Run your school on one system

A school ERP runs the administration of a school in one system: admissions, student records, attendance, fees, exams and report cards, timetables, transport and parent communication. ERP stands for enterprise resource planning, but in a school it simply means that the office, the teachers, the principal and the parents all work from the same records.

Without one, the same information lives in five places. A student’s details sit in the admission file, the class register, the fee register, the exam spreadsheet and the bus list, and every change has to be made five times. With a school ERP, a change is made once and everyone sees it.

The test of a good school ERP is the busiest mornings: the first week of a fee cycle, the day results come out, the first day of admissions. If it makes those mornings calmer, it is doing its job.

There are two ways to get school software from us: our own product, or a system built for you. Beacon School ERP is our school ERP software that runs admissions, attendance, fees, exams and parent updates in one school management system, with a parent app. It is in development, and schools that want early access can ask through the form on this page.

A ready-made product suits most day schools whose year follows a familiar pattern. A custom build fits better when your school doesn’t: a group of schools with a central office and its own rules, a boarding school with hostels, mess and outings, an international curriculum with its own assessments, a college with semesters and credits, or an existing accounting or HR system the school must keep.

We will tell you which one fits after the first conversation. If Beacon covers what you need, we will say so rather than build it again.

Fees are usually where a school ERP earns its keep first. Online payment by UPI, automatic receipts and reminders before each due date turn a month of phone calls into a report the accounts team reads in the morning.

Attendance comes next. When teachers mark it on their phones and parents of absent children hear within the hour, the office stops making calls and parents stop being surprised. Then come report cards: marks entered once, grading rules applied by the system and report cards printed in your format remove days of copying at the end of every term.

The principal feels it last, and most. Instead of waiting for month-end registers, attendance, fee collection and admissions are on one screen every morning, and a class that keeps falling behind on fees or attendance shows up in time to do something about it.

We start with a day in your school office. We sit with the office staff, the accounts team, a few class teachers and the transport in-charge, because each of them knows the exceptions no list of features mentions.

We also collect what the school already uses: admission forms, fee structures and concession rules, report card formats, the timetable, the bus routes and every register or spreadsheet someone keeps on the side. Each one becomes a screen or a report, so nothing your team relies on is lost.

Finally, we need one person who owns the project, usually the principal or the administrator, and the session dates. Schools switch most smoothly at the start of a session or a term, so we plan backwards from that date.

A few early choices set the size of the work. One school or a group: a group needs a central view and rules that can differ by school. Which boards and classes: each has its own grading and report card. Which modules first: most schools start with attendance, fees and the parent app, and add exams, transport, library, hostel and payroll as they settle in.

Others are about parents. A parent app under the school’s name, or WhatsApp and web links that need no download? Which languages? Should parents see the bus live? We write each decision down with its reason, so the plan and the quote match what the school chose.

Admissions begin online: parents fill in the enquiry form, the school follows up, and the admission form collects documents, photos and previous school records. Seats are tracked by class, including the seats private schools reserve under the Right to Education Act, with their own documents and fee concessions.

Each class has its fee plan: tuition, transport, activities and one-time fees, paid monthly, quarterly or yearly. Concessions for siblings, staff children and scholarships apply automatically, and late fees follow the school’s rules. Parents pay by UPI or card, receipts go out on their own, and the accounts team sees collections and dues by class without a single register.

Teachers enter marks by subject and assessment, once. Grading rules follow the school’s board and class, and report cards print in the school’s own format: CBSE, ICSE or state board, and the holistic progress card introduced under the National Education Policy, with co-scholastic areas and teacher observations.

AI can draft a remark for each student from their marks, attendance and the teacher’s notes, so teachers start from a draft instead of a blank page. Every remark is checked and approved by the teacher before it reaches a report card, and published marks are locked against quiet changes.

Parents follow their child on one app or on WhatsApp: notices, homework, attendance, results, fee dues and payments, the timetable and the school bus on a map. Parents with more than one child at the school see all of them in one place. Replies come back the same way: a parent answers an absence alert, and the class teacher sees the reason before the first period ends.

Every parent should be able to read what the school sends. We build the parent side in English, Hindi, Gujarati and other languages, so a circular about the sports day reaches a grandmother in the language she reads, and an absence alert reaches a father who doesn’t read English.

Children’s data needs the most care of all. Student data is encrypted and, for Indian schools, stored in India. Each staff member sees only what their role needs, parents see only their own children, and every change to a student’s record is logged. India’s data protection law asks for a parent’s consent before a child’s data is processed, so consent is recorded with each record.

Schools also file UDISE+ returns every year, and students are being given APAAR IDs. We keep student and staff records in the fields these ask for as part of everyday work, so annual reporting draws on data the school already has.

Students, staff, fee balances and past results are imported from your old software or spreadsheets. A few classes and the accounts team try the system first, teachers are trained in short sessions on their own phones, and parents are invited class by class.

The timetable and bus routes are set up in the same weeks, so the first day on the new system covers the whole school day: attendance before assembly, substitutes suggested for absent teachers, fees through the day and bus alerts in the afternoon.

After launch we look after the system with you: help at admission and exam time, a new session set up each year, and new modules when the school is ready. Each year the school runs on better data than the last.