Schools are big business and successfully managing your school’s finances efficiently is imperative for success. Rigorous financial management demands efficiency and accountability but if you are using an off the shelf finance software package not specifically designed for schools, how can you be sure you are getting value for money?
Schools need to manage many accounting requirements, yet off the shelf products have their limitations. Specifically, most software solutions can’t be tailored to suit school administration needs, like student-fee collection, split fees, instalment plans and teacher-to-parent communication.
Does your current system have an accounts receivable function providing school-specific debtor management through comprehensive invoicing, receipting and reporting?
Having a student centric billing system where the child is the driver, allowing for different people to be responsible for paying the costs of sending a child to school is vital. An example of this is a family structure where one parent is paying all the tuition fees and the other paying all the resource fees.
Most importantly, school administrators need to be able to track the allocation of funds and integrate that information with student records—when schools use multiple software options to achieve that goal, unnecessary work and human error are almost guaranteed.
"allowing for different people to be responsible for paying the costs of sending a child to school is vital"
The data stored within a Student Management System (SMS) should be available to be used by the accounts receivable function. Having an accounts receivable system that fully integrates with the SMS contacts (student and parent records) eliminates the time-consuming task of performing imports and exports because the system knows who the contacts are and the students associated with those contacts. This is the essence of having a seamlessly integrated school SMS.
Like with any good finance system, your accounts receivable function should be complemented with the following:
- Accounts Payable: Providing fully featured creditor management, from ordering and invoices through to payment.
- General Ledger: That is at the centre of the finance suite providing comprehensive summary reporting drawn from all the integrated subledgers.
- Asset Register: Providing asset management for all insurance, maintenance and depreciation requirements.
Imagine if administrators could manage the school finances and accounting requirements all in one system with deep integration into the school’s SMS and parent portal so any fees, payments and discounts were captured, tracked and applied across the system!
Would your schools staff like to drive the billing process from the student record allowing for family discounts, split fees and instalment plans to be worked out and applied? This would empower staff to plan with confidence using powerful forecasting and analysis tools to monitor cash flows and prepare budgets.
These are some of reasons why your school should consider using finance software designed and built specifically for schools. To find out more click here
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