Troubleshooting guide
A new family can't get into the parent portal: the setup mistakes to check, in order
Before you create another account, find out which of two things your portal actually is — a system that provisions accounts, or one that matches the address already on the child's record. The checklist is different, and half the usual advice applies only to the first kind.
Written by the Pearspark team · updated · about 8 minutes
In short
Nearly every failed parent-portal setup is one of six things: the address on the child's record is not the address the parent signed up with, the parent record exists but is not linked to the child, the same adult has two records, two parents share one inbox, the parent is also a staff member and lands in the staff view, or the invitation went to spam. Check them in that order, and create nothing new until you have.
First: which kind of portal do you have?
There are two designs, and the usual troubleshooting advice mixes them together. In the first, the portal account is a thing an administrator creates: a username, a password reset, and often a "portal access" permission per contact. Access can exist without the account being linked to a child, and the account can exist with access switched off. Half the checklist for these systems is about the account itself.
In the second, there is no account to provision. Access is matched: the adult signs up with the email address that is already on their child's record, and the system decides what they are — parent, student, teacher — from which record that address sits on. Nothing is granted and nothing is revoked; removing the address removes the access. Pearspark works this way, which is why there is no "portal access" switch to find, and why almost every failure in it is an address problem or a link problem rather than an account problem.
Find out which you have before you start, because in a matched system the two most common instructions in a vendor help article — create the account, then turn on portal access — describe steps that do not exist, and following them produces the duplicate records that cause the next problem.
The checks, in order
Work down. Each check is cheaper than the one after it, and stopping to create a new record before you reach the end is what turns one problem into two.
- Compare the two addresses, character by character. The one on the child's record, and the one the parent actually typed. Case is not the issue in practice — mail providers treat the mailbox name as case-insensitive, and Pearspark matches without regard to case — but a trailing space, a work address swapped for a personal one, a .co that should be .com, an address the parent stopped using in June, or an old alias all are. Ask the parent to read theirs aloud rather than trusting what is on file.
- Ask what they see on screen, because the two failures look nothing alike. A parent who signed up with an address on nobody's record is not locked out — they are signed in with no role, and Pearspark tells them so: "You're signed in, but not set up yet." That sentence means the login worked and no record matched, so the fix is the address, not the password. A portal that opens but has no children in it means the opposite: the address matched a parent record that is not linked to any child.
- Check the link, not just the record. A parent can exist perfectly, with the right address, and be attached to no student — most often when a family was added from an application or a spreadsheet import that carried the parent's details but not the relationship. In Pearspark the link lives on the student: open the child, look at the guardians list, and confirm the parent is on it. Removing a guardian there unlinks them from that child and keeps their record, which is what you want when a family's relationships change.
- Look for a second record for the same adult. This is the cause of "I can only see one of my three children", and it is quietly common at a school that has grown: a parent entered again with each new sibling instead of being reused. A login binds to one record, and the portal shows that record's children — the other siblings are attached to the twin. Search your parent list by surname before you add anyone, and merge rather than adding.
- Ask whether two parents are sharing one inbox. One address can only be one person. Once a record is claimed by a login, Pearspark will not re-point it at a second person signing in with the same address — deliberately, because staff can edit the address on a record, and a system that re-points on match hands over an account to whoever types the address in. The honest fixes are to give each parent their own address, or to accept that the household has one login.
- Ask whether the parent is also on staff. A teacher, an assistant or an administrator who is also a parent has one address on two records, and every system has to pick one. Pearspark picks the staff role, so they land in the staff app and conclude the portal is broken. It is not: their workspace switcher carries a second entry named "<School> — Family", and that is the portal. Tell dual-hat families this at orientation rather than in a support thread in week three.
- Ask whether the family belongs to two schools on the same platform. A parent with a child at your school and another at a school that also uses Pearspark holds one login and two memberships, so a school picker stands between sign-in and the portal. It is a screen, not a fault, but a parent who has never seen it will report that the portal opened "on the wrong school".
- Only now, look at the invitation. In Pearspark the invite is a welcome email rather than a key: it tells the family which address to use and carries a sign-up link that works even where public sign-ups are restricted. Nothing about it expires, and a family that deleted it can still sign up with the right address. Nothing is sent when you add or import a family — invites go out only when someone sends them, from Students → Send invites (either people never invited, or everyone who still hasn't signed in) or from the Invite button beside a parent on the student's page. If that button is missing, the record is already bound to a login, and you are troubleshooting the wrong person.
