Choose how long-term bus bookings work at your school, term by term, and RollCall follows it.
Every school runs bus bookings a little differently. Some let parents book and get on with it. Some want to check each request first. Some do all the booking themselves, because seats are tight or routes are planned around every student.
Until now, RollCall gave you one switch: parent bookings on or off. That suited the schools at either end, and left everyone in between working around it.
Not any more. Booking setup asks you one question, and the answer shapes how bookings work for your team and your families.
Who makes the booking? That is the whole choice - and you can make a different one for each term.
The choice covers long-term bookings: the regular seat a student holds for the term. One-day bus and stop changes, and bus absences, keep their own settings whichever way you choose.
The parent books, and the booking is confirmed straight away, inside your booking window. Mia's mum books Term 1 in the app, and Mia is on the bus.
One side asks, and the other says yes. Leo's dad books Term 1, and it waits until your team approves it. Or your team offers Leo a seat, and his dad accepts.
Your team books, and parents can see the booking but not change it. Your team puts Ava on Route 4, and her parents see it in the app.
There is no right answer, only the one that matches how your service already runs.
You can change the way for a term at any time, even partway through. Bookings already made keep the way they were made under.
Here is how the three compare, side by side.
| Parents book | School approves | School books | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A parent books a term | Booked straight away, inside your booking window | Becomes a request. The seat is held, and your team approves it | Not available. Parents are told the school manages bookings |
| Your team books a term | Booked straight away | Sent to the parent as an offer, or booked directly | Booked straight away |
| A parent cancels in the app | Only if you allow it | Only if you allow it | Never |
| One-day changes and absences | Their own settings | Their own settings | Their own settings. One-day changes start switched off |
Whichever way you choose, RollCall now checks your booking window, your confirmed routes and bus capacity for every parent booking. Parents can book a term only once you have confirmed that term's routes on the Routes tab.
Nothing changes until you finish setup. Go to Settings › Bookings, open the Setup tab and select Get started. Until you confirm, the header reads "Not set up" and bookings keep working exactly as they do today.
Setup takes five short steps:
Confirming setup changes your settings, never your bookings. Students who are already booked stay booked.
An offer holds a seat for the student but books nothing until the parent accepts it. If the student already has a booking, it stays in place until the new one is accepted.
On Seat, or Students › Bus Booking, the confirmation now has two buttons: Offer to parent, and Book directly beside it. An offer can cover chosen weekdays, every week, or every second week for a student who stays with each parent on alternate weeks - set Repeat Every to 2.
Capacity counts every held seat, so a bus cannot be promised twice.
The offer waits in Pending Review until the parent answers. They can Accept seat, and the student is booked. They can Decline, with an optional reason, and the seat is released. Or they can Ask for a change - a different stop or route, or a new stop near an address - once.
At 3pm the day before, your administrators get one summary, as a bell item and an email: how many offers starting tomorrow were accepted, released, still waiting, or waiting on your team.
Your team can accept on a parent's behalf at any time, one offer or many at once.
Under School approves, a term booking a parent makes becomes a request. The seat is held, and the request lands in Needs Attention for your team.
From there, your team can approve it, approve it with a different stop or bus, or reject it. The parent hears at each step: an email when the request is sent to the school, and another when it is approved, approved with changes, or not approved.
One thing to know: until your team approves a request, the student is not on the driver's list for that trip.
Every long-term booking for the term sits on one board, in three columns, according to whose move it is.
Bookings made another way, such as through rollover, Route Builder or Smart Route, show in Complete. Under School books, only Complete shows.
Open any card for the full set of actions: accept on the parent's behalf, approve a booking or a change request, re-seat, reject, cancel, edit, resend the confirmation, and add notes only your staff can see. Editing a booking changes the bus or stop from tomorrow. Trips that have already run, been scanned or been charged are kept as they were.
Around the board, Starting soon narrows the list to offers starting within 7 days, and the List view shows every booking's status, with a CSV export.
The school side is ready now. The parent side of offers and requests comes with the new Parent App, version 4.1.0, which is on its way to the app stores.
In the new app, parents see "1 bus booking to review" with Accept seat, Ask for a change and Decline, and "Waiting for your school" on a request they have made. Where your school allows it, they can also cancel a long-term booking.
Until your families have the new app:
Two changes in this release reach every school, whether or not you run Booking setup.
Every booking message now follows the same path. If your school did not send booking emails before, you may start to. Parents who chose push notifications get pushes, secondary parents get everything a primary parent gets, one-day bus changes your team makes notify parents, and each parent gets one confirmation per booking.
Duplicate bookings have been cleaned up. Bus Utilisation, Transport, Transit Times, Exception, Student Route/Stop and Overdue trips reports, and the driver's list, now count each student once per trip. If a number drops, that is why. Trip Details, Trip Summary, Non Travelled, Revenue and Customer Statement still count the removed duplicates for now, so their totals may not match the others.
Check that you have confirmed that term's routes on the Routes tab, that the booking window is open, and that the term is not set to School books.
Under School approves, a parent's booking is a request until your team approves it. Look for it in Needs Attention.
They can still ride. Riding never accepts an offer, and the board flags the student as "Rode the bus while pending", so you can follow up.
Your team can offer chosen weekdays, or every second week, on Seat. Parents cannot pick days in the app yet.
Contact our support team. Setup can be reset only before any offer has been sent.
This is the first stage. Next on the list:
Pick the way of booking that matches how your team runs bookings today, not how it might one day. You can change it for any term later.
Run Booking setup under Settings › Bookings, and confirm that term's routes, before families start booking. Nothing changes until you finish, and the review shows you every change before you save.
If you would like to talk through which way of booking suits your school - your routes, your capacity, your families - our support team is happy to go through it with you. Email support@rollcall.com.au.
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