Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Troubleshooting & FAQs

Students are not required to use MFA. However, students may be prompted to update usernames or passwords. We recommend proactively reviewing student credentials to help ensure a smooth experience. 

Student accounts must meet the following criteria: 

• a valid email address
• a username that is unique across all FACTS products
• a password that meets the new requirements

Use Manage Logins to update student usernames, passwords, and email addresses in bulk.

The user must click the registration link in the email, then create a new account or log into their existing FACTS account. 

Have the parent or staff member clear cache and cookies for all time. Parents and staff should be logging out of their accounts to prevent sessions from holding on, instead of simply closing out of their browser or window.

If a parent or staff member needs to change their authentication preferences they must contact account support to verify their authentication questions and request MFA to be removed.  The removal will allow them to select their preferred authentication method the next time they log in.

• School contact FACTS SIS: 1-866-800-6593
• Parent contact FACTS Financial Management: 1-866-441-4637

School contacts, please contact our Account Management team.

• FACTS SIS support: 1-866-800-6593
• FACTS Financial Management support: 1-866-412-4637

Parents, please contact FACTS Financial Management parent support.

• Parent support: 1-866-441-4637

• If the user has not completed their account creation, resend the Create Account invite. The user must click the registration link in the email and complete setup. 
• Verify the parent or staff member is using the correct username.
• Verify the parent or staff member is not duplicated.

If the issue persists, school contacts, please contact our account management team.

• FACTS SIS support: 1-866-800-6593
• FACTS Financial Management support: 1-866-412-4637

Parents please contact FACTS Financial Management parent support.

• Parent support: 1-866-441-4637

Review Staff Login Management or Family Individual Login Management.

• If there is a username listed and grayed out, the user is most likely using the wrong username or they need to clear cache and cookies for all time.
• If the invite is showing as sent but there is no username, the user must click on the registration link in the email they received to create an account, OR sign into an existing FACTS Financial Management account to link it to their SIS person record.

Clear cache and cookies, then log in directly at factsmgt.com. Resave any stored bookmarks.

Each person should have a unique email address. Shared emails may cause password reset confusion or merged accounts. 

Verify that the user's email inbox is not inactive, or that the email is not in their spam or junk folder. 

MFA is designed for one login across all systems. Make sure the user has the same email adress on all accounts so that they link, and is not already logged into another school in the same browser.

The following issues may cause this error:

• The code is expired
• The browser session has cached data
• The browser autofill is interfering
• The user is already logged in elsewhere

Clear cache & cookies for all time.

Select Forgot username/password to identify if you are using the correct username.

When MFA is enabled for your school it may inadvertently trigger email notifications indicating that parent demographic information had changed. No actual demographic data was modified. 

This is not an error. This means that the person's username was not unique across all of FACTS and needs to be updated.

• Once the parent or staff member attempts to log in to the SIS with their existing username and password, they will be prompted to setup a new username and password that is unique.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is required to improve data security and protect sensitive student and family information. It adds an extra layer of verification beyond a username and password. MFA is required for staff and parents. Students are not required to use MFA.

MFA will be required on your school's scheduled rollout date. On that date, the MFA will become required for staff and parents.

On April 17, 2023, FACTS began requiring MFA within the FACTS Giving product for all administrative users.

On July 12, 2023, FACTS rolled out requirements for administrative users to use MFA to access the following FACTS products:

• FACTS Payment Plans
• FACTS Financial Aid Assessment
• FACTS Payment Forms

On November 13, 2023 FACTS rolled out MFA for consumer users (families) that access the following FACTS products:

• FACTS Payment Plans
• FACTS Financial Aid Assessment

FACTS SIS began implementing MFA for a group of early adopter schools in January 2025.

• In April 2025, MFA began gradually rolling out to all SIS schools.
• In August 2025, the MFA rollout was paused to avoid disruption during the busy start of the academic year, and will resume in late September. 

In some cases, your MFA rollout date can be changed. Please contact your Account Manager to discuss your situation.

MFA is madatory and cannot be opted out of. 

