Fees and collection¶
Who does this: Accountant · Registrar (read only) Where: Fees How often: Daily
The fee side of the school works in one direction, always:
Fee Types → Fee Structure (the price list) → Student Fee Account → Invoice → Payment → Receipt
configuration per year & grade per child, per year
Two things to know before the detail.
The money is real accounting. Invoices, payments, VAT, credit notes, aging and tax reporting are the system's own certified accounting documents. The fee account says what a child is charged; what has been paid is read back from the invoices. There is one set of books, and the fee account is a view of it — never a second ledger somebody has to reconcile.
A fee account belongs to a year, not to a child. A family owing for 2026–27 and paying for 2027–28 has two accounts with two balances, and nothing in the system ever totals them together. It is also why a bursary granted for one year stops when the year does, with nobody having to remember to remove it.
Configuration¶
Fee types¶
Fees → Configuration → Fee Types. The school's fee components, as data: Admission, Registration, Tuition, Textbooks, Uniform, Transport, Notebooks/Stationery, Activity, Examination, Miscellaneous, and Discount/Scholarship. They arrive with English and Arabic names.
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kind | Charge adds; Discount / Scholarship subtracts |
| Charge Basis | One-Time · Per Year · Per Term · Monthly. Admission is charged once in a child's school life; Tuition is annual, and is what an installment plan splits. |
| Optional | An optional component is charged only to children who take it up — Transport is the case that matters |
A school that introduces a Laboratory fee in October adds a row. Nothing in the system reads these components by name, so there is no release to wait for.
No taxes are pre-set on fee types
Which VAT applies is a question for the school's tax advisor, and per family for the nationality rule below. A guess in the setup data would be the one kind of default worse than none.
Fee structures — the price list¶
Fees → Configuration → Fee Structures. One structure per academic year and grade, with a priced component per fee type, its taxes, and whether it is optional or refundable.
- Create the structure for the year and the grade.
- Add the components on the Components tab, with amounts.
- Press Publish.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being prepared. Cannot be billed from. |
| Published | Final. This is what a child's account is priced from. |
| Closed | Superseded. |
Only a published structure can price a fee account. Reset to Draft is there for a correction before anybody has been billed.
Installment plans¶
Fees → Configuration → Installment Plans. A plan is a set of percentages with due dates — three equal parts in September, January and April, for instance. The percentages must add up to the whole year. A school can offer several plans and choose per family.
The student fee account¶
Fees → Student Fee Accounts. One per child per year, raised automatically when an enrollment is confirmed.
The six columns¶
Every line of the account shows, per component:
| Column | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Amount | Copied from the fee structure when the account was raised |
| Discount | Any scholarship or discount applied |
| VAT | Calculated |
| Net Amount | Amount − discount + VAT |
| Paid | Read back from the invoices |
| Balance | What is still owed |
Why the first four are copied rather than linked
A price edited in March must not restate what a family was billed in September. The account keeps what it charged.
The per-component Paid figure is an apportionment: a payment settles an invoice, not one row of it, so a line worth a fifth of the invoice is credited with a fifth of what has been paid. It is there so the accountant can see where the money went. The authoritative figure is the invoice's own outstanding amount, which is what an aging report reads.
Process — billing one child for the year¶
- Open the account — it exists already if the enrollment has been confirmed.
- Apply Fee Structure. The account is filled from the published structure for the child's year and grade. Optional components are included only where the child takes them up: the transport component appears only for a child on the school bus. Due dates are set per line — one-time charges at the start of the year, everything else on the installment dates where a plan applies.
- Open Account. The account is live; the family can be invoiced against it.
- Raise the invoice, either:
- Invoice the Year — one invoice for everything; or
- Invoice by Installment — one invoice per installment, each carrying every component at its share of the year, so a parent paying in three parts pays a third of each component rather than the whole of the tuition first.
- The invoices are created in draft. Posting them is the accountant's own decision, on the accounting document itself. The fee process never posts on the school's behalf.
- Register payments as money comes in, recording the voucher number from the receipt book.
