The Finance module of the Prosum EMS is perfectly designed for billing and collection of school fees as well as Inventory management. The bookkeeping function is however limited as it does not support the double entry system. It has always been our intention not to try and create an Accounting system but rather be able to integrate with these systems. The reality is that there are many good and affordable accounting systems that are specifically designed to manage accounting transactions and should be your first choice.


The Prosum EMS will manage all the school fee accounts which can easily be transferred to your accounting system by way of a simple journal. The result of this is that the accounting or bookkeeping system will have a lump sum total with no detail and the detail will be in the Prosum EMS. This does not however preclude an institution of actually transferring all detailed transactions to the accounting or bookkeeping system. In this case we can create a very simple integration process to transfer all transactions.


Before we start with setting up and billing of fees, we first need to deal with some terminology issues in the system.


  • Fee Category: When creating a fee category you are just creating a grouping of similar fees. A good example of this is Monthly Fees vs Annual Fees. Any fees that are billed over 12 months can be placed in the same Category while Annual Fees which are billed once a year will have its own category. If there are fees billed over 6 months then they will have to have their own category. So it is critical to remember that the number of times that a fee will be billed over a year, is a significant factor when setting up categories.
  • Fee Particular: Particulars are nothing more than a specific item that can be billed like School Fees, Aftercare Fees, Stationery Fees, Annual School Levy or any other particular item than a parent or student has to pay for.
  • Fee Discounts: While this item does not need any further explanation it is important to create a number of specific discounts that will be used by your institution rather than just a generic discount. A few examples of these are Sibling Discount, Staff Discount, Bursary Discount, Early Settlement Discount, etc.


Billing Decisions

When using the Prosum EMS for billing of school fees, it possible to bill fees as a once off lump sum or over a number of installments. If students and parent are allowed to pay fees over a number of months then billing fees monthly would be the preferred method as it allows for easy arrears reporting.  The system will be able to easily calculate which months are in arrears and provide a detailed report of arrears collections.


When choosing a lump sum billing the collections report will have to be downloaded to excel and the arrears calculation will have to be manually performed.


Conclusion   

Billing in the Prosum EMS is specifically designed for educational institutions and can be easily and efficiently done once a year. Managing changes to billings, like fee discounts or fee removals are easy and hassle free. It is important however that the transactions in the Prosum EMS is reconciled to the bank account as well as other accounting transactions. If you are unsure about some of the settings or processes then please contact us for further assistance.