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Fees & Finance

The finance module covers the complete billing lifecycle — from setting up fee schedules through to end-of-term financial summaries. All amounts are in the local currency of the deployment (set by CURRENCY_CODE in deployment.conf.php).

Note

For schools with more than one campus, a staff user restricted to a single campus (see User Management) only sees and manages fees, bills, reminders, and debtors belonging to their own campus throughout this module.

Fee Items

Fee items are the line items that appear on student invoices (e.g. Tuition, PTA Levy, Exam Fees, Development Levy).

Add fee items in Settings → Finance Settings → Fee Items.

Fee Schedules

A fee schedule defines how much each class owes for a given term.

  1. Go to Finance → Fee Schedules
  2. Click Add Fee Schedule
  3. Select Academic Year, Term, Class (or all classes in a division)
  4. Add each fee item with its amount
  5. Click Save Schedule

Tip

You can duplicate a schedule from a previous term and adjust amounts rather than starting from scratch.

Preparing Student Bills

Before a student can make a payment, their bill must be prepared from the fee schedule.

  1. Go to Finance → Prepare Bills
  2. Select the Term and Class
  3. Click Prepare Bills — sERP generates a bill for every student in the class based on the fee schedule
  4. You can adjust individual student bills from Finance → Student Bill if a student has a discount or additional charge

Recording Payments

  1. Go to Finance → Collect Payment (or search for a student)
  2. Find the student by name or ID
  3. Enter the Amount Paid, Payment Date, Payment Method (cash, bank transfer, cheque), and any Reference
  4. Click Record Payment

sERP automatically updates the student's outstanding balance and can print a receipt immediately.

Partial and Instalment Payments

sERP fully supports partial payments. If a parent pays part of their bill, the system records the partial amount and shows the outstanding balance on the debtors list.

Online Payments

Parents and students can pay school fees online by card, mobile money, or bank transfer, via Paystack.

Setup (admin, one-time):

  1. Go to Settings → Payment Gateway
  2. Enter your school's Paystack Public Key and Secret Key, from your Paystack dashboard
  3. Save — online payments are unavailable until both are configured

Note

The Secret Key is encrypted at rest. Once saved, the field shows a placeholder instead of the actual key — leave it blank when saving other changes to keep the existing key, or enter a new one to replace it.

Paying online (parent/student portal):

  1. From the portal's Fees page, click Pay Online Now
  2. Enter an email address and the amount to pay
  3. Submit — this redirects to Paystack's hosted checkout page to complete payment

Once Paystack confirms the transaction, the payment is posted to the student's fee account the same way an admin-recorded payment is — arrears, custom bills, and fee items are settled in the same priority order, any overpayment is credited to the student's account, and a receipt and SMS confirmation are sent automatically.

Receipts

After recording a payment, a printable receipt is generated automatically. To reprint a receipt:

  1. Go to Finance → Payment History
  2. Find the payment and click Print Receipt

Note

sERP can also automatically email a PDF copy of the receipt to the student's registered guardian email address when a payment is recorded, alongside the existing SMS confirmation. This is configured by your licensee as part of your installation's mail settings.

Debtors List

  1. Go to Finance → Debtors
  2. Filter by Term and Class (optional)
  3. The list shows all students with outstanding balances
  4. Use the Send SMS Reminder button to send a bulk fee reminder to guardians of all students on the list

Expenditure

Record school expenditure:

  1. Go to Finance → Expenditure
  2. Click Add Expenditure
  3. Enter the Date, Category, Description, and Amount
  4. Click Save

Financial Reports

Report Location
Term collection summary Finance → Reports → Term Summary
Class-level fee collection Finance → Reports → By Class
Income & expenditure statement Finance → Reports → I&E
End-of-year financial summary Finance → Reports → Annual Summary

Banking

Record bank lodgements and cheque management:

  1. Go to Finance → Banking
  2. Log each bank lodgement with amount, bank name, and date
  3. Track cheques received, presented, and cleared

SMS Fee Reminders

Automated SMS reminders can be sent to guardians with outstanding balances:

  1. Go to Finance → Debtors
  2. Filter to the term and class you want to target
  3. Click Send SMS Reminder
  4. Confirm the message template (editable) and click Send

SMS usage is deducted from the school's SMS credit balance.

Fee Credits & Advance Payments

Record a credit against a student's account before a bill is raised — for example, when a parent pays a term early or a scholarship credit needs to be applied.

  1. Go to Finance → Student Account → Add Credit
  2. Enter the Amount, Date, and Reference
  3. Click Save — the credit appears on the student's account immediately

When the next bill is prepared for that student, any available credit is automatically applied and the payable balance is reduced accordingly. Credits are visible on the student's statement of accounts and on receipts.

Payment Refunds

Issue a formal refund when a payment needs to be returned to a parent or guardian.

