Fees, arrears, payroll and running costs for schools and training centres

Fees come in three lumps. Salaries go out twelve times.

Money arrives at a school in three bursts, most of it in the first three weeks of term. Salaries, food, power and fuel leave evenly, every month, including the holidays when nothing comes in. That is why a school with full classrooms can still be short by week six.

The second problem is arrears. A pupil who has paid 60% of the term's fees is still in the classroom, still being fed, still being taught. The cost is fully incurred; the income is not. Most schools know roughly what is outstanding and never exactly who owes it.

PesaScope treats each family as an account. A part payment leaves the rest on that account, so the arrears list is a by-product of recording fees rather than a job someone does at half term.

How a school runs it, term by term

1. Record each payment against the family's accountCash, mobile money or bank. Anything short of the full term's fee stays on the account as a balance instead of vanishing into a receipt book.
2. Let the arrears list build itselfThe debtors page shows every family with an outstanding balance, sorted by amount or date. Open one and you see every payment they have made.
3. Pay staff from the payroll pageEach salary carries an effective date, so a mid-year raise does not rewrite last term's payslips. The month's row shows salary plus allowances, less any advance taken, and the net due.
4. Put every running cost in a categoryFood, power, water, fuel, exam papers, repairs. Rent and internet can be set as recurring, so a draft appears each month to confirm rather than remember.

The fee lines and shop items a school sets up

Pick "School / training centre" at sign-up and this list is already there. Fees go in as services and shop items as products, so the fee book and the shop never blur into one figure.

Keep transport and lunch as their own lines — they are the charges parents most often part-pay, and you want them apart from tuition.

One term, 180 pupils

The term kept UGX 6,100,000 and left UGX 14,400,000 on the arrears list — well over twice as much. No cost here could be cut far enough to match what collecting half of that would do.

Be clear: this is not a school management system

PesaScope has no student records, no attendance register, no marks, no report cards and no timetabling. It will not tell you who was absent on Tuesday or what Grace scored in maths. If that is what you came for, this is the wrong product.

What it holds is the money: fees charged and fees collected, which families are behind and by how much, what each member of staff is owed and has been paid, and what the term cost to run.

In most small schools the register is already on paper by the door and the marks in a spreadsheet, and neither is where the trouble is. The trouble is the bursar's book — the record that must be right at end of term and cannot be rebuilt from memory.

Where a school term leaks money

1. Arrears that quietly ageA balance owed since last term is far harder to collect than one owed since last month. The aging report groups what is outstanding into 0–30, 30–60, 60–90 and 90+ days.
2. The school shop and canteenUniforms, books and snacks get sold by whoever is free, often with no record. Put through as sales, they stop being a second untracked business inside the school.
3. Transport charged flat, run at a moving costThe school run is one flat fee a term while fuel and repairs move weekly. Under their own expense category, the two figures sit side by side.
4. Advances taken mid-term and forgottenA teacher asking for money in week four is normal and easy to lose. Recorded as an advance, it comes off that month's net pay automatically.

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