[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":444},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-how-to-start-a-new-session-and-term":3,"blog-related-how-to-start-a-new-session-and-term":154},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":139,"date":140,"description":141,"draft":142,"extension":143,"featured":142,"image":144,"imageAlt":144,"meta":145,"navigation":146,"ogImage":144,"path":147,"seo":148,"stem":149,"tags":150,"updated":144,"__hash__":153},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-to-start-a-new-session-and-term.md","The end-of-session checklist","team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":129},"minimark",[10,14,23,33,38,41,48,52,55,62,66,73,89,93,119,123,126],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Almost everything in 1410SMS is filed against a term and a session. Grades, attendance, invoices,\nreport cards. The start of a new period is therefore one of the few times a school genuinely has to\nsit down and configure something, and it is worth ten unhurried minutes.",[11,15,16,17,22],{},"The mechanics are short and documented in full under\n",[18,19,21],"a",{"href":20},"\u002Fdocs\u002Facademic","Academic Calendar, Terms & Sessions",": add the session, pair it with a term as a\ncalendar, mark that calendar current. This is the other half, the part that is not a form. What order\nto do things in, and what goes wrong when a step is skipped.",[24,25,30],"screenshot",{"alt":26,"height":27,"src":28,"width":29},"The Academic Calendar workspace on its Terms and Sessions tab. The school year for 2026\u002F2027 is drawn as a bar of three coloured term blocks with the breaks between them named, and each term is listed with its dates and day count: First Term 07 September to 18 December, 103 days, badged Current term, the other two offering Set current. Below sit the 2025\u002F2026 terms marked Finished, an undated 2024\u002F2025, and cards listing the academic sessions and the three permanent terms",1924,"\u002Fblog\u002Fnew-session-and-term\u002Facademic-setup.png",1832,[11,31,32],{},"The school year at the top, and underneath it the sessions and terms it is built from.",[34,35,37],"h2",{"id":36},"the-click-everything-depends-on","The click everything depends on",[11,39,40],{},"Setting the current calendar is the step that actually changes what the platform does. It decides the\nterm a new grade is filed under, the term an invoice belongs to, what the dashboards report on and\nwhich period a report card opens to.",[11,42,43,47],{},[44,45,46],"strong",{},"If you forget it, nothing breaks visibly."," Marks and invoices keep saving. They keep saving\nagainst last term, and by the time someone notices, correcting them is a real job rather than a\nclick. It is the single most important action on the page, so make it the one you go back and check.",[34,49,51],{"id":50},"do-not-create-a-new-first-term-20262027","Do not create a new \"First Term 2026\u002F2027\"",[11,53,54],{},"The three default terms are permanent and reused across every session. That is what lets a report\ncard say \"this pupil's running average across the terms completed so far\" and mean something. The\nterm is First Term; the session is what changes.",[11,56,57,58,61],{},"A school that calls its terms something else gives them an ",[44,59,60],{},"alias"," rather than renaming them:\nMichaelmas, Rain Term, Semester One. The alias is what appears on report cards, in the portals, on\nPDFs, in exports and in the app, while the spine everything is ordered against stays intact.",[34,63,65],{"id":64},"order-matters-for-promotion","Order matters for promotion",[11,67,68,69,72],{},"New session usually means everyone moves up, using ",[44,70,71],{},"Promote Students"," on the Students page. Two\nthings are worth getting the right way round:",[74,75,76,83],"ul",{},[77,78,79,82],"li",{},[44,80,81],{},"Sort out your class list first."," Opening a new stream or retiring one is a job to do before\npromotion, not after.",[77,84,85,88],{},[44,86,87],{},"Work from the top down."," Promote the leaving year first and come down the school, so you are\nnever moving pupils into a class you are about to empty.",[34,90,92],{"id":91},"then-the-things-nobody-remembers-until-they-bite","Then the things nobody remembers until they bite",[74,94,95,101,107,113],{},[77,96,97,100],{},[44,98,99],{},"Check each class's subject list."," A year group that has picked up a new subject needs it ticked\non the class's Edit form, or it will not appear in grade entry or the timetable builder, and the\nfirst person to notice will be a teacher trying to enter marks.",[77,102,103,106],{},[44,104,105],{},"Review your fee structures."," Amounts change more often than fee types do, so this is usually\nupdating a default amount rather than adding anything.",[77,108,109,112],{},[44,110,111],{},"Review discount awards."," A sibling discount awarded \"until you revoke it\" carries into the new\nsession by itself, which is normally what you want. A bursary awarded for a single term does not,\nwhich is also normally what you want. Worth a look either way.",[77,114,115,118],{},[44,116,117],{},"Set