  1. Go to Finance → Payment History
  2. Find the original payment and click Refund
  3. Enter the Refund Amount (full or partial), Date, and Reason
  4. Click Process Refund

Every refund is date-stamped, attributed to the processing staff member, and reflected in the student's statement of accounts. Refunds do not alter or delete the original payment record.

Bill Write-offs

Write off a balance that cannot be recovered — keeping accounts clean and reports accurate without deleting historical data.

  1. Go to Finance → Student Account
  2. Find the student and click Write Off Balance
  3. Enter the Amount, Date, and Reason
  4. Click Confirm Write-off

Written-off amounts appear on the student's statement with a "Write-off" label. The original bill and any payments remain intact.

Student Statement of Accounts

A complete, chronological financial statement per student — every bill, payment, credit, refund, and write-off in a single view.

  1. Go to Finance → Student Account and search for the student
  2. Click View Statement
  3. Filter by Date Range or view the full history
  4. Click Print to generate a printable PDF statement

The statement can be shared with parents during fee discussions or provided on request as a formal account summary.

Store & Inventory (Point of Sale)

Record direct sales of school store/shop stock (uniforms, stationery, snacks, and similar items) to students or walk-in customers — separate from fee billing. Each sale automatically decrements the stock quantity of every item sold.

Note

For schools with more than one campus, a staff user restricted to a single campus only sees and manages Store & Inventory sales belonging to their own campus throughout this module.

Recording a Sale

  1. Go to Finance → Store & Inventory → New Sale
  2. Select the student (or enter walk-in customer details) the sale is for
  3. Add each item being sold, with its quantity
  4. Click Save — sERP generates a receipt and deducts the quantity sold from each item's stock

Cancelling a Sale

Cancel a sale that was recorded in error — for example, a wrong item or quantity.

  1. Go to Finance → Store & Inventory → Sales
  2. Click the Cancel Sale icon next to the sale in the list, or open the sale's receipt and click Cancel Sale
  3. Enter a Reason for cancelling
  4. Click Cancel Sale to confirm

Cancelling reverses the stock for every item in the sale — the quantity sold is added back to inventory automatically, and logged in each item's own stock adjustment history. The sale record itself is never deleted: it's kept with a "Cancelled" status, along with who cancelled it, when, and why, all shown if the sale is viewed or a cancellation is attempted again. A cancelled sale no longer appears in the default Sales list (which only shows completed sales), but remains reachable directly via its receipt link, which shows a "Cancelled" badge in place of the usual print option.

A cashier can cancel a sale they recorded themselves; an admin or super admin can cancel any sale. Cancelling is controlled by its own access permission, separate from viewing the module or recording a sale — an admin must grant it explicitly for staff who need to cancel sales.

Fixed Assets Register

Track every physical asset owned by the school — from buildings and ICT equipment to laboratory apparatus and vehicles.

Asset Categories

Go to Fixed Assets → Categories to manage categories. Each category defines a default useful life (years) and depreciation rate. Seven categories are pre-seeded (Buildings, Vehicles, ICT Equipment, Fixtures & Fittings, Furniture, Land, Laboratory Equipment).

Adding an Asset

  1. Go to Fixed Assets → Register → Add Asset
  2. Select a category — the asset code is generated automatically (e.g. FA-ICT-0001)
  3. Enter acquisition date, cost, salvage value, useful life, and depreciation method (Straight-Line or Declining Balance)

Depreciation

Go to Fixed Assets → Depreciation to compute annual depreciation in bulk or per asset. Results show opening value, annual charge, and closing book value for each year.

Disposals

Open an asset's detail view and click Dispose to record a sale, write-off, or damage event. The asset status updates automatically.

Double-Entry Accounting

A complete double-entry bookkeeping system with automatic posting of school financial transactions.

Chart of Accounts

Go to Accounting → Chart of Accounts to manage accounts. Five account types are supported: Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, and Expense. A default chart is seeded on installation and can be extended or customised.

Financial Periods

Create periods under Accounting → Periods (e.g. "Term 1 2025"). Close a period to lock it against further posting.

Journals

Type Purpose
Receipt Income received
Payment Expenditure paid
Contra Internal transfer between accounts
Journal Manual general ledger adjustment
Payroll Monthly payroll entry

Every journal must balance (debits = credits). Journals can be reversed, creating a mirror entry.

Auto-Posting

The following transactions post to the ledger automatically:

  • Fee payments (billable and non-billable)
  • POS / store sales
  • Canteen payments
  • Expenditure records
  • Monthly payroll (via Accounting → Sync → Payroll)

Posting failures are logged under Accounting → Posting Failures.

Financial Reports

Report Description
Trial Balance Debit/credit totals per account
Income Statement Revenue vs expenses (surplus/deficit)
Balance Sheet Assets, liabilities, equity as at a date
General Ledger Running balance for one account
Budget vs Actual Budgeted vs actual per period

Export data to CSV or IIF (QuickBooks import format) from the Reports page.