1. Profile Management
This a collection of data of all stakeholders of the school.
A. Student data
This is a database of all student records both current and past. It captures all data
pertaining to a student and their linked guardians/parents. It also supports linking of student attachments such as birth certificates and photos. It also comes with a reporting tool that you can use to query student records based on a wide range of criteria e.g Boarders, Archived students etc.
B. Guardian data
This provides for the storage and management of guardian records. Both active and past. It also comes with a reporting tool that allows you to filter, view, print and export these records when needed.
C. Staff data
A detailed database for managing records for all your staff, both teaching and non-teaching. Allows for grouping of records into different departments.
2. School Fees Management
This is category carries modules that simplify the invoicing and receipting process, tracking fee balances and generating fee statements.
A. Invoicing
This is a comprehensive invoice generation tool that automates the termly invoicing process. It supports the bulk generation of invoices at a go as well as the creation of a single invoice for a single student. The invoices generated are downloadable, printable and can also be emailed directly to the guardians of the student from within the platform.
B. School fee discounts
School fee discounts can be configured to pick and apply automatically during the mass generation of invoices e.g sibling discounts can be applied to kids who share the same guardian. Custom discounts can also be applied to or removed from an invoice under the manage invoice area.
C. Fee structure management
This is a crucial module to invoicing as it allows the school to configure its fee structure in a very flexible manner. A school can have multiple fee structures running concurrently and applicable to different groups of students within the school. This module gives you that freedom. It also gives a simple overview of how many students are under a particular fee structure.
D. Receipting
Recording of payments for school fee has never been easier. This sub-module provides an interface to record a payment made via either bank deposit, mobile money, cheque or direct bank transfer. Email receipts or SMS communication can be toggled to consequently sent a notification to the student’s guardian that a payment has been received and recorded. Receipts are also generated upon the recording of payment
record and can be printed, emailed or downloaded.
E. Mobile money integration(MPESA)
We are firm believers of end-to-end automation of processes which can be fully
automated. Recording of mobile money payments should not be a process of more than one step from the point a guardian opts to pay from their mobile phone to the generation of a receipt. This reduces the work of manually recording mobile money payments in the system as all mobile money payments are picked up and reconciled automatically.
F. Fee agreements
Guardians need to be reminded and follow-ups need to be made whenever they are late in submitting payments for their students’ school fees. This tool does that for you as it allows you to record agreements with guardians on how and when they’ll clear their dues. It also comes with an automated reminder sent out to guardians as the
agreed date nears.
G. Fee balances
For effective monitoring and follow-up of school fee balances, this tool gives a detailed report of all students with dues i.e both active and archived/past students. It allows for
the filtering of this report per grade or stream/section. This report is sortable by the amount due and is also printable. For each student with a fee balance, it gives the option of sending a due/demand notice to guardians via email directly from the system. Under this section, a report of all students with overpayments is also available.
H. Fee statements
This is a printable document available for all students giving a summary of all amounts invoiced as well as all amounts paid to the school. It also gives the running balance on each transaction made. This document can be emailed to the student’s guardian and is also accessible from the guardian portal.
3. Communication
Keeping all stakeholders engaged and informed on all school matters requires effective and reliable tools of communication. This module puts a variety of such tools at your disposal.
A. Notice board
This is a digital school notice board that you can upload notices to targeted audiences. For instance, you can upload a notice for all staff members in a particular department and only they will have access to that notice when they access their respective portals. The same can be done for guardians. These notices/memos can be accompanied by file attachments which are downloadable by those viewing
B. Email
This is a wholesome email management tool that provides the option of sending out emails to a group of recipients or a single recipient. Recipients can be fetched from a wide range of filter criteria including guardians of students(filterable), members of staff etc. It also comes with an email tracking addon to view when your recipient(s) open and view your email. Emails are also branded with the school theme colours and brand.
C. SMS
This short message service allows you to automatically send messages to guardians or members of staff or any other stakeholder directly to their mobile phones. It also supports sending out branded messages with the school’s name as the sender id.
