother me in general about FACTS or any other platform within Google is the amount of information they have about you and you’re financial and educational histories. The AI is so advanced that they can pin point you to you’re very location at any given time. Same is true most other programming as well.

Vorteile

This software was suitable for the needs of our school in the beginning but our needs grew. The ease of entering data was nice.

Nachteile

They weren’t able to keep up with the changing times and provide updated software.

Vorteile

FACTS is an affordable SIS. The system maintains all of our records and has capability for customization within reports such as building your own report card. FACTS is always improving. They take user requests seriously and we can vote on which requests we'd like them to prioritize. Last year, they updated to a mobile web-based platform that can be accessed across all devices. They also offer communication services such as mass texting (for an additional fee). A definite pro is that this one system manages everything from tuition payment, grant services, grading, lesson planning, reporting and communication!

Nachteile

At times, FACTS can be click-intensive, requiring multiple steps to get something done. The standards-based grading portion is not yet fully developed to allow for true standards based grading and reporting. For example, there is no way to record/notify parents of missing assignments when using standards based grading in FACTS.

Vorteile

FACTS (formerly known as RenWeb) is a robust SMS / SIS software. It has a full spectrum of features and functions that schools need. Their customer service was very accessible/responsive most of the time.

Nachteile

It's been around a long time, and it seems like they have struggled to keep up/update their platform/interface. It's not very intuitive to use. There are MANY features that you need/want that cost extra, and the nickel and dime effect was significant.

Vorteile

I appreciate the functionality of renweb especially with grading. It is easy to align the grading system to the system you want for you classroom. Also, it allows parents to get connected to your student's progress.

Nachteile

Sometimes, certain features feel like they are 100 clicks away. Especially to send home messages through the program itself. I relied on my regular email far more often. Putting in behavior reports was also not my favorite feature.

Vorteile

RenWeb online is fantastic. The way it is graphically organized makes it very simple and intuitive to access grades, report cards, contact parents and staff, see individual student information, Etc. I'm over all very happy with the software.

Nachteile

The RenWeb Android app really doesn't let you do much. I can access student information and take attendance, but that's pretty much it. It's not organized terribly well and is slow as well. I look forward to an updated version in the future as they have updated their website.

Vorteile

All the basic teacher / admin functions are covered reasonably well. The system is stable.

Nachteile

Old look, Windows bias.

Vorteile

I've had good experiences with customer support.

Nachteile

Running reports out of RenWeb is a pain, and you are extremely limited on what information you can filter in order to get the report that you need/want. Also, if you enter a payment prior to the charge being added to the account, that charge will not be automatically cleared once it is on the account. You can have a credit on the account, but charges will still show as being not cleared, which, in turn, skews your accounting reports.

Vorteile

I enjoy using it to check on my children and communication with teachers is such an ease.

Nachteile

It would be nice to see the app with the ability for the teacher to take pictures for parents to view.

Vorteile

What I like most about this software is that I can easily access students' information when needed. I can also easily access each student's parent contact information which is very helpful.

Nachteile

I don't have any negative comments for the software.

Vorteile

Has a lot of features
Is a one stop shop

Nachteile

Want communications to have mail merge capabilities.
A little more intuitive,

Vorteile

The best part of Renweb is the web based setup that gives teachers an easy way to give information to families in real time.

Nachteile

Some of the navigation is tricky. Recently I had trouble accessing class listing in a way that made sense to me. I couldn't remember the teacher and there wasn't an easy option to sort the view by class subjects.

Vorteile

the school management and account billing is one of ma favorite

Nachteile

it lucks some modules that might have been good for me

Vorteile

RenWeb was a great tool for our school to share information about our students with their parents. Being able to email parents and have all of the information readily available when needed was very helpful. I also liked that I was able to keep track of grades and attendance all in one place.

Nachteile

There were a few things that were difficult to navigate for both parents and teachers. There were some times that we were not able to do everything that we wanted.

Vorteile

Saves grades and comments automatically, is very easy to use and set up, and allows for assignments to easy be posted and viewable to anyone who has access.

Nachteile

Formatting and the automatic saving can be a catch-22. If you accidentally click on another student and hit different numbers, it can change a grade and save automatically. If you do this and do not recognize it, it can become a problem.

