Fees module is one of the important modules of any school management software because it’s used not only to collect and manage fees submitted by students, but it’s functionality also impact the whole account section which includes all type of earning and expenses. So if your software don’t have effective Fee module, it’s time you should worry about it.
Below are 3 important functions of FEE MODULE, must include in any School ERP solution:
1. Configurable Fee Structure
Many institutes have their own structure to collect fees some have on the monthly basis, some quarterly while few collect fees yearly. Apart from that deposit is also collected, whose record needs to be manage. There are some fees which are optional such as stationary fees, transportation fees, hostel fees which also varies time to time. Charges collected by the institutes like penalties are also hectic job because it varies from student to student and at the end of the day any adjustment asked by parents or ordered by management make it more confusing.
So variable factor plays a vital role in fee module so it should be configurable, to maintain fees Collection. And for CBSE institute after the memorandum passed by CBSE to publish fees on the website in order to maintain transparency among school and parents, it’s important to have this functionality to configure fees according to management.
2. Online Payment gateway integration
Integrations are like support pillars to any school management solution, as many you have stronger your software get. We have biometric fingerprint software for attendance, SMS integration to communicate with parents etc, among this ONLINE PAYMENT GATEWAY INTEGRATION is for Fees module, presently most of the parents prefer to make fees payment online through the online payment gateway, and that’s amazing because it saves parent’s time a lot. And if your ERP is not integrated with payment gateway, it will be quite difficult and complex process to monitor the money flow.
Although Online Payment Gateway Integration is powerful tool for many school software, but for campus which are in remote area or those institutes who prefer to use offline solutions, cannot integrate payment gateway facility.
However to tackle this situation institutes have introduced facility for parents to deposit their child fees in bank through bank folio concept, in which slip is generated through which parents can make payment directly in bank.
So if have Integration of online payment gateway, it will trigger automation in most of the function such as data entry etc. that will eventually save time. So make sure that this solution is integrated with your student information system but if your campus is using OFFLINE school ERP solution, then bank folio generation facility should be in your ERP solution. Apart from that bank excel sheet import facility should also be there, because migrating data manually is time consuming.
3. Account Mapping & Fee posting
For any organization, accounts is a section need to maintain on regular basis, this also implies on Educational institutes and with the regular flow of money in form of fees, expenses and charges it’s quite confusing to generate voucher with the different name and define ledgers such as liability, assets, expense.
Nowadays many Student Information System have account mapping & fee posting options in which you just need to map financial transactions, after that with one click on fee posting voucher will generate automatically. Although tally is most commonly used for accounting, and no school ERP solution will give you experience of tally accounting interference, but there are some that give you integration facility to migrate data, and that should be used to filter your options, because it’s better to have a school fee management software that provides tally integration.