At this time, all administrative users – staff and teachers - with access to the following products will be required to utilize MFA:

• FACTS Giving
• FACTS Payment Plans
• FACTS Financial Aid Assessment
• FACTS Payment Forms

On November 13^th, 2023, FACTS rolled out MFA for consumer users (families) that access the following FACTS products:

• FACTS Payment Plans
• FACTS Financial Aid Assessment

FACTS SIS began implementing MFA for a group of early adopter schools in January 2025.

• April 2025, MFA began gradually rolling out to all SIS schools.

• Login History: school users with security rights to view login management, will be able to view login history for users. Additionally, schools will be able to see which users have enrolled in MFA, providing greater visibility into account security across staff and families.
• Single user account across products: We are taking steps to centralize our authentication system across FACTS products. Currently, separate user accounts are necessary for applications, the SIS Family Portal, and some financial products. With this update, users (staff or parents) will be able to use a single account across all FACTS products.

Yes, we will notify your school at least 2 weeks before the changes take effect. You’ll receive a notification in the SIS upon login with the specific date, and your Account Manager will also reach out via email to ensure you have the information.

View our Prepare for Multi-Factor Authentication Checklist and ensure your database is clean.

We’re actively expanding these materials based on feedback from schools to ensure you have the tools needed to support your staff and families.

Schools are responsible for notifying staff and families. There are resources and a video to share with parents.  Families may access these resources within the Family Resource Center, or you may also share the links with them.

Yes! You may change your preferred authentication method by contacting FACTS account management to verify identity and request MFA removal.

• School Staff Support: 1-866-800-6593
• Parent Support: 1-866-441-4637

No, physical authentication devices are not supported at this time.

No, Students accessing the Family Portal will not be prompted or required to use MFA to access their FACTS account. However, they may be prompted to update usernames or passwords. 

On its own, a single sign-on (SSO) solution doesn’t satisfy the MFA requirement. If your SSO system uses MFA, you don’t need to also enable FACTS MFA for users who access FACTS products solely through SSO.

If your institution has an SSO connection with FACTS and already manages the users, passwords and enforcing MFA from their identity provider, there will be no impact to users. If your institution has not enabled Single Sign-On (SSO) with FACTS, users will be required to enable MFA when logging into FACTS.

For questions on how to enable SSO, please reach out to your {{k12short}] account management team.

If a user attempts to login and they fail to type the correct password, authentication code or verification code, 4 or more failed attempts in 30 minutes, then the account is locked. If they try again later, as long as there haven't been 4 failed attempts in the last 30 minutes, then the account is no longer locked.

Staff that have the appropriate security rights, will be able to unlock the user account.

When a school is enabled with MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), each user's SIS username must be unique. If a duplicate username is detected, it will be amended with a "migrated" prefix. The next time the user logs into FACTS SIS, they will be prompted to update or change their username. Once the username is updated, the next sync with Clever will send the new username.

If the school is using Clever’s stored password feature, the user must follow the steps in Clever to update their stored username and password accordingly.

Following the update, users whose usernames remain unchanged will experience no impact to their login or existing process.

For users with non-unique usernames, FACTS will assign a temporary placeholder username, which is visible until the user logs in and updates it. Users will still login with their existing username and password.

Until the user logs into FACTS and updates their username and the next sync occurs, external applications may not reflect the user's most current username.

No. MFA cannot be configured on behalf of another user.

We've heard your concerns that the 4 hour window can lead to inefficiencies, with staff and teachers needing to re-authenticate multiple times during the day. In response, we’re extending the session duration to 8 hours to better support daily workflows.  If it has been more than 8 hours since the last authentication and the user signs out, they will be prompted to reauthenticate when signing in. 

If users do not have a personal mobile phone or device to utilize MFA, users will have the option to use email verification.

Staff who are also parents at the same school can use the same username and password for both their Staff and Parent accounts if they have been merged and therefore have the same email address on both accounts. However, if they prefer to keep their personal and work accounts separate, they must have a different Email #1 for each account. This ensures that each account remains distinct while still allowing the user to manage both roles effectively.

