Glossary¶

The words PinkTower uses, and what they mean.

Schools and people¶

School: One childcare centre or school and all of its records, kept completely separate from every other school. Each school has its own short name in the web address, taken from its name.
Role: What a person is at one school: Administrator, Teacher, Nurse, Bus driver, Bus conductor or Parent. One login can hold different roles at different schools. See Roles and permissions.
Membership: A person's link to one school. Someone with two memberships chooses a school when they sign in, and switches from the account menu.
Guardian: A parent or other adult linked to a child, with a relationship (mother, father, guardian or other). A guardian can be linked to any number of children at the school, and a child can have several guardians.
Primary contact: The guardian the school contacts first about a child. Each child with guardians has one.
Alumni parent: A parent none of whose children is still enrolled at the school. They keep read-only access to their children's records. If the school enrols one of their children again, their access returns to normal.
Bus crew: A bus's driver and conductor together. Both have the same access: they mark the children on their own bus on and off it, and are never assigned to a class.

Grade level: One of twelve: Preschool, Nursery and Primary 1 to 6, plus the Montessori levels Infant and Toddler, Children's House, Lower Elementary and Upper Elementary. Each school chooses which ones it runs, and only those appear in the app.
Year-round grade: Preschool and Infant and Toddler, which run all year and are billed monthly. Every other grade follows the academic calendar and is billed per term.
Term: A dated part of the academic year, for the grades it applies to. Fees for termed grades are raised once per term, and the school bus does not run outside a term.
Closure: A day or range of days the school is shut, such as a public holiday, for some or all grades. Late-pickup alerts and the bus stop on those days.
Enrolment status: Whether a child is enrolled, has graduated or has left. A child who has left keeps their record; only removing a child deletes it.
Promotion: The end-of-year step that moves every child up a grade and graduates the top one.

Closing time: The time the school day ends. Children still at school after it are reported to their parents and the school. Entered in UTC.
Authorised contact: Someone other than a child's guardians who may collect them, such as a grandparent or childminder, named on the child's record.
Pickup code: A one-day code a parent sends to someone collecting their child that day. Staff type it in at the gate. It can be used once for each child it covers, and stops working at the end of the day.
Run: One direction of one day on the school bus. The morning run takes children to school; the afternoon run takes them home.
Roster (bus): The children who ride a given bus. A child rides one bus, so adding them to another moves them off the first.
Arrival not confirmed: A bus run the crew never finished in PinkTower, closed automatically after a set time. It records that the child boarded, but does not claim they arrived.
UTC: Coordinated Universal Time, the world's reference time. A few PinkTower times are read in UTC, which is one hour behind Lagos. See Times are in UTC.

Announcement: A notice for the whole school or for one class.
Broadcast: A message from an administrator to all parents, all staff or everyone. A parent's reply goes privately to the sender.
Story: A short written update about how a child is getting on, posted by their teacher or an administrator.
Draft and published (events): A new calendar event starts as a draft, which only administrators see. Families see it once it is published.

Required document: A record the school asks families to provide, such as a birth certificate, for some or all grades. Each is identity, medical or other. Nurses see only medical documents.
Compliance: Whether each child has provided, and had approved, all of their required documents.

Fee type: A kind of charge: tuition, registration, activity, transport, materials, meals or other.
Fee amount: The standing price of a fee type for a grade, charged every billing cycle until it is changed.
Fee record: One charge on one child, raised automatically.
Billing cycle: A month for year-round grades, a term for every other grade.
Billing: What families pay the school.
Subscription: What the school pays PinkTower. Separate from Billing.
Read-only (subscription): The state a school reaches when its PinkTower subscription stays unpaid. Marking attendance, recording pickups, adding students and sending messages are paused. Nothing is deleted, and parents can still pay fees.

Supply catalogue: The items a school stocks.
Grade list: What a class in a grade should be issued in a term.
Reorder level: The quantity at or below which a class counts as low on a supply.

Two-factor authentication: A second check at sign-in: a 6-digit code from an authenticator app on your phone, as well as your password. Optional, and it covers every school you belong to.
Home-screen app: PinkTower added to your phone's home screen, so it opens like an app. See Install PinkTower on your phone.