There is nothing to deny that fee or Accounting management is one of the most important tasks that are done by a school on a regular basis. It is with the help of such work that a school is able to keep complete track of the fees that the students are paying. There was a time when such systems were pretty critical and there were plenty of errors involved in such work as well. This primarily boiled down to the fact that it was done in a manual way.
It also needs to be said in this context that such way of work ate up a lot of time as well. There were also different kinds of work involved over here.
Examples of such would be generating fee receipts, canceling transactions, and getting details of paid fees the earlier year. It certainly did not help that as connected these tasks were they were diametrically different from each other. This was why there was such a need for an online fee management system. The main aim here was to cover the shortfalls in the system. This is where school fee management systems are making such a major difference in every sense of the term.
Read: Signs that Your School Needs a School Management System
What is school Fees or Accounting management system?
These are integrated systems that we are talking about over here. At a very basic level, they help you collect fees, issue receipts and generate and maintain reports. All this implies that your management becomes free of any trouble, a lot more convenient, and free of paper as well. In a nutshell, such a system makes your life a lot easier no matter how you look at it.
Below have highlighted the imperative Features of School Fees Software, and how it streamlines the Fees Process :
- Setting up Fee Structure
When it comes to the fee management system or module in your school ERP software you would want it to be the best. Ideally the best systems in these regard feature elements from all different such modules that are being used all around the world. At the very start, they should be able to help you set up the fee structure on the basis of student category or for a total course as such. The system should make it possible for you to collect fines for late payment of fees. At the same time, it should be able to provide discounts – both instant and fixed – as well.
- Check Fee Defaulters
The system should let you check regularly the students who are defaulters in this regard. It should help you send such students – as well as their parents – notifications about pending fees by way of means such as SMS (short messaging service) and email. It should allow you to collect various kinds of reports on the basis of fees that have been collected or are pending as well as the receipts of the same.
- Providing Access to School Financers
Normally the access to financial details of the school is limited to only a few members of the staff. They are normal people related to the administration as well as ones who are handling all the groundwork in this regard. The fee management system in question should be able to provide specific and controlled access to such users so that they can take all the details from the same and include it in the financial database as such.
- Calculating the Taxes & Deductibles (where applicable)
You can easily use such a system in order to calculate all the taxes that may be applicable in these cases such as VAT (value added taxes). The tax feature let the school impose necessary taxes on all the different kinds of fees that you are collecting. This includes the likes of the following:
General Fees
Instant fees
Transport & Hostel Fees
The system should also let you carry out other important transactions such as statutory deductions like housing and transport allowance, refunding and reverting fees. However, the access to such work should only be given to certain employees and it should be done on the basis of requirement.
Read: Benefits or Advantages of School Management and Administration Software (Online)
- Generating Invoice Reports
Generate invoice reports for the fees that are scheduled to be paid immediately. You should also be able to use the system to create custom categories so that you are able to record all the common transactions that are being done in your institution. The best systems in this regard also come with features such as tally integration. They should help you export financial transactions from the ERP system that you are using in your school. You can perform the sync in a manual way in bulk.
- Syncing with Payment Gateways
Else, you can also do it as live sync. More important than anything else, you should be able to integrate the ERP system with your preferred payment gateway. This way, you would be able to collect the fees online as well. It should let you create account based maps. At the same time, the reports that it generates should be as comprehensive as possible including all the details that you may need at various points in time.
If you have a system of hostels and transport facilities as well the system in question should be good enough to let you collect them along with the academic fees and that too at one go.
How do School Fees Management System works?
A great benefit of school fees management system is the way that they function. They gather all the information related to students in the central database of your school and they also include extra information in the following areas:
Fee payment plans
School policies
Installments
Concessions
Scholarships
Due dates
All this information is collected by way of excel sheets within a span of 24 hours after the student has enrolled. They are also entered and then proofread with almost cent percent accuracy as well. This makes sure that there is no ambiguity in this regard at all.
These modules have been created with the specific intention of making sure that the work of fee collection and receipt generation can be done in the shortest span of time possible. It also works in such a way that normal human errors, in this case, can be mitigated at the earliest.
Making it safe and convenience for parents to make payments
The mode of payment of these systems is such that parents always feel safe in paying the money. The overall payment environment is as safe and secure as it can possibly get. There are so many ways in which parents can make payments in this regard.
They may be enumerated as below:
Cash
Cheque
Credit card
Bank transfer
Demand draft
Debit card
The multitude of payment options means that parents are now able to make the payments within a really short span of time. Since the process has become hassle-free they are able to enjoy it as well. In most schools, where such modes of payment are not used there is plenty of stress associated with the entire process since the parents have to pay them in person.
Conclusion
Technology is supposed to make human lives easier and systems such as these are a perfect embodiment of the same.
