A school, college, or training institute sends the same fee demand every term to hundreds of families - and then spends the term working out who has paid in full, who is paying in bits, and who has gone quiet. Fee circulars go out on paper, payments trickle in by mobile money and bank deposit in odd amounts, and reconciling a family’s balance means scrolling a statement and a WhatsApp thread. By closing day the bursar is reconstructing the term from memory.
Where the money leaks
- Fee invoices are prepared by hand each term, and a family or two is always missed
- Parents pay in instalments and in round numbers, and matching them to a balance is manual
- There’s no quick view of which families are behind and by how much
- At the end of term, a clean statement per family has to be rebuilt from scratch
Invoice the whole term in one go
Bill each family as a customer, with fee heads - tuition, transport, lunch, activity - as itemised lines. Put them on a recurring schedule so the next term’s invoices raise themselves on the date you set, delivered by SMS, WhatsApp, or email with a pay link. Term after term, nobody is missed.
Let parents pay in instalments, and see who’s behind
Parents pay by M-Pesa STK push in whatever instalments they can - each part-payment is accepted and the invoice sits at partially paid with the balance tracked, clearing itself to paid on the final one. The aging report shows exactly which families are behind and by how much, and automatic reminders nudge an overdue balance at 3, 7, 14, and 30 days so the bursar isn’t sending them one by one. An overpayment is held as credit against next term.
The bank deposits, reconciled without the scrolling
Most school fees still arrive as a deposit into the school account or paybill, with a slip the parent may or may not bring. Upload the M-Pesa or bank statement - CSV, Excel, or a PDF straight from the bank, scanned copies included - and Zana pulls out every incoming transaction, proposes the family and invoice each one settles, and shows why it matched. You confirm or correct the rows, then commit them in one go. Nothing touches the ledger until you say so, the statement’s own totals are checked as a guard, and re-uploading a statement that overlaps last month’s never posts a payment twice.
Every family’s statement, ready on demand
Each family’s full history - every term invoiced, every instalment paid, the running balance - is already a clean PDF statement for any date range. When a parent queries a balance, or the term closes, it’s one click, not a reconstruction.
Worked example. A school bills KES 45,000/term to 400 families. The recurring run raises and sends all 400 on the first day of term. Parents pay in two or three instalments each by STK push, auto-reconciled; the aging report flags 30 families past 30 days, who get reminded automatically. At closing, every family’s statement is ready without the bursar touching a spreadsheet.
What you’ll need
A school raising several hundred bills a term wants a tier with unlimited invoices, and CRM if you also want to send fee reminders and closure notices to parents by SMS and WhatsApp from the same list. Import your families, set the term’s fee lines, and raise the whole term at once.