Login troubleshooting for families

Login issues are the most common thing families email about. Most are easy to fix. Here is what to walk them through.

The most common cause: wrong email

The family is typing an email different from what is on their account. Maybe they have two emails and forgot which one signed up. Maybe a typo in the welcome email.

Fix: open the family in /students, confirm the guardian email on file, and tell them to use that exact email.

The second most common: password forgotten

Send them to /portal/login and have them click Forgot password. A reset link goes to their email. Most families fix it themselves once they see this option.

If the email is not landing in their inbox, it is probably in spam. The sender is your school's name (not Rosterra) and the from address is the one you set at /settings/email-domain. Make sure that domain has proper SPF and DKIM records to land in inboxes (see the integrations article).

The third most common: their email is on a different family

Two siblings at your school, two different parents, but they share a guardian email. This happens with divorced parents.

Each parent should have their own account with their own email. From /students, edit each child's guardian list and add the missing parent as a second guardian. Each gets their own login.

Magic link instead of password

If the family is locked out and cannot reset, the staff side has a Send magic link button on every guardian profile. Click it, the parent gets a one-time login link in their email. They click and are signed in instantly. After that, they can set a new password.

Their account is disabled

If you deactivated a family (or they were marked inactive automatically after a long stretch of no engagement), they cannot log in. From the family profile, click Reactivate.

The mobile app shows "wrong school"

The shared Rosterra app has families pick their school the first time. If they picked the wrong one, the app will not show their account. Have them:

1. Open the app settings.
2. Tap Sign out then Forget this school.
3. Sign in again and pick your school from the list.

Their child's name shows but no schedule

This usually means the student was created but no membership or class enrollment was added. Open the student in /students and confirm they have an active membership in at least one program with a class.

They claim they paid but the system says they did not

Open the family billing page. The status of each charge is visible:

• Succeeded. Payment landed. They were charged.
• Pending. Stripe is processing. Wait 24 hours.
• Failed. The card declined. Have them update the card.
• Refunded. You (or auto-refund) sent the money back.

If they were charged but the family insists the payment did not go through on their end, look at the email receipt timestamp. Match it to the Stripe transaction. The most common cause is a duplicate charge from the family clicking "pay" twice; refund the duplicate from the payment page.

When in doubt

Have them email support@getrosterra.com and the Rosterra team can investigate. We can see things you cannot (specific Stripe payment status, email delivery, recent password-reset attempts).