D. Chat
This is a “WhatsApp like” chat module that gives all stakeholders to hold real-time peer-to-peer chats with one another as well as allows the school to create special purpose or general chat groups that can be moderated.
E. Feedback tool
Allow stakeholders to give feedback to the school using this tool. Give them the freedom to submit their views on any topic of interest e.g academics, meals, transport etc. The benefits of this tool are understated. Assign staff to act and give a response to this feedback.
F. Contact groups
Create and manage groups which you can easily send emails and SMSs to. This tool allows you to manage contact lists that can be reused for sending out general communication to a group of stakeholders e.g Guardians of students going for a school trip
4. Academics
This is a comprehensive yet simple tool for handling all academic matters of a school. It is effective in managing the following items:
A. Subjects
This sub-module is key in managing records of subjects offered in the school. It is flexible and effective as it allows you to group the subjects per class i.e Categorize the subjects according to which classes/grades they’re offered in. It also gives you the ability to link the teacher who’s in charge of a subject in a particular grade/class.
B. Examinations
Record all examinations undertaken in each grade in a particular school term using this tool. This sub-module is key in recording and keeping track of student marks. It also
helps in the generation of academic performance reports.
C. Student marks
This a teacher’s best friend when it comes to the handling of student marks. This tool provides teachers with an interface to easily record student marks. With an import tool for bulk upload of student marks, teachers don’t have to spend hours trying to feed in scores after an exam. Once uploaded, this tool does the consolidation of all marks in all subjects for a particular exam to give out detailed performance reports.
D. Academic performance
This is a report sub-module which carries the following detailed reports:
● Student report cards
● Overall grade/class performance reports
● Subject performance reports. These reports are automatically generated and are exportable, printable and easy to filter through. The report cards can be printed or sent to guardians automatically via email. The reports also provide key data points such as class mean grade, subject mean grade, student ranks etc.
5. Accounts Module
Keeping track of the school’s finances is crucial in ensuring that the school runs and runs efficiently. This module helps you and your accountant in doing that.
A. Supplier management
This module keeps track of all your supplier records and contact details. This enables you to link your expense records and payment records to particular suppliers. It also gives a report of how much money has been paid out to a supplier within a time range.
B. Income management
A simple accounting tool linked with school fee payments. All school fee payments have income entries automatically created. It also allows you to keep records of income generated through other avenues such as hiring out school resources such as school bus, grounds etc.
C. Expense management
This expense tracker allows you to record expenses on different expense heads. These expense heads act as your ledger accounts and can also have sub-ledger accounts under them. It gives a detailed and sortable report that you can generate to see how money is spent on the various cost centers of the school. This report is also exportable and printable.
D. Petty cash
This is an easy-to-use sub module that is your cashier’s best friend for managing petty cash expenses. It allows you to record entries whenever the petty cash account is replenished and also record expense entries that use money from the petty cash account. This is important in tracking even the smallest but repetitive expenses that can go unnoticed by the school.
6. Addons
With the modules detailed above, the information system is usable and can run effectively. However, is it really a complete information system? To achieve completeness, ShuleMaster ships with these addons which make the solution wholesome.
A. Guardian portal
This is a one-stop dashboard for guardians to perform the following tasks:
● View and print school fee invoices.
● Download school fee statements.
● Access all their payment receipts.
● Keep track of their children’s academic performance and download report cards.
● Keep in touch with the school through giving feedback, peer chats, group chats and the school noticeboard.
B. Teacher portal
This is a simplified dashboard for teachers for performing the following tasks:
● Manage student marks i.e add, edit and upload.
● Generate performance reports.
● Communication tools.
C. Task management
A todo list management tool available for all users to keep track of tasks that need their attention or input
D. Security addons
These security add-ons can only be fully appreciated when put to use. Access control for all system modules is enabled to ensure that only people with access rights can view and manage data in these modules. This is achieved through a user role management tool that gives you the flexibility to assign permissions to a role e.g an accountant role can only have permissions to access the accounts module. We also give a system audit trail report that keeps track and shows a report of all user activities on the system.
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