As a private school proprietor, we understand your pressing needs – one of which is a system that will help manage your school records and easily organize your books of the account while taking into account cash inflow and outstanding bills on tuition or related fees.
An effective book of account will not only help you track the financial position of the school you manage but also monitor profit or loss of each session so you can forecast expected income from next sessions while managing your administrative expenses.
We had just concluded the installation and networking of QuickBooks accounting software for a private school with over 1,000 students, and if you are interested in the scope of the project, here are few customizations you might find interesting for your school.
Charts of Account
This is the backbone of every accounting software as it helps you organize your account heads into income, expense, assets or liabilities. As a school, the chart of account configuration lets you track your relevant income heads (school fees, uniform, textbooks, or any other extra-curricula activities), direct expenses ( repair and maintenance of school classrooms, purchase of school equipment, payment of teachers salaries, payment on the supply of school uniforms, etc), assets (school and administrative building, school buses, computers, furniture, etc) and liabilities (any outstanding payables to your vendors or service providers).
Students and Class List
This is the first stage of our setup, where the client is expected to provide a comprehensive list of all the students in the school categorized or sorted by classes in excel format so that each of these students is rightly added to their respective class as well as their previous or pending bills from previous sessions.
The essence of this is to generate accounting receivable reports that not only let you see how much is owed but also plan your expected cash flow in the new session.
Vendors List
These are your service providers or inventory suppliers. As a proprietor, you shouldn’t just plan your cash inflow by looking at the outstanding bills on schools fees but also pay close attention to your cash outflow by tracking all pending payments to your service providers. These could be related to the supply of school uniforms, repair and maintenance of school facilities or instalment payment on the acquisition of new buses.
By looking at these numbers, you’ ‘d be able to see the potential red flags on your accounts – for instance, if your expected cash inflow is way more than your cash outflow, it’s a sign of impending trouble or working capital challenges.
Bank Balances
Every cash inflow and outflow has the bank at the centre – so you must not neglect your banking transactions. Having all your bank balances in QuickBooks accounting software lets you track all payments to vendors so you can ascertain the actual balances owed to your vendors while also taking into account inflows from pending bills on your students from the previous or current session.
QuickBooks also gives room for reconciliation, a core feature that helps you bring your bank statement balances at par with your cash book figures.
Batch Invoicing
We understand the complexities and rigorous work involved when you try to create a manual invoice for each of your students, especially when you have over 500, 1000 students to apply recent school fee bills on. This is where batch invoice comes in, you are able to apply a single invoice (categorized by class) to all the students of a school in less than 10 minutes which automatically increases their outstanding bills for the new session.
For students that had pending balances carried forward from previous session, the amount owed is increased by the value of the new invoice/bill created in the new session. You, as the proprietor, are able to see in real and less time, how much is expected in the current session.
For schools with multiple income heads like school fees, uniforms, after-school classes, textbooks, or any other related items, you can as well add them to a single invoice and apply to all the students in the class.
And as these students make payment into the school bank account, you can receive the cash against their outstanding balances on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Expenses
This is one of the most important parts of accounting software as it helps you track your payments to relevant service providers as well as ensure that no activity is disrupted during school session.
The expense session lets you see:
- how much you have paid as salaries to your teachers
- how much you paid to your security staff for the safety of school facilities.
- what you have incurred on repair and maintenance of school buses.
- what you spent on the acquisition of new computers or furniture.
- how much you spend on the inventory of new textbooks or learning materials.
- and every other direct or indirect cost.
Inventory
As a school, I am sure you’d also like to keep records of school uniforms for each of the classes, textbooks, and related learning materials? The inventory session of QuickBooks is designed to help you see the number of materials you have in store as well as their respective cost so you can generate an inventory report. With a report like inventory valuation summary, you can see the value of what you have in store on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Financial Reports
This is the real deal! Every transaction posted in the software updates your financial reports, depending on what’s inputted. QuickBooks provides you with over 100+ financial reports (including revenue, expenses, receivables, payables, profit or loss and financial positions) that will help you make a swift decision. While some are represented in vertical format, you also have a chart or reports in graphical format for trend analysis – this helps to compare previous period performance to the current figure for variance analysis.
While these tips will help you choose the best accounting software for your school finance management, you can connect with our support centre to discuss specific needs that are tailored to your private school.
We can deploy your QuickBooks in premise or cloud, depending on which is affordable or effective for you.
Email: info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or bigresourcessolutions@gmail.com. You can also reach us on 08105090001