The Customer Portal has been designed to make life easier for you and your customers. Your site comes with your own unique Customer Portal link to add to your website and social media pages or to easily share with your customers via email or SMS.
Full functionality of the Customer Portal will significantly reduce your administration time by giving your customers the ability to:
- Notify absences
- Book make-up lessons
- Make online payments
- Check upcoming lesson dates
- View attendance history
- View skills progression per student
- View awarded Certificates and share them to Facebook
- Contact the centre via email
- Update basic contact details and
- View and agree to centre policies.
The Customer Portal is perfect for engaging clients with your program. It was designed to be user-friendly and to help your families stay connected with you at their leisure. Whether it is in the middle of the day or late at night, customers don’t need to call – they can just log in!
For the initial setup to enable Customer Portal access (this only needs to be done if you have not used the Customer Portal before this point), go to Configuration > System Setup > System and tick the box "Enable Customer Portal" and "Save Changes".
To configure your customer portal, simply follow these steps below.
1. Go to the "Configuration" tab.
2. Under the "Company" heading click on "System Setup".
3. Click on "Customer Portal".
4. Here you can configure / edit your portal settings (explanation for each option is below the image).
Once you have made all necessary changes, click on the blue "Save Changes" button in the bottom right-hand corner. You can come back and edit these at any time.
Disable Account Transactions
- Recommended: Leave unticked for families to be able to see all transactions from the family finance section for the past 30 days.
- Tick this box if you do not want families seeing all transactions from their family finance section. (Transactions include all charges, credits, adjustments and payments).
Disable Account Balance
- Recommended: Leave unticked to display the family's current account balance so they know if they need to make a payment.
- Tick this box is you do not want families to see their account balance.
Disable Direct Debit Management
- Recommended: Leave unticked so that families can add / update their direct debit details.
- Tick this box if you do not utilise direct debit or do not want families to be able to add their direct debit agreement or update their details themselves without staff interaction.
Disable Make-up Class Bookings
- Recommended: Leave unticked so that families can check for and book make-up lessons themselves. Make-ups will only be able to be booked into classes of the same level as the student.
- Tick this box if you do not want to allow make-ups to be booked through the customer portal.
Disable Contact Us
- Recommended: Leave unticked so families can contact you through the portal / app. Their message will be delivered to your inbox and will include their family name and ID number.
- Tick this box if you do not want families to be able to contact you through the portal.
Disable Student Card Display
- If you have a Scanbox for students to scan in, leave unticked so they can scan in their card from the SimplyPortal app / their Apple Wallet.
- If you do not have a Scanbox to record attendance, tick this box to disable the Student Card display.
Disable QR Code on Student Card (show normal barcode)
- If you have a Scanbox for students to scan in, you can opt to tick the box for a barcode rather than a QR code to be displayed, or leave unticked for the QR code.
- If you do not have a Scanbox to record attendance, you do not need to action this setting.
Disable Non Attendance
- Recommended: Leave unticked so that families can mark student absence through the portal.
- Tick this box if you do not want families to be able to notify a non-attendance through the portal.
Days in advance Non Attend Allowed
This is where you set how many days in advance families can notify that a student will be absent from their lesson. This is at the discretion of your centre and should be in line with your policies and how far in advance you wish to be notified of an absence. A common setting if you invoice per term is 120, meaning families can notify of an absence up to 120 days in advance. If you invoice monthly, you may wish to set this to 30 days.
Minutes before Class Time Non Attend allowed and
Minutes before Class Time to Block Makeup Allowed for Non Attend (still allows Non-Attend, just prevent a Makeup being given.)
These two settings control the cut-ff times for families to notify absences.
Using both settings in conjunction, you can set a cut-off time to award a make-up if the reason allows (second setting) and a time to notify within that window up to the lesson start time so that you don't need to field last minute calls / texts / emails (first setting).
If you don't award make-ups, you only need to use the first setting (Minutes before Class Time Non Attend Allowed).
For example, if you require 30 minutes' notice, enter 30 into the field and leave the second setting empty.
If you do award make-ups, the cut-off time for a make-up should be put into the second setting (Minutes before Class Time to Block Makeup Allowed for Non Attend (still allows Non-Attend, just prevent a Makeup being given.). Use this setting so families can notify of an absence within this cut-off window.
For example entering 1 in the first field and 30 into the second field will mean families need to give 30 minutes or more notice to get a make-up but they can notify up to 1 minute before the class start time and they will not receive a make-up if it is within this second window.