What each step refuses to do¶
| Step | Refused when | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Apply Fee Structure | The account is no longer draft | An opened account has been shown to a family; rebuilding it underneath them would change what they were told with nothing recording the change |
| Apply Fee Structure | No published structure exists for that grade and year | The message names the grade and the year |
| Open Account | The account charges nothing | Apply a fee structure first |
| Open Account | Nobody is flagged as payer for the child | There is no one to address the bill to |
| Invoice | The account is not open | Open it first |
| Invoice | Invoices already exist | Cancel them before raising new ones |
| Reset to Draft | Live invoices exist against the account | Cancel them first |
The status of an account¶
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being prepared. Nothing billed. |
| Open | Live. Invoiced, or ready to be. |
| Paid | Settled in full. |
| Closed | Finished with — a decision somebody makes, not an arithmetic result. |
Paid looks after itself. It is set when the balance reaches zero, and it goes back to Open if a credit note or a reversed payment leaves money outstanding. An account reading Paid while money is owed would drop off every collection report.
It is kept honest from three directions, because no one of them sees every case: when an invoice is posted, by an overnight sweep that catches payments reconciled in the accounting screens, and by the Refresh Status button for an accountant who wants it now.
Payments and vouchers¶
A payment can carry a voucher number — the numbered receipt handed to the parent at the counter. It is typed rather than generated, because the voucher book is usually pre-printed and its numbers belong to the school, and because a bank transfer arrives with no voucher at all. A voucher number can be used only once per school.
A payment taken against a fee invoice is linked back to the child's fee account automatically. A payment on account is linked by hand.
Scholarships and discounts¶
Fees → Scholarships & Discounts. An award is granted to one child for one year.
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Type | Merit · Financial Need · Sibling · Staff Child · Management Discretion · Other |
| Discount Type | A percentage, or a fixed amount |
| Applies To | Which components. Leave it empty for every chargeable component; name Tuition to discount the tuition but still charge for the bus. |
| Awarded On and Reason | The record of why |
Process¶
- Create the award against the child's enrollment.
- Approve — this records who approved it.
- Apply to Fee Account — writes the discount onto the child's account.
Applying an award re-derives every discount on the account rather than adding one more. A percentage award and a fixed-amount award on the same lines cannot be applied one at a time, because the second would read the first one's discount as part of the price.
Discounts apply to charge lines only. Discounting a discount would add the money back.
Cancelling an award¶
Cancel withdraws it. Before invoicing, the discount simply comes off again. After invoicing it does not: the invoice is an accounting document and correcting one is a credit note — the school's decision, taken on the accounting document, not something the fee process does quietly in the background.
Quoting fees to a family who has not joined yet¶
Fees → Fee Quotations, or Send Fee Quotation on an application.
A quotation is what a year would cost, for a family still deciding. It carries the enquirer, the child's name as plain text, the year and grade, the quoted lines, the totals and a validity date.
- Price from Structure fills the lines from the published structure.
- Send to Parent puts it to the family.
- Record the outcome: Accepted or Declined.
Quotations that have been sent and pass their validity date are marked Expired overnight. Drafts are left alone — a quotation never put to a family has nothing to expire — and so are accepted ones, because an accepted quotation is a commitment rather than an offer.
VAT by nationality¶
Some nationalities are treated differently for VAT, and the rule is configuration rather than code: Nationality policies.
Two points matter at the counter:
- The child's nationality decides the treatment, not the payer's. One guardian can have children of two nationalities, and each invoice has to be right for the child it is for. The treatment is stamped on the invoice, not on the contact.
- The system will not bill a child it cannot bill correctly. Where a policy promises an exemption that has not been set up in the accounts, invoicing is refused and the message says so. The refusal lands where money is at stake rather than where the configuration was typed.
Who can do what¶
| Fee structures, accounts, awards, quotations | |
|---|---|
| Accountant | Full |
| Registrar | Read only |
| Administrator | Full, including deletion |
The Accountant role does not carry the school's general ledger with it. The person who takes fee payments at the counter is not necessarily the person who posts journal entries. A school that wants one person to do both gives them both roles, deliberately rather than by side effect.
Reports¶
The fee reports — statements, outstanding balance and aging, payment history, collection forecast, and the bilingual ZATCA-compliant invoice and receipt layouts — belong to a later stage of the build. What exists today is the correct data behind them. See What is available today.