Add a child to PTRS
The eight-step registration wizard ends in a sequence of nine saves in a row, and that sequence cannot reach the end. It stops at the first failure, and there is always at least one.
The path below uses Quick Actions → Quick Member Entry and then the child's own record, and every step of it completes. The wizard's failures are set out at the bottom of this page so you can recognise them if somebody has already tried.
Before you start
Have the paper form in front of you. Two values on it cannot be corrected once the record is created:
- Date of birth is set once, at creation, and no screen changes it afterward. The edit sheet shows the field and does not save it
- Enrolment date is set to today automatically, and is equally fixed
If you have a scanned or photographed form rather than paper, use Review a scanned application instead, but read what Quick Scan does to a date of birth it cannot read first.
1. Create the child and the first guardian
Quick Member Entry creates both in one step.
- Open /members.
- Press Quick Actions, then Quick Member Entry. The same dialog is on the header's Quick Add menu.
- Fill in the child: First name, Last name, Date of birth, Gender, Grade.
- Fill in the guardian: First name, Last name, Phone, Email, Relationship.
- Press Create.
Only first name, last name and date of birth are required. The guardian section is optional and is only used when both guardian names are given.
This dialog offers K, 1, 2, up to 12. The directory's Grade filter looks for Pre-K, K, 1st, 2nd, up to 12th, and matches the stored value exactly.
A child stored as a bare "3" will never appear under the filter's "3rd".
If you want the child to be findable by the grade filter, leave Grade blank here and set it on the child's edit sheet, a free-text box, typing "3rd", not "3".
2. Complete the child record
Open the child from the directory, press Edit, and fill in what Quick Entry did not collect: middle name, nickname, ethnicity, language, address, home phone, school, physician, hospital, insurance, pickup password, referral source and the five list fields.
Allergies, Medical Alerts, Medications, Hobbies and Other Programs each hold a list of short entries in a specific format the placeholders show, for example a list written as "Peanuts", "Dairy" inside square brackets, quoted and comma-separated.
Type it exactly that way, not as a plain comma-separated sentence. A value in the wrong shape produces an error with no explanation, and the save is lost.
Two fields display on the edit sheet without saving, the Date of birth field and the Enrolment date field. Editing them changes nothing.
Of the wizard's seven choices for referral source, only School, Website and Other actually get stored. The other four are dropped without a message, so this box is free text on the edit sheet: type one of the eleven names PTRS recognises if you need the field to hold a value.
3. Add the second guardian, contacts and pickup list
All of these are on the Overview tab.
| To add | Control | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Another guardian | Add Guardian on the Guardians card | Creates a new guardian record. There is no way to attach an existing one, so a sibling's parent becomes a second row |
| An emergency contact | Add on the Emergency Contacts card | Collects name, phone, extension, relationship and priority. There is no edit; to correct one, remove it and add it again |
| An authorised pickup | Add on the Pickup Authorisation card | Collects name, phone and relationship only. A photo ID, a court order and the authorising guardian cannot be recorded |
| A restricted person | Add Restricted Person on the same card | Name and reason. Use this for custody and no-contact orders |
The enrolment gate in step 5 requires two. Adding both now saves a round trip.
4. Record the consents
Still on the Overview tab, at the bottom: the Consents panel.
Choose the consent type, pick the signing guardian from the list, capture the signature, and save. This panel passes a real guardian identifier taken from the loaded record, which is why it works where the wizard's version does not.
Record a consent of type "Emergency Hospitalization"; the enrolment gate requires an active, un-revoked, unexpired consent of exactly that type.
A captured signature is limited to 10,000 characters and nothing checks the length before it is sent. A signature captured as an image can exceed that.
If saving a consent fails with a server error, save it again with a shorter signature: a smaller, simpler stroke makes a smaller image.
5. Fill in the medical record, then add the enrolment
The enrolment gate reads a different record from the medical fields on the edit sheet. Steps 2 and 3 wrote to the child's main record; the gate reads her separate structured medical record.
- Open the Health tab.
- Set Immunizations Up to Date.