• Usernames must be unique across all of FACTS, but do not have a character limit or need special characters
• Email #1 must be unique
• Passwords are case sensitive
• Passwords may not be reused for the same user, up to the last four passwords used
• Passwords must:
  • contain at least 12 characters
  • contain at least one letter
  • contain at least one number
  • include at least one special character: ! @ . # $ % ^ * ( ) _ + -
  • not start or end with a space
  • not include any invalid special characters 

For some users, no changes are necessary. However, if a user’s username is already in use in the FACTS system, they are prompted to choose a new one during login. Similarly, if their password doesn’t meet updated security requirements, they’ll be asked to update it at that time.

Yes,  usernames must be unique across all FACTS users, not just within your school or district. If a username is not unique at login, the user will be prompted to create a new one.

Using an email address as the username may ensure uniqueness, but is not required.

Yes, students must have unique usernames even though MFA does not apply to them.

Yes, families will be able to utilize the same user account they created to apply to the school to complete their enrollment and access the Family Portal.

Yes, a user account is not required to assign a teacher to a classroom or add them to a security group. When you’re ready for the staff member to log in, you can initiate an email from FACTS to create their user account.

Schools can see which staff members have not yet created their accounts and can send them the invite email either individually or in bulk.

Yes, staff will retain the ability to create and edit usernames and passwords for student accounts. This functionality will remain unchanged with the upcoming updates.

Yes, if your security rights currently include the ability to view login information, you will have access to view usernames for staff and parents.

With MFA enabled, school admins can no longer reset passwords for parents and staff directly. These users must follow the MFA recovery process or contact Support.

Schools will have the ability to initiate password reset emails for staff and parents directly from the SIS.

As part of this update, the SIS will begin using the same delivery service for account creation and password reset emails that the financial system has been using for a few years, which has been proven to provide reliability and consistency in email delivery. While this update should improve email delivery times for password reset, it’s important to note that no email system can guarantee 100% delivery, as factors like spam filters or settings outside of our control can impact receipt.

Sharing email addresses is not recommended and may cause errors. Before the MFA rollout, duplicate emails should be removed. After the MFA rollout, every user must have a unique email address.

An email #1 address is required for MFA. Schools may need to create a school-domain email for these accounts.

Use the Duplicate Emails Report. You may also Create a Report to make a list of every user and their email address, then sort by the email to identify any duplicates. 

Any user, staff, student, or parent who logs in must have an email address. Users that will not log in, such as some grandparents, do not need one.

We appreciate all the comments and feedback we’ve received directly or in FACTS^SPACE. We’ve heard some great requests we are going to actively begin implementing such as:

• Extended Authentication Window: We've heard your concerns that a 4 or 8 hour window can lead to inefficiencies, with staff and teachers needing to re-authenticate multiple times during the day. In response, we’re extending the session duration to 10 hours to better support daily workflows.
• Improved Mobile Login Experience: We're also making an enhancement for users logging in on mobile devices. The system will now prompt users to paste the verification code from their email, eliminating the need to manually switch between FACTS and their email.

Single Sign-On (SSO) has been a long-requested enhancement to FACTS SIS. While SSO via SAML is available for our Tuition and Financial Aid products, integrating this functionality into FACTS SIS has been a very complex project.

While we have prioritized the implementation of MFA for direct access users, we are continuing to work on updates to FACTS SIS to handle multiple audiences and provide SSO functionality. We are planning to launch a beta/early adopter group, which will help us test and refine the SSO experience before a broader rollout.

While we are still in the development phase and not ready to begin implementation just yet, you can reach out to your FACTS Account Manager or the Support Team to express interest in joining the early adopter group. This group will help shape the implementation process and contribute to refining the supporting documentation ahead of broader rollout.  

We are exploring the ability to enable passkey’s that would enable a user to login using biometric methods (face ID, touch ID, etc.) or a device PIN.

The emails are not currently available in Spanish. However, users can select Spanish as their preferred language when they access the login or account recovery screens. Expanding language support for emails is something we’re exploring.