Vorteile

The package is very comprehensive for running a school, including admissions, simple financials, scheduling, course management...

Nachteile

Little-to-no integration with Google (Classroom, email, calendar...). The learning curve seems steep for both admins and teachers, but the company is in the process of releasing a better interface that should help with that. THe UI look is a bit lackluster, though not a huge factor for us.

Vorteile

Ease of use setting up payments. Easy to work within product.

Nachteile

Over priced and terrible customer service

Vorteile

The customer service is the best part of using Renweb. They have a lot of self-help articles and videos. If you are crunched for time or can't find the answer you need just call them and they are more than happy to walk you through the issue!

Another great thing is to have everything you need to run a school in one system! That simplifies all of our lives. They've even developed an integration with FACTS to make billing streamlined!

Nachteile

The fact that Renweb is creating a new online system and going away from their desktop based system will be great once it's finished. Right now it's frustrating to be stuck between the two systems with some important features not functional online yet (I know because I have a mac and can't use the desktop version).

Some aspects of Renweb are clunky and not well organized which can be frustrating when you are trying to figure something out and don't have a lot of time.

Vorteile

I liked the financial reports that we had access to.

Nachteile

It was difficult to update or change parameters and information etc.

Vorteile

One stop shop for multiple software applications

Nachteile

Slow to innovate, expensive add ons, frustrating software functionality

Vorteile

This is an all-in-one Grant & Aid tool. It allows families an unbiased 3rd party review software, allows administrators on the review team to see the overall picture compared to the aid budget, then posts the award directly to the student's account.
They are also backed up by the excellent customer service provided by FACTS management. We have never had an issue with FACTS management go unresolved for more than 24 hours and 99% of the time they are able to resolve it right there on the phone with you.

Nachteile

Parts of the software were a little clunky to use. With as busy as we are as a small school, we need software that can be picked up pretty intuitively. There are quite a few steps to learn to just to finalize the award and post it to the account. Just to do this, I watched 3 separate videos. One of them I had to watch several times to make sure I was posting the award correctly. I know proper training is important when working with software, but it took longer to learn this software than we had planned upon.

Vorteile

What I like most about RenWeb is the fact that everything a teacher may need in document management is in one place. The teacher can write their lesson plans, use the software to enter grades and find everything they may need on their students all in one place. I like the fact that the lesson plans are easy for parents to see as well. They have made some good advances in the past year. They are making strides in keeping up with the way they appear and the flexibility they have implemented to allow the teacher to work from work and personal devices. I do know from personal experience that they want to put the best product out there and are not afraid to change to do it.

Nachteile

The thing I have liked least about this software is that they make some changes to the software in the year. I adjusted to some of their updates with ease only to find it has changed during the year. I can be a bit frustrating especially when those changes happen at the end of a school year. I'm glad they are evolving, the timing could be better.

Vorteile

Having all the information for our students literally at our fingertips has been a huge advantage in moving into the digital age. We can quickly look up everything we need and it tracks it for all students and families. Having the access to personal information, tracking emails, communications, grade book and calendars all in one spot has been my favorite parts of diving into this software.

Nachteile

The thing I really hate is when you go to a classroom and it pops up "communication has moved". I did not go there for communication but since it is the first alphabetically on the list, this error pops up every time. I just scroll down and click grade book so it is easy to get out of it. It is just annoying that I feel like it yells at me every day when I go to that section. Small annoyance really but still annoying.

Vorteile

Integrates easily with our website and Google classroom; robust SIS and communication tools. Better than average school accounting features. Reliable cloud access.

Nachteile

Technical support was agonizingly slow and frustratingly unresponsive. It took months of calls to get our school calendar to not show multiples of all recurring events and our customized school app continues to experience delays due to slow responses from tech support.

Vorteile

It is one of the more affordable options out there and includes most needed features in the basic plan.

Nachteile

Although it is improving—and I am hopeful that this continues—it does not integrate well with other platforms. There are also areas there are not well-developed. For example, announcements, resources, etc. can only be made available to the entire school or district. It would be easy to implement and extremely helpful if these could be made available by grade levels.

