Admissions & enrolment intake

§ 01What Admissions is

Admissions is where new students start as applicants and finish as enrolled students — without anyone retyping their details. It has two halves:

• A public application page at your school's login link, where prospective families fill in the student and guardian details themselves.
• A staff pipeline inside School Admin, where your office reviews each application, makes an offer, and enrols the ones you accept.

It's run by school admins. Parents and the wider public never sign in to apply — the application page is open to anyone with the link. Everything after submission happens in School Admin under Admissions, whose page header reads "Manage incoming applications and enrol accepted applicants as students."

§ 02The public application page

Every school has its own application page at /<your-slug>/apply on the login site — for example login.simusim.com/kumasi-prep/apply. Share that link on your website, posters, or WhatsApp; families don't need an account.

The page is headed Apply to [your school] under an Admissions label, with your own welcome message above the form (you set that in settings — see §03). It asks for:

• Student — First name *, Last name *, Date of birth, Gender, and Desired class / level.
• Guardian — Guardian name *, Guardian phone *, Guardian email, and Relationship to student.

Fields marked * are required: the student's first and last name, the guardian's name, and the guardian's phone. The phone accepts either a local number (the page suggests 0244 000 000) or international form (+233 24 400 0000) — both end up stored the same way.

When a family taps Submit application, the page confirms with an Application received panel headed "Thank you" and shows a reference number shaped like APP-XXXXXX. The note reads "[your school] has received your application. Keep your reference number — the school will use it when they contact you."

§ 03Custom fields & documents

Your own questions

The built-in fields cover the basics, but you can add your own — a previous school, a home address, a "how did you hear about us?" — and they appear on the public form under an Additional details heading. Custom fields are set in School Admin under Settings → Custom fields, whose header reads "Define extra fields captured on student, parent, teacher, staff, and class records. Each entity type has its own set; drag to reorder."

Each field can be a short text answer, a long text box, a number, a date, a yes/no checkbox, or a single- or multiple-choice list. Required custom fields show a * on the public form just like the built-in ones.

The welcome message

In Settings → Admissions settings you can also set Application intro text — the "Welcome message shown at the top of the public application form…" Leave it blank and the form shows a neutral default prompt instead.

Documents

An application can carry supporting documents — a photo, a birth certificate, a previous report card, or anything else. Uploads are limited to images (PNG, JPEG, WebP) and PDFs, so a passport photo or a scanned certificate both work. When you open an application, any attachments appear under a Documents heading with their type, filename and size; each is tagged with its kind (for example birth certificate or report card).

§ 04Adding an application yourself

Not every family applies online. When someone walks into the office or phones in, your staff can record the application directly:

1. In School Admin, open Admissions and press New application. The page is headed "Record an application submitted directly to the school."
2. Fill in the Applicant details — Given name *, Family name *, and an optional Desired level (e.g. Year 7, Grade 3).
3. Fill in the Guardian details — Name *, Phone * (in the form +233241234567), and an optional Email.
4. Add anything useful in Notes — these are internal and never shown to the family.
5. Press Create application. It opens at its own detail page, ready to review.

A staff-entered application behaves exactly like a public one from here on — it gets the same APP-XXXXXX reference and travels the same pipeline.

§ 05The review pipeline

The Admissions list shows every application with its reference, student, status, level, guardian, the date it was submitted, and how many documents it carries. The tabs across the top — All, New, In review, Offered, Accepted, Enrolled, Rejected — filter the list. An empty view simply reads "No applications."

Open one with View to see the full applicant and guardian details, any documents, and a History of every status change. The statuses mean:

The detail page only shows the buttons that make sense for the current status, so you can't skip a step. If two records look like the same student or guardian, the application is flagged with a dup badge in the list and a Possible duplicates notice on the detail page — "This application may be a duplicate. Similar records found:" — so you can check before enrolling.

§ 06Making an offer

When you decide to offer a place, the pipeline records the offer and (optionally) tells the family. It's a small handshake:

1. Open the application and, while it's In review, press Make offer. The status moves to Offered.
2. If applicant notifications are switched on, the guardian gets a text: "good news — [student] has been offered a place (ref [reference]). Please contact the school to accept."
3. When the family confirms, press Mark accepted. The status moves to Accepted — and an Enrol student panel appears.

An offer isn't a dead end: from Offered you can still Reject or Withdraw if circumstances change. Acceptance is what unlocks enrolment.

§ 07Enrolling an applicant

Enrolment is the one-click finish: it turns the applicant into a real, signed-in student and links the guardian as their parent — reusing the same account-creation that the rest of School Admin uses, so the new student gets a proper student code, a PIN, and class membership.

1. On an Accepted application, find the Enrol student panel and pick a class under Assign to class.
2. Press Enrol student. The button shows "Enrolling…" while it works.
3. On success, the panel confirms "Student enrolled successfully. Record these credentials — they will not be shown again." and displays the new Student credentials (student code + PIN) and the Parent credentials (phone + PIN).

The guardian's phone decides the parent account. If that number already belongs to a parent at your school, Admissions reuses the existing account — the panel tags it existing account and doesn't show a new PIN, because the parent keeps the one they already have. Otherwise a fresh parent account is created with its own PIN. Either way, the parent is linked to the new student.

Once enrolled, the application's status becomes Enrolled and it links back to the student and parent it created. From there the student and parent show up in your normal user lists, classes, and apps — the admissions record is just the paper trail of how they joined.

§ 08Applicant notifications

Admissions can keep the family in the loop automatically by SMS, and by email when a guardian email is on file. Notifications are opt-in per school: in Settings → Admissions settings, the Notify applicants toggle — "Send status-update emails to the guardian when an application moves through the pipeline." — turns them on.

With notifications on, the guardian hears from the school at three moments:

The decision message is deliberately gentle — it never says "rejected" in a text, just that there's an update and the family should get in touch. Moving an application to In review or marking it Withdrawn sends nothing. Notifications are best-effort: if an SMS or email can't be delivered, it never blocks the status change itself.

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