Fees from setup to collection: the whole workflow

CloudSchool's Fees module follows one workflow, from deciding what to charge to actually collecting the money. This article walks through the whole thing in order, so you know what step comes next.

Where to start

Open Fees & Billing from the sidebar. If your school hasn't set up fees yet, you'll see "No fee collection data yet" and a Start fee setup button. Once fees exist, the landing page shows a Fee workflow card with six numbered steps — click any step to jump straight to it:

1. Setup — Categories & particulars
2. Discounts — Concessions
3. Fines — Late fees
4. Schedule — Bill a batch
5. Vouchers — Print challans
6. Collect — Record payments

Step 1 — Setup

Go to Fee setup. Here you create a fee category (for example, "Tuition Fee" or "Admission Fee"), then add its particulars — the individual line items that make up that category. You can also set a different amount per batch, so a senior class can be charged more than a junior one for the same particular.

Step 2 — Discounts

Go to Discounts to create concessions — for a whole batch or specific students, as a percentage or a fixed amount. See the article "Give a concession" for the full walkthrough, including how long a discount lasts.

Step 3 — Fines

Go to Fines to set up late-payment charges. Create a fine tied to a fee category, with slabs — for example, a fixed charge or a percentage, kicking in after a certain number of days past due. Once set up, use Generate fine to apply fines to all overdue vouchers.

Step 4 — Schedule

Go to Scheduling to actually bill a batch — this is where a voucher/challan gets created for real students. Give the schedule a name and period label, set the period start, period end, and due date, tick the batches to bill, and tick the particulars (with their amounts) to include. Click Create schedule, then Generate vouchers on the schedule to raise the vouchers. If you change your mind later, the same button becomes Re-generate.

Step 5 — Vouchers

Go to Vouchers to see every generated fee voucher, filterable by All, Unpaid, Partial, Paid, or Waived (100% off). From here you can print a single voucher or a whole batch at once. See "Print fee challans" for details.

Step 6 — Collect

Go to Collect fees to take a payment from a parent or student — search by admission number, roll number, name, or phone, or load a whole batch and step through students one by one. See "Collect a fee payment" for the full walkthrough.

Other useful pages on the Fees landing screen

Alongside the six-step workflow, the Fees & Billing top bar also gives you: Collections (a worklist of recent collection runs), Batch defaulters (who hasn't paid), Reconcile (matching bank deposits), Cheques (post-dated cheque tracking), Reports, Online payment, Invoice designer (see "Print fee challans"), and Reminders (sending payment reminders to families).

Keeping the order in mind

Fees work best done in order: set up your categories and particulars first, add any discounts and fines, then schedule a batch to generate its vouchers, then print or collect. Skipping straight to Collect for a student who has never been billed will show "No fee has been billed to this student yet" with a link to set up their fees.