Vorteile

I like being able to take payments online or at the school and credit manually. I like that families can choose their own payment plan (per our setup).

Nachteile

Families find it frustrating if they are not online a lot or don't pay bills online. Paper invoices often get lost in mail. Also, I don't like that late fees are not charged when the payment is late. All late fees are added at the end of the month, even if the person was late as of the 20th. This gets really confusing if the family pays after being late but prior to late fee addition.

Vorteile

I thought the pros of Renweb was that it was a starting point. It had lots of features that you could purchase and lots of options.

Nachteile

I think the software was not extremely user friendly. It was hard to navigate and they just needed a UX designer to go in and update thing. There were various versions that people were using that made things complicated. Also they make it so you can't pull your data out easily.

Vorteile

Working for a small school means trying every way to save money and we were able to do that with this software.

Nachteile

It doesn't offer as many of the "bells and whistles" as other big-brand names do.

Vorteile

This is great for managing our school. We have three "schools" on campus and are able to effectively manage our student information for all three using FACTS SIS. I like most that it's cloud based, so administration can access from anywhere on or away from campus.

Nachteile

Some of the features don't make sense to the user (such as in the steps to copy a schedule to use for the next school year, you have to "Clear Schedule" which sounds counterintuitive). Customer support can also be hit or miss.

Vorteile

Renweb has a key feature where it stores emails sent to parents for the past 6 months. This is helpful when trying to track who emails were sent to.

Nachteile

There are glitches in the system. It is hard to get technical support for issues as most time the IT department does not understand the issue.

Vorteile

FACTS Grant and Aid Assessment is great in compiling and organizing data. Every year, we would make our financial aid application available and have families fill it out. Once the application was closed, FACTS compiled all the data and made recommendations. It was great.

Nachteile

A majority of the people who filled out the application (families applying for aid) were able to do so without a problem. There was, however, a portion of people who couldn’t figure it out and had issues. Just be mindful that you may receive phone calls!

Vorteile

Report card emails are clear and clean

Nachteile

Navigation is frustrating and confusing
I don't fully understand its purpose
Clunky program

Vorteile

Renweb has an incredible amount of diversity. We can keep grades, behavior reports, medical info, admission paperwork, etc. all in one place.

Nachteile

For all the positives that Renweb provides, it is still not very user-friendly. They also totally botched the unveil of Renweb 1. Users have been in limbo for too long.

Vorteile

Since this software is so comprehensive it is great to be able to call the customer service number any time during the day. The customer service team is courteous, helpful and very knowledgeable. Using this software in addition to FACTS has also allowed us to pass on the same level of customer service to our students and families.

Nachteile

The transition has been difficult and it would have been helpful to have more integration, import export capability with Excel and have templates provided for this transition.

Vorteile

-Easy to learn and navigate
-Everything your school needs under one umbrella
-Very user friendly
-Quality and detail oriented
-Simply stated - the best decision you could make for your school

Nachteile

Customer Service wait times were often a bit long.

Vorteile

web based, customer support

Nachteile

quirky (probably like any software)

Vorteile

The interface of this software has dramatically increased over the past few years. It is easier to located classes, enter grades, and copy-paste material across multiple classes.

Nachteile

I really wish that FACTS would bring back a much-improved app for a smartphone. It was so convenient to take role by pulling up the app.

Vorteile

I like that flexibility of the database. It tracks families as groups, and as each individual separately. It allows me to "divorce" families and change things however I need.

Nachteile

Like all advanced systems, it can be cumbersome to drill down to all the levels and use all its capabilities. But whether for simple users or expert ones, it seems to accomplish everything we need at our school.

Vorteile

This software has multiple sections that integrate with each other . This makes troubleshooting easier since you can actual get to the same area different ways. Also, once you get their support team they are awesome when it comes to helping you understand what you need done.

Nachteile

No area for emailing thread or contacting conversation with a co-workers on family balances.
Also call in to many buttons to get software area needed.

Vorteile

They are always coming up with new features and they finally made web browser based user portals.

Nachteile

The software is normally pretty bad. The web browser interfaces are very different among different browsers. There always seems to be an issue with the reliability of data entry/access or some sort of new technical issue that they can't determine the cause to or replicate the issue for when you call support.