Symptom, cause, and where to look
What the parent reports, what it usually means, and the screen that settles it. The Pearspark column names our screens; the middle column is true of any system.
| What the parent says | What it usually means | Where to look in Pearspark |
|---|---|---|
| "It says I'm signed in but not set up yet" | The address they used is on no record at the school | The parent's email on the student's page — compare it with what they typed |
| "The portal opened but it's empty" | Their record matched, but no child is linked to it | The student's guardians list — add the parent to the child |
| "I can only see one of my children" | The same adult has two records, and the login bound to one | Search parents by surname; merge the duplicate rather than adding a third |
| "My husband can't get in with our shared email" | The address is already claimed by the first login and is never re-pointed | Give the second parent their own address, then invite that record |
| "I get the teacher screens, not the portal" | The same address is on a staff record, which outranks the parent one | The workspace switcher — the entry ending "— Family" |
| "It asks me which school" | The login is a member of two schools | Nothing to fix; the picker is the way through |
| "I never got the email" | Nobody sent one, or it was filtered | The Invite / Re-invite button on the student's page; then spam and quarantine |
| "It says they've already signed in" | That record is bound to a login — the person in front of you is using a different one | The parent's own sign-in address, not the record |
If nothing arrives at all
When no invitation reaches any family, stop looking at the portal. Check one address you control — send yourself an invite for a test parent record — and look in spam and in any school-wide quarantine before anything else; filtered mail is the usual answer, and mail from an unfamiliar sender to a fresh list is exactly what filters are built to hold. Google's own bulk-sender guidance is the shortest description of why that happens and what makes it stop.
Invitations from Pearspark are sent from our sending domain, not yours, so there is nothing for a school to configure and nothing you can misconfigure. What a school can do is tell families the mail is coming, from what name, before it goes — one line in the enrollment packet moves more invitations out of spam than any technical measure available to you.
Where this model does not fit
Matched access has one hard requirement: every adult who signs in needs their own email address. A family without one cannot use the portal at all — Pearspark has no family username and password, no PIN, and no printed access code, and we would rather say so than have you discover it with a family in front of you. Schools serving households without reliable email keep those families on paper, or give the portal to the parent who has an address and print for the other.
The same goes for a grandparent, a nanny or a stepparent who needs access: in Pearspark they are added as another guardian on the child with their own address, which is right for anyone who really is part of the family's life and wrong as a way to hand out temporary access — there is no read-only viewer role and no guest link, so what you give is a full parent view of that child.
The parts of Pearspark involved
Each page says what the feature does today and what it does not.
Watch the setup from both sides
Adding a student and their guardian, setting the billing contact, and what the parent and student each do with the invitation. A minute each.
Common questions
What are the usual setup mistakes when parent portal access isn't working for new families?
Six cover nearly all of them: the address on the child's record is not the one the parent signed up with; the parent record exists but is not linked to the child; the same adult has two records, so the login sees only some of the children; two parents share one inbox and the address is already claimed; the parent is also a staff member and lands in the staff view; or the invitation was never sent, or went to spam. Check them in that order.
A parent says they are signed in but cannot see anything. What does that mean?
It means the login worked and no record matched the address they used — in Pearspark the screen reads "You're signed in, but not set up yet". Do not reset a password; compare the address they typed with the one on the child's record, character by character. An empty portal is a different fault: there the address matched, but the parent record is not linked to any child.
Why can a parent only see one of their children?
Almost always because the same adult has two records — one created with each child — and the login bound to one of them. The other children hang off the twin. Merge the duplicate rather than adding a third record, and search your parent list by surname before adding anyone new to a family that is already at the school.
Can two parents share one email address for the portal?
One address can only be one person. In Pearspark the first login to use an address claims that record, and the record is never re-pointed at a second person who later signs in with the same address — that is a deliberate guard, because staff can edit addresses and re-pointing on match would let anyone claim an account by typing its address. Give each parent their own address, or accept one shared login for the household.
Do I have to turn on portal access for each parent?
In Pearspark, no — there is no portal-access permission to switch. Access is matched to the email address on the record: a parent signs up with that address and lands in the family portal automatically. Adding the address grants access, removing it takes access away, and the invitation is only a welcome email telling them which address to use. Other systems do provision accounts, and there the switch is real — find out which kind yours is first.
The invitation email never arrived. Can the parent still get in?
In Pearspark, yes. The invite carries no key: a family that never received it can sign up with the address on their child's record and land in the portal. Resend it from the Invite button beside the parent on the student's page, or in bulk from Students → Send invites — and if nothing reaches anyone, look at spam and school-wide quarantine before the portal.
A parent who also teaches at the school sees the staff app instead of the portal. Is that a bug?
No. One address sits on two records, and the higher role wins, so a teacher-parent lands in the staff app. In Pearspark their workspace switcher carries a second entry ending "— Family", which is the portal for their own children. Worth telling dual-hat families at orientation, because it looks exactly like a broken portal until someone explains it.
Does a microschool need to create accounts for every family?
Not in a matched system. In Pearspark you add the parent to the child with their email address, and the account is whatever they create for themselves when they sign up with it. What a small school does need to do is keep one record per adult rather than one per child, because duplicates are the single most common cause of a portal that shows the wrong half of a family.
What if a parent has no email address at all?
Then the portal is not available to them in Pearspark, and we would rather say it plainly: there is no family username, no PIN and no printed access code — every login is an email address. Schools in that position give the portal to the parent who has an address and print the week, the report card and the invoice for the other.
Sources
Every figure on this page is read from the source linked below. Where no source could be found for a claim, the claim is not made.
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