Product Review of CommunityPass

Community Pass delivers before/after school care program registration, invoice management, and program management solutions (enrichment, day camps, trips) to public and community schools. Their “Digital Attendance” adds vital security to attendance and enables accurate tracking. It is streamlined and intuitive for customers and flexible and efficient for the administrative staff. Professional services include integration with financial software, custom reports, and data conversion.
Website: https://www.communitypass.net/
What Users Love About the App
“I like that we can register individuals for programs as well as have them go into their own accounts to register themselves. I like the face of the homepage and the ease of navigation through the site.”
“Community Pass has been great for us, and has been very easy to implement, start-up, and use on a regular basis. Our previous system was difficult for our customers to use; about 70% of our registrations were done over the phone and our staff had to do everything. We just opened our summer registrations and had very few phone registrations. The customers were able to go into the program and register themselves. If I had an issue, the staff responded quickly to my call or email. The staff was able to implement this system very quickly for us so we could be reading for opening a new facility. We began implementation in early December and were fully implemented with memberships, printing membership cards, and registering for activities in time for our grand opening in January. We are very happy with Community Pass.”
“The Borough has been using Community Pass for all of our recreation registrations for 5+ years and it just keeps getting better. The development team is constantly working to put out a better product by adding features that are user-friendly. Community Pass allows our office to focus on the customer. We are able to see registrations and financial reports (up to the minute) to better control the programs we offer.”
“We like the easy access of seeing registrants in the reports for specific programs. The transaction report shows exactly which family has registered and we can then go from there.”
“Once you set everything up, it takes care of everything automatically. It becomes very easy to ensure everyone has a waiver on file. It is also great that Community Pass generates reports to show attendance in an easy-to-read manner. We send out emails to all of our program participants, so I like that I can copy all the emails at once.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“It is difficult to do anything greater than a simple function. The process for refunds is very complicated, and it causes problems for our customers. It is also difficult to create exceptions and make special rules for events.”
“We’re looking for the attendance roster to include more important details, such as instructor name and program dates at the top, name, age/grade, emergency contact(s), phone number(s), allergies/medical conditions, etc. We’ve had a lot of issues with the residency statutes being based on address—sometimes, a residents’ address seems to be “out of town” and then we have to go in and make it exempt so they aren’t charged out of town rates. I have redone the street list multiple times and it doesn’t fix the issues that we’re having.”
“The software has poor searching and sorting. Redundant pages need to be completed for each registration, which creates a big problem on busy registration days. Also, the software undergoes frequent locking up and freezing.”
“We can’t embed a pdf file in the body of an email to be sent out to everyone in our address book for a beautiful eye-catching e-newsletter that markets our programs and events. We have to use another provider, and then continually update the email address book from Community Pass.”
“One thing I dislike about the software is that you are unable to send just a text message. It only allows you to send an email and a text message to all the families.”
“Using this program requires a lengthy learning process. When I think there is something I have finally understood, there is always something else that I didn’t do correctly and need to find a new way of doing. Some things are difficult to find, but the Help section does give some detailed directions.”