Parents rarely pay a term in one movement. A fees book that only understands full payment will show almost every family as unpaid, which is not what the bursar, the parent, or the class teacher needs.
The term is an account, the payment is a line
Open one fees account per student per term, with the amount due. Each payment, waiver, or refund is a line on that account. The balance is the due amount minus the lines. A parent who pays half is halfway, not absent. The receipt names the student, the term, the amount of this payment, and the balance left.
Do not create a second account because a second payment arrived. The account is the term. Payments append. A bursar who opens a new invoice for the balance will eventually receipt the same shilling twice and argue with a parent who has the first slip.
Who may see the balance
The parent should see their own children. The class teacher may see whether a child is cleared for an activity, not the family’s entire history. The bursar sees the money. Those are three queries, not one screen with a permission hidden in a menu.
A clearance flag is a rule you write down: balance zero, or balance under a threshold the school sets, or a bursar override with a reason. The override is a line too. Next term, nobody should have to remember who was waved through.
Statements that match the receipt book
The statement the parent is shown must be the same lines the receipt book printed. If the screen says 15,000 and the stamped receipt says 10,000, the school has two books. Print the receipt from the line you just committed, and give it a number that will not be reused.
At the end of term, the report is who has a balance, how old it is, and which payments arrived with no student matched. Unmatched payments sit in a queue. They are not dumped into a suspense student you invent to make the report tidy.
The receipt the parent can compare
Parents compare the stamped slip to the balance they are told later. Those numbers come from the same line. Print the receipt from the payment you just committed, with the amount of this payment and the balance left on the term. A receipt that shows only the amount, without the remainder, creates a visit. A screen that shows a different remainder creates an argument.
One account per student per term stops the bursar opening a second invoice for the balance. The second invoice is how the same shilling is receipted twice. Payments append. Waivers append, with a reason and a person. The balance is arithmetic. It is not a status someone picks because the family is known.
Clearance is a rule: balance zero, or under a threshold the school wrote down, or a bursar override stored as a line. The class teacher may see whether a child is cleared for a trip. They do not need the family's whole history. The parent sees their children. The bursar sees the money. Three queries.
Unmatched payments, where the reference does not find a student, sit in a queue. They are not dumped onto a suspense student you invent to make a report balance. At the end of term the report is who still owes, how old the balance is, and that queue. The suspense student is how money becomes untraceable.
A term change is a new account, not a reset of the old balance. The parent can see both. A sibling's payment does not land on the wrong child because the phone number matched. Search by the admission number the receipt already printed. That number is what the bursar reads back when the slip is faded.
Before fees week
- Open one fees account per student per term.
- Append payments. Do not open a new account for the balance.
- Print the receipt from the line that was just saved.