- Set the last physical exam date; it must be within the last year.
- Fill in conditions, medications, dietary restrictions and blood type as needed.
- Save.
Then:
- Open the Financial tab. Only an organisation administrator or a super admin can use this tab; see Member financial information.
- Press Add Enrolment.
- Choose an Enrolment Type: New, Renewal or Transfer. Do not choose Reinstatement; PTRS does not recognise it and refuses the save.
- Set the dates and save.
What a refusal from Add Enrolment means
| Message contains | Fix |
|---|---|
| "has N emergency contact(s); minimum 2 required" | Add another emergency contact on the Overview tab |
| "does not have an active signed Emergency Medical Authorization consent" | Record an "Emergency Hospitalization" consent, step 4 |
| "does not have immunizations marked as up to date" | Set the flag on the Health tab, step 5 |
| "physical exam is expired or missing" | Set a last-physical date within the past year on the Health tab |
| "has emergency medication that is not ready for administration" | Health and Safety module; the medication on site is not cleared |
The message is all the feedback there is. The panel built to list all five checks with a tick or a cross, and to offer a site director a waiver, exists and is never shown on any screen.
6. Upload the documents
The Documents tab has an upload dialog and a checklist of nine document types it labels required.
- Accepted: PDF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, DOC, DOCX, up to 25 MB
- Keep the document name under 200 characters. Between 201 and 250 characters passes the on-screen check and fails when it reaches PTRS, with a server error and no message
- Do not choose an IEP document from the type list; PTRS does not recognise that name and refuses the upload. Use "Section 504 Plan" or "Other"
| Where | Count | Types |
|---|---|---|
| Documents tab checklist, noted as "per DELACARE compliance" | 9 | Birth certificate, immunisation record, physical exam, enrolment application, emergency contact form, emergency medical authorisation, medical release, photo release, insurance card |
| Registration wizard | 5 | The first three, plus school enrolment verification and emergency medical authorisation |
| PTRS's own missing-documents check | 3 | Birth certificate, immunisation record, physical exam |
None of the three cites a regulation. Follow your own licensing requirements, not this checklist, and note that PTRS's own check ignores expiry dates and whether a document is actually required for that child, and its result is not shown on any screen anyway.
Pressing Verify on a document marks it verified and records the verifier as the fixed word "current-user", not the person who pressed it. There is no un-verify.
Why not the wizard
The eight-step wizard is a genuine wizard: it auto-saves a draft every 30 seconds, offers to resume it, checks each step, and ends on an editable review page with a progress bar. Its final save makes nine calls to PTRS in order and stops at the first one that fails.
Four of the nine fail:
| Step | What it saves | Why it fails |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The child record | Sends the medical conditions and medications textareas as plain sentences into fields that only accept a specific structured shape. Any child with a recorded condition or medication fails here |
| 6 | Consents | Sends a temporary, made-up identifier where a guardian id belongs. PTRS rejects it before reading further |
| 7 | Documents | Three of the eleven offered types, School Enrollment Verification, Medical Form, IEP/504 Plan, are names PTRS does not recognise |
| 9 | Enrolment | Sends an enrolment type PTRS does not recognise, and behind it sits the five-rule safety gate, which the wizard's one-contact minimum cannot satisfy |
The error appears in a red panel at the top of step 8, with the line "you can retry, any already-created records will not be duplicated." That line is wrong: the sequence restarts at step 1 every time, so each retry creates another child, another guardian and another link. Children cannot be deleted, so every attempt leaves a permanent duplicate in the directory.
The wizard also collects a suffix, a primary phone, an email and a county, and shows them back on the review screen, and never sends any of the four. Guardians after the first are dropped too; the save sequence never adds a second one.
Look for children created today with "Unknown" or partial records and duplicate guardians. The child rows cannot be removed; set Member Status to Terminated on the edit sheet for the duplicates and keep one.
Where to go next
- Work a child's record, what each of the eleven sections can do
- Work the member directory
- Member and guardian fields, every field and the rule PTRS actually enforces on it
- Members troubleshooting
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.