the resumption date"," on any one pupil's report card, and every other pupil in the session\npicks it up.",[34,120,122],{"id":121},"what-carries-over","What carries over",[11,124,125],{},"Nothing is deleted at a session boundary. Last year's grades, registers and invoices stay exactly\nwhere they are, filed under the session they belong to, and every screen with a session filter can\nstill reach them.",[11,127,128],{},"Unpaid balances carry over too, because a debt does not expire with a term. That is why the\ndashboard's period filter defaults to the whole session rather than the current term: when you are\nchasing arrears, the session total is the number you want.",{"title":130,"searchDepth":131,"depth":131,"links":132},"",3,[133,135,136,137,138],{"id":36,"depth":134,"text":37},2,{"id":50,"depth":134,"text":51},{"id":64,"depth":134,"text":65},{"id":91,"depth":134,"text":92},{"id":121,"depth":134,"text":122},"Operations","2026-07-29","The handful of things worth settling before a new academic year starts, in the order that stops you undoing your own work, and the one click that quietly decides what every screen in the platform means for the next four months.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-to-start-a-new-session-and-term",{"title":5,"description":141},"blog\u002Fhow-to-start-a-new-session-and-term",[151,152],"operations","how-to","DUy9WbgJhxn27uL_ueHxesQUjcTV_GvT8zW34OPQcAU",[155,324],{"id":156,"title":157,"author":6,"body":158,"category":313,"date":314,"description":315,"draft":142,"extension":143,"featured":142,"image":144,"imageAlt":144,"meta":316,"navigation":146,"ogImage":144,"path":317,"seo":318,"stem":319,"tags":320,"updated":144,"__hash__":323},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fschool-fee-controls-that-actually-work.md","Four Controls That Stop School Fees Going Missing",{"type":8,"value":159,"toc":306},[160,163,166,169,173,176,179,186,189,193,196,203,206,220,223,230,233,236,240,243,246,249,252,256,259,262,265,268,272,275,290,293],[11,161,162],{},"Almost every school that loses money to its own fee process loses it the same way. Not to theft.\nTo a single unchecked entry.",[11,164,165],{},"Somebody takes ₦180,000 at the desk on the first Monday of term, writes it in the book, and does not\nget to the summary sheet because there are fourteen parents waiting behind. Six weeks later a parent\nproduces a receipt for a payment the school cannot find. Now the school is choosing between\naccusing a paying customer of lying and writing off the amount. It usually writes it off, and it\nusually does not record that it did.",[11,167,168],{},"The frustrating part is that the controls that prevent this are not complicated and do not require\nan accountant. They require that no single person be the only pair of eyes on a transaction.",[34,170,172],{"id":171},"_1-the-person-who-receives-money-should-not-be-the-last-person-to-confirm-it","1. The person who receives money should not be the last person to confirm it",[11,174,175],{},"This is the oldest rule in bookkeeping and the one small schools break most often, usually without\nnoticing, because the bursar is trusted and competent and there is nobody else free.",[11,177,178],{},"Trust is not the point. A second review catches honest mistakes far more often than dishonest ones:\nthe payment entered against the wrong sibling, the ₦50,000 typed as ₦500,000, the transfer credited\ntwice because the parent sent the receipt on WhatsApp and then again by email.",[11,180,181,182,185],{},"What this looks like in practice is a ",[44,183,184],{},"verification step",": money is recorded when it arrives, so\nthe parent gets their receipt immediately, but the entry is flagged as unverified until somebody\nelse has checked it against the bank statement or the POS printout. In 1410SMS this is the\nverification queue on the Payments tab. Verifying never moves a balance. It records who checked the\nentry and when, which is exactly what you want in February when you are trying to reconstruct\nOctober.",[11,187,188],{},"Do this weekly. A queue reviewed once a term is a filing cabinet.",[34,190,192],{"id":191},"_2-never-delete-a-wrong-entry-reverse-it","2. Never delete a wrong entry. Reverse it",[11,194,195],{},"When a payment is recorded in error, the instinct is to delete the row and re-enter it correctly.\nResist it. A deleted row leaves no trace that it existed, which means the one thing you cannot later\nreconstruct is what actually happened.",[11,197,198,199,202],{},"The correct move is to ",[44,200,201],{},"void"," the entry with a stated reason, which reverses the payment, restores\nthe invoice balance and leaves both the original and the reversal visible. Six months later the\nrecord still says: this was recorded, this is who reversed it, this is why.",[11,204,205],{},"Two things worth being clear about, because they get conflated:",[74,207,208,214],{},[77,209,210,213],{},[44,211,212],{},"Voiding is not a refund."," No money moves. It is the correction of a mistaken entry, usually a\nduplicate or a payment recorded against the wrong child.",[77,215,216,219],{},[44,217,218],{},"Voiding is not rejection."," Rejecting is a review verdict and leaves the balance alone. Voiding\nactually reopens the invoice for payment.",[11,221,222],{},"Most voids are internal corrections that the parent never needs to hear about, which is why\nnotifying them should be a decision you make per void rather than something that happens\nautomatically. Occasionally it does need telling, and then you want the option.",[11,224,225,226,229],{},"There is a third correction, and confusing it with voiding is the one that will put your books out of\nstep with your bank. A ",[44,227,228],{},"refund"," is money the family really paid and you have really sent back.