How to check parent reach on WhatsApp in Inkwelly

1. Open the Communications dashboard

From the left navigation click Communications. The page opens on the four Hero KPIs (Sent today, Delivery rate 7d, Active channels, Unhandled inbound). Scroll past the Send velocity chart and Delivery health card. The Reach & consent card sits in the second row, on the right side. It loads in under two seconds for schools with fewer than 5,000 students.

2. Read the recipient count in the card header

The card header shows a sentence like '1,585 recipients in this session'. This number is every parent record Inkwelly currently considers active in your school — usually one parent per student, sometimes two if you marked both father and mother. If this total looks off by more than 5%, the issue is in the Students module — duplicate or archived records are leaking into the active set. Fix that first, then come back to the reach card.

3. Read 'Addressable by channel' for the WhatsApp percentage

Under the recipient count, you will see four rows — WhatsApp, SMS, Email, Push — each with a percentage and an absolute count. A real school on day one looks like WhatsApp 33% (519), SMS 33% (519), Email 3% (47), Push 0% (0). The WhatsApp number is what matters for fee receipts and exam updates. Anything under 70% means most parents will not get the message even if you send it. The honest target before going live with paperless fee receipts is 90%.

4. Note the 'unreachable' count and what causes it

Directly below the channel breakdown, the card shows a single number like '1,066 unreachable'. These are parents whose record is in your active list but cannot receive any message on any channel — usually because the phone column is blank, the number is not a valid 10-digit Indian mobile, the parent opted out under TRAI rules, or the WhatsApp number is on a Meta block list. Click this number to export the list as a CSV — every row gives you the student name, class, parent name, and the exact reason the record is unreachable.

5. Check 'Consent by purpose' for opt-out drops

The sub-section 'Consent by purpose' splits parents by the type of message they have agreed to receive — Academic, Fee, Attendance, Marketing. For a typical CBSE school, Academic and Fee sit near 100% (mandatory), Attendance near 95%, Marketing around 40–60%. If Fee consent is below 90% you have a data-entry bug — Inkwelly never asks parents to opt out of fee receipts on registration. Fix the consent flags in the Students module.

6. Fix bad numbers in the Students module

Open the Students module from the left navigation. Filter by 'unreachable on WhatsApp' (the CSV you exported earlier will give you the list). Pick the first 50 rows. Phone the class teacher or open the admission paperwork — the correct number is almost always there, just never copied into the system. Bulk-edit the phone column in batches of 50, save, and the Reach card recalculates within five minutes. Do not skip rows — the parent whose number you skipped is the one who will complain about a missed fee receipt.

7. Re-run the reach count weekly until you hit 90%

The first pass usually takes the school from 33% to 65% WhatsApp reach. The next two passes — calling parents whose number bounced, capturing new numbers at PTM — push it past 90%. Re-open the Reach card every Monday morning, compare the WhatsApp percentage to last week's, and stop only when you cross 90%. At that point you are safe to switch off paper fee receipts. Schools that try to switch at 70% reach lose three weeks to angry parents and roll back to paper.