Changes to SIMS Pay & InTouch
In February, ESS SIMS was acquired by new independent owners and is therefore no longer part of Capita.
As of the 21st May 2021 the legal name of the company formerly known as Capita ESS Ltd will be changing to Education Software Solutions Ltd. The abbreviation ‘ESS’, which they have been using since February, will continue to be the abbreviated acronym.
Due to the above change ESS SIMS are carrying out some rebranding which has an impact on both SIMS Pay and InTouch.
What’s Changing?
The main changes are as follows:
InTouch: Due to these changes schools will have a new InTouch email address.
SIMS Pay: Due to the rebranding SIMS Pay has been renamed to Pay360 Education Payments.
When does this happen?
InTouch:
- Your new email address will start working now, any emails sent to it will appear in your InTouch system. Your new email address will be <DfE number>@sims-communications.co.uk.
- 5th July: from 5pm your school will be migrated to the new email address for all outbound emails and the new email address will appear as the sender.
- End of July: your current InTouch email address will continue to work until this date for incoming emails.
SIMS Pay:
There will be a series of activities prior to the final switch over on 26th July.
- Saturday 10th July – SIMS Pay will be off line between 9am and 5pm to enable us to carry out the required maintenance.
- Monday 12th July – we will send out the updated SSM package. If SSM is set to auto install packages, the update will happen automatically overnight.
- Monday 12th July – we will add a notice within the current SIMS Pay log in screen to advise parents of the name change. We recommend you communicate with parents to make them aware of the name change as of 26th July.
- Monday 26th July – SIMS Pay will be off line between 1pm and 5pm to enable us to finalise the changes.
- From 5pm 26th July – SIMS Pay will be available as Pay360 Education Payments.
For full information on the changes please see the documents below:
Important Information – Your SIMS InTouch email address is changing