Earn a Makeup for Non-attendance of a Makeup Class (if Non-Attend reason allows a makeup)
Do you allow a make-up to be given for non-attendance of a make-up lesson if they meet the notice requirements?
If yes, tick this box.
If no, leave the box unticked.
Disable SMS for Verification Code
NOTE: This option is only applicable if you have an SMS account setup in SimplySwim. Please contact Support if you would like more information on SMS or to set up an SMS account for your centre.
- Recommended: Do not tick the box so that families will receive their portal verification via SMS. An SMS generally gets actioned immediately.
- Tick this box if you do not want families to receive their verification code to register for the customer portal via SMS (they will need to verify their email address instead).
Disable display of Skill Last Updated Date
NOTE: Only applicable if you use the Certificates & Skills module (Elite subscription).
- Recommended: Do not tick the box. Families will then see the last updated date against each skill.
- Tick this box if you do not want families to see the date that student's skills were last updated.
Makeup Booking Balance Calculation Outstanding Days
When the below configuration box is ticked to "Limit Makeup Booking by Outstanding Account Balance" and a number of days is entered in this field, this function allows you to set a number of days you consider an account to be outstanding in order to block make-up lessons being booked through the portal.
Customers whose accounts are in good standing will be able to book make-ups as normal. Those families whose accounts are not inline with your configuration will be blocked from booking a make-up and redirected to the payment page (if you have payments configured through your portal) or advised that they need to make a payment before they are able to book a make-up lesson. Please note, SimplySwim does not calculate the outstanding amount on the total account balance, but rather the standing of the account within the timeframe you set compared to the current date. You must also tick the box below to activate this setting.
Limit Makeup Booking by Outstanding Account Balance
- Tick this box if you fill out the above field and want make-up lessons blocked by an outstanding account balance over the number of days set above.
- You do not need to tick this box if you do not want to restrict make-ups by account balance.
Redirect Families to New Family Portal
(Only applicable to SimplySwim sites prior to 2022).
- Tick this box (recommended) if you ever utilised portal v1 ("old portal") so that your families will be redirected to the "new" portal. Reason being that full functionality of blocking make-ups, policies and updates are only located in the new portal.
Send an Admin Email Notification when a Non-Attendance is recorded in the Portal
Tick this box if you want to receive an email each time a non-attendance is recorded via the SimplyPortal app (customer portal) and enter a number of hours in the next field.
Non-attendances are updated in real time in your SimplySwim application. Having an email sent regarding non-attendances adds another layer of admin to deal with. You can check your Attendance screen for any updates to absences.
Admin Email Notification - Send for Attendances with (x) hours
Enter a number of hours to be notified of non-attendances recorded in the portal.
Portal Message Delivery Address Override
Leave this field empty and all messages sent by families through the portal to you will go to the email address specified in your Company information on Configuration (your primary contact email).
If an email address is entered into this field, family portal messages will be redirected to the email address entered rather that the Company email.
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Adding a Payment option
Adding a payment option to your portal saves you time and money in reconciliation of accounts. Families simply login to their portal, make their payment and this is automatically receipted against their account in SimplySwim.
You will need to create an account with one of our third party payment providers:
- Worldpay for Platforms (formerly Payrix) for online payments and / or direct debit. This is the recommended provider as both options will be available to you: https://platforms.worldpay.com/en/payrix-simplyswim/
- Pin Payments (for online payments only): https://pinpayments.com/get-started/simplyswim
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Additional aspects to consider when setting up your portal
Non-Attendance Reasons
We recommend having different terminology to your regular non-attendance reasons as it is nicer to have some softer language with your customer interface but also so that you can distinguish them at a glance as being from the portal.
We recommend grouping these together with a sort order of 50 so they are lower down in your list of reasons for staff not to use.
Some examples could be (20 character limit):
Something came up
I am sick
I am on holidays
Parent working
Parent sick
School commitment
Activity clash today
You can have as many reasons as you wish. Using softer language and giving more options can really help you pinpoint why you have absences.
Make sure the "Make-up Given" and "Show in Customer Portal" options are ticked (if you do not give make-ups, do not tick the make-up box). Families will only be able to select a non-attendance reason that has "Show in Customer Portal" enabled. See article: Creating Non-Attendance Reasons
Welcome Message
You can add welcome messages to your portal where you can put information such as Term dates, when fees are due or any other relevant information. See article: Adding a Welcome message to customer portal.
Launching your portal
Once you are happy with how your portal is set up you can send the portal link in an e-mail to your customers to start using or add the link to your social media page or website. See article: How to tell your families about the Customer Portal
Last updated 24 April 2025
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