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SchoolDeck · Feature

School fee management that survives a bad month

SchoolDeck fee management handles multiple fee heads, term and monthly instalments, sibling and staff concessions, RTE reimbursement tracking, late fees, and part payments. Every receipt posts against the same student record as attendance and results, so the fee register and the class register cannot diverge.

It is not accounting software. It produces the fee ledger and the receipts; a school still keeps its books in Tally or equivalent, which SchoolDeck exports to.

Fee collection in an Indian school is not one number. It is four or five heads, a concession policy with exceptions, an instalment plan that assumed the parent would pay in July, and a February in which forty families ask for an extension in the same week.

The software problem is not calculating the total. It is representing a part-paid instalment against a concessioned head for a student whose sibling left in October, and still producing a defaulters list the office trusts.

Fee heads
Unlimited, per class or per student
Instalments
Term, monthly or custom schedules
Concessions
Sibling, staff, merit, RTE, ad-hoc with approval trail
Payment
Cash, cheque, UPI and gateway, reconciled to one ledger
01

How a fee structure is actually built

A structure is defined per class and then varied per student. That order matters: schools think in classes, and defining 900 individual structures is how implementations stall.

  • Define heads — tuition, transport, laboratory, examination, admission, and whatever your school calls the rest.
  • Attach an instalment schedule to each head. Transport is often monthly while tuition is termly; the system does not force them to agree.
  • Apply the concession policy as a rule, not a hand-edit — siblings, staff children, RTE, merit — so the reason is recorded against the reduction.
  • Vary individual students where the rule does not fit, with the approver and the reason stored on the record.
02

Instalment plans that survive a bad month

Every school has families who pay, eventually, but not on the day the schedule says. The unhelpful response is to treat the instalment as binary and mark the student a defaulter on the first of the month.

SchoolDeck records part payments against the instalment they were intended for, keeps the balance visible to the office and the parent, and lets a school set a grace window and a late fee that only applies after it. A family that pays sixty percent in July and the rest in August shows as settled for July, not as two separate failures.

StateWhat the office seesWhat the parent sees
PaidReceipt number and modeReceipt, downloadable
Part paidAmount received, balance, date of last paymentBalance and the date it is due
Within graceDue, no late fee applied yetDue date and when the late fee starts
OverdueBalance plus late fee, on the defaulters listBalance, late fee, and how to pay
03

RTE reimbursement, tracked as a receivable

Schools admitting students under the Right to Education 25% quota carry a receivable from the state, not a concession. Treating it as a discount hides the money the school is owed and makes the reconciliation at year end impossible.

RTE students are flagged at admission, their entitlement is recorded per head, and the reimbursement claimed and received is tracked against it. The gap between claimed and received is the number a trust actually wants at the board meeting.

04

The reminder nobody resents

A fee reminder that arrives on the due date, names the amount and the head, and contains a link that works, gets paid. One that arrives weekly, addresses the parent by the student’s name, and says "kindly clear your dues" gets muted.

Reminders are scheduled relative to the instalment date rather than the calendar, stop automatically when payment posts, and are suppressed for families with an approved extension. SMS and WhatsApp credits are billed at cost.

FAQ

Questions people ask

Phrased the way they arrive, answered so each one stands on its own.

Can different classes have different fee structures?

Yes. Structures are defined per class and can then be varied per student. Most schools run five to eight distinct structures across the school, with individual variations for concessions and RTE students.

Does SchoolDeck handle part payments?

Yes. A part payment posts against the specific instalment it was intended for, and the balance stays visible to both the office and the parent. The student is not marked a defaulter for the whole instalment.

Can we track RTE reimbursement?

Yes. RTE students are flagged at admission and their entitlement is recorded per fee head. Amounts claimed from the state and amounts actually received are tracked separately, so the outstanding receivable is visible at any point.

Does it integrate with Tally?

SchoolDeck produces the fee ledger, receipts and a daily collection summary, and exports in a format Tally imports. It is not a replacement for your accounting software and does not attempt to be.

Which payment methods are supported?

Cash and cheque recorded at the counter, plus UPI and card through a payment gateway. All modes reconcile into one ledger, so the day’s collection is a single figure regardless of how it arrived. Gateway charges are set by the gateway and passed through.

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Provenance

Who checked this, and against what

Accountability

Checked by the Implementations desk on 31 August 2026. Corrections go in the page, dated, rather than quietly.

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