features of school management software

 Well, small schools, academies and K12 schools have way too different needs and requirements from colleges and higher educational institutions. But, even so, no one can deny that there are some core processes and tasks related to fundamental entities, present in most types of schools. To name a few, no matter the type of your school you’re responsible for, you definitely have students, teachers, classes and subjects — regardless of the structure. You also track attendance and need some basic timetable management. So, what’s my point? Make sure you take all of them into consideration.

PARENT PORTAL

Though such unfettered parental access to grades, upcoming assignments, and alerts might be the bane of most students’ existence, increased visibility into coursework not only enables parents to have informed discussions with teachers about the material being taught, but also encourages parents to take a more active role in their child’s education which can only yield positive results. On the other hand, when students claim that they’ve already done all of their homework they’ll have the evidence to back it up.

FEE TRACKING & ONLINE PAYMENT

Despite that most schools already use accounting software, the ability to track fees and process online payments within a school management system is still incredibly useful for creating invoice templates, monitoring outstanding balances at a glance, and easily distributing bills. Integrated payment gateways also make it much easier to determine late fees, manage cash flow, and accept payment by ACH, Credit, or Debit.

NETWORK MANAGEMENT

Not a feature per se but a necessary part of the school management system infrastructure, software that aims to provide more than one of the features previously mentioned is usually managed via a centralized dashboard that controls permissions, access to records, documents, and internal communication. The reach of school management dashboards varies widely, however, and can be as narrow as simple user administration or as broad as to include every aspect of student and faculty data management including health screenings and prerequisite checking.