The things we end up explaining on every call
Written down so you can read them without talking to us. Most of it applies whichever software you choose, and some of it will help you evaluate ours more sceptically.
Written for a school administrator, not for search engines. Each one is on the blog with the detail this page summarises.
Eight questions to ask any vendor, including us
Print this and take it into every demo. The answers matter less than whether the vendor answers directly.
- Show me a role that cannot see fee data, then open the browser’s network tab and prove the data was not sent. Hiding a tab is not access control, and this is the most common serious defect in school software.
- Can I export everything myself, right now, without asking you? If the answer involves a support ticket or a fee, that is your switching cost being set.
- Does the fee module post to a general ledger, or does the accounting report add up receipts? Ask to see a trial balance and ask whether a period can be locked.
- Mark attendance for a section in front of me and time it. Over thirty seconds means it will be done at lunch, and an absence alert at lunch is worthless.
- What does this NOT do? A vendor who cannot name three limits either does not know the product or is not telling you.
- Who reconciles our migration, and what figures will you show us before go-live? The right answer names specific numbers, not “our team handles it”.
- Is my SMS template DLT-registered, and will you show me a delivery report rather than a send log? See the next section for why.
- Can I speak to a school of my size and board, without you on the call? A refusal is an answer.
We have tried to answer all eight in public on this site rather than only in a meeting. Where our answer is no, it is written on the relevant page.
Your SMS to parents may be failing silently right now
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it applies whatever software you use. In India, transactional SMS must be sent on a template registered with a DLT platform. If the template is not registered, the operator drops the message — and returns no error. Your software will report it as sent. Nobody receives it.
- 01 How to check whether it is happening to you Look at your delivery report, not your send log. A send log says the software handed the message over; a delivery report says the operator delivered it. If your software only shows you a send count, that is itself the finding.
- 02 What DLT registration involves Registering your entity, a sender ID (header) and each message template with your telecom provider. Approval takes days, not minutes, and the template text must match what you send — including the variable placeholders.
- 03 Why we make it mandatory in the software We refuse to send a campaign without an approved template. That is inconvenient once and honest afterwards, because the alternative is showing you a comforting number for messages that reached nobody.
- 04 WhatsApp and e-mail have no such rule WhatsApp Business has its own template approval, which is quicker and gives read receipts. E-mail from your own domain has no restriction. Many schools now use WhatsApp as primary and SMS as fallback.
Designing a fee structure that survives the year
Most fee setups fail in the same way, and the fix is one distinction.
A fee HEAD is one chargeable item — tuition, transport, hostel, exam, lab, uniform. A fee STRUCTURE is the combination assigned to a class, with instalment dates. Keep them separate and next year’s revision is a ten-minute job: raise tuition by 8% and every structure that uses it follows. Fold them together — which is what a spreadsheet with one row per class encourages — and every change means rebuilding everything by hand.
Four rules worth following
- Transport and hostel as add-ons, never inside the base fee. A student who stops using the bus should be removed from that head, not given a new fee structure. Folding them in is why schools end up billing children for a bus they left in July.
- Concessions as reversals, not smaller invoices. A sibling discount recorded as a reduced amount destroys the audit trail. Recorded as a concession against the full invoice, with an approver and a reason, it appears properly in the ledger and can be reported on.
- Fines with a grace period, applied automatically. A late fee somebody has to remember to add is a late fee applied inconsistently, which is worse than not having one.
- One invoice per student, covering everything. Parents paying tuition in one place and transport in another produces the “I already paid” call that eats an afternoon.
If you are migrating, this is the moment to fix it. We will import what you have, but a structure that was already tidy migrates cleanly and one that was not will need an hour of decisions — and that hour is much better spent before go-live than in November.
Terms vendors use loosely
ERP. Enterprise resource planning. In school software it should mean one database behind every module. Ask what happens when you promote a batch — if the fee structures and timetable do not follow, it is a suite, not an ERP.
Multi-tenant. Your data shares infrastructure with other schools’. Normal for hosted software. The question is where isolation is enforced — at the data-access layer, or by each screen remembering to filter.
RBAC. Role-based access control. Meaningful only if the roles narrow the database query. If they hide menu items, the data is still being sent to the browser.
Double-entry. Every transaction posts equal debits and credits to a general ledger. A "financial report" that sums receipts is not double-entry, and the test is whether it can produce a trial balance that balances and lock a period.
DLT. Distributed Ledger Technology, the Indian telecom registry for transactional SMS senders and templates. Unregistered messages are dropped silently. See above.
SIS. Student information system — the student record itself, as distinct from the modules that read it.
CBCS. Choice Based Credit System, used by many Indian universities. Requires credits and credit-hour transcripts, which our product does not produce; we say so on the college and university pages.
Pro-rata. Charging for part of a period. Relevant when a student joins mid-year or crosses a plan’s included student count.
White-label. The software under your name and domain, with your own branded apps. Parents never see the vendor. Usually an enterprise-tier feature and a one-time build cost.
Sargable. A query that can use an index. Not a term a school should need — but if your current system takes forty seconds to show one day’s attendance, this is usually why.
Common questions
Something not answered here?
Do I have to give you my e-mail to read these?
Can we use the evaluation checklist against you?
Is the DLT problem really that common?
Will you help us design our fee structure even if we do not buy?
Do you have anything for teachers rather than administrators?
Can we reuse this material in our own documentation?
How often is this updated?
What if the guide I need is not here?
Use the checklist on us first
Bring the eight questions to a twenty-minute call. We will answer all of them, including the ones where the answer is no.
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- Your data stays yours — export any time
- Setup help included