Case Study I: Ryan Group of Institutions – Admission Fees
The sun was shining brightly that day, it was clear sky all around, in general, a beautiful day that MyClassboard and Ryan Group of Institutions would collaborate and together create a software solution to answer the most critical of questions plaguing school administrations around the country, most probably, around the world as well.
It all started when an accounting review threw up unexpected results. A little backstory, schools in general usually have a predetermined fee structure that has been set in place before the academic year starts and many schools also offer various early bird offers for students enrolling earlier such as for an academic year from April to March, if a student joins the school and makes payment for the year in the month of January, then the management generally chooses to give the student a discount in the total amount. This is usually generated in the computer accounting system as a concession, which makes sense, seeing as it is a concession of sorts.
Now the problem starts when the student wants to join after the school has already started or is a transfer from some other school, and the school management charges the students for only the number of months he has left in the academic year, for example in an academic year from April – March, if the student joins midway for example in September and he/she is only being charged from September – March, then the other months have to be adjusted in the books as concessions.
From a strictly accounting standpoint, the actual amount of concessions in this year will far outweigh the estimated amount only due to the limitations of the system but not due to the concessions that the students availed which is giving an incorrect picture to the management. Hence this needed to be addressed. For this MyClassboard in collaboration with Ryan Group of Institutions started working on the concept of prorating the admissions fee collection system. It was an uphill task that required a lot of sleep nights for the developers here at MyClassboard but resulted in an elegant solution, in the end, encompassing all the requirements of a school. Using our Fee Collection Module, schools now can calculate true concessions and keep their accounts clear of any misrepresented data.
Similarly, MyClassboard was able to complete prorating all the various forms of fees collected by a school like library fees, tuition fees, hostel fees, mess fees, transport fees, etc.. But the final feather in our cap was when the reporting tool for this application was released and the most impressive report being generated was snapshot of the collection month vs due month depicting exactly how much money was collected against which fee type and in which month. A detailed analysis will also pinpoint the exact student for which the particular fee was paid letting the accounting department know exactly who the fee defaulters are, for exactly which service have they defaulted the fees on and exactly how many months are the students behind on paying up!