\nVoiding and refunding do the same thing to the invoice balance and mean opposite things: voiding says\nthe payment never happened, refunding says it happened and is being reversed. Void a payment that\ngenuinely reached your account and your records will show nothing collected while your statement\nshows the money arriving, with nothing anywhere to explain the difference.",[11,231,232],{},"So keep the three apart and reach for the one you mean. Cancelling an invoice says the charge should\nnever have been raised. Voiding a receipt says the entry was a mistake. Recording a refund says the\nmoney has gone back. Only the third moves anything, and it is the only one the family is told about\nby default, because money arriving unannounced is a phone call you will take either way.",[11,234,235],{},"One habit worth forming with refunds: record them against the date the money actually left, not the\nday you got round to entering it. They are counted on the day they were sent, so a Friday transfer\ntyped in on Monday still reconciles against Friday's statement.",[34,237,239],{"id":238},"_3-treat-the-parent-as-your-auditor","3. Treat the parent as your auditor",[11,241,242],{},"This one costs nothing and is the most effective control on the list.",[11,244,245],{},"Every parent who receives a receipt the moment they pay, and who can look up their own outstanding\nbalance without phoning the office, is checking your books for you. They have a strong incentive to\nnotice a payment that never landed, and they will tell you within days rather than at the end of\nterm.",[11,247,248],{},"Schools that send receipts on request, or at the end of the week, or only when a parent asks twice,\nlose that entirely. The error is still there. It just gets found in November.",[11,250,251],{},"The practical version: receipts go out automatically on every payment, invoices carry your bank\ndetails so nobody is guessing where to send money, and the parent portal shows a live balance rather\nthan a figure someone typed into a message. If you want one change from this article, make it this\none.",[34,253,255],{"id":254},"_4-separate-the-roles-even-when-you-cannot-separate-the-people","4. Separate the roles, even when you cannot separate the people",[11,257,258],{},"Here is the part most advice on this subject skips.",[11,260,261],{},"Textbook segregation of duties assumes you have enough staff to give receipting, reconciliation and\napproval to three different people. A school with two administrators and a head does not have that,\nand telling them to hire is not useful advice.",[11,263,264],{},"What you can do is stop everyone signing in as the same account. If your bursar, your receptionist\nand your head teacher all use one shared admin login, you have no record of who did anything, and\nevery control above collapses to nothing. Separate accounts with separate permissions cost nothing\nand give you an audit trail with real names on it.",[11,266,267],{},"Then split the sensitive permissions, even across only two people. Recording a payment and voiding a\nreceipt do not have to sit with the same person. Neither do voiding and verifying. In a two-person\noffice you will not achieve full separation, and you should not pretend otherwise, but moving the\nvoid permission to the head teacher alone is a meaningful control that takes about a minute to\nconfigure.",[34,269,271],{"id":270},"what-to-do-this-term","What to do this term",[11,273,274],{},"If you are starting from a notebook and a shared login, do not attempt all four at once. In order of\nvalue for effort:",[276,277,278,281,284,287],"ol",{},[77,279,280],{},"Give every member of staff their own account. One afternoon, no cost, and it makes everything\nelse possible.",[77,282,283],{},"Turn on automatic receipts to parents. Immediate effect, no process change for your staff.",[77,285,286],{},"Move the void permission away from whoever records payments day to day.",[77,288,289],{},"Start reviewing the verification queue on a fixed day each week. Friday afternoon works well\nbecause the week's bank statement is available.",[11,291,292],{},"None of this makes fraud impossible. It is not meant to. It means that a mistake surfaces in days\nrather than months, while it is still small enough to fix and while everyone still remembers what\nhappened.",[11,294,295,296,300,301,305],{},"The ",[18,297,299],{"href":298},"\u002Fdocs\u002Ffees","Fee Management docs"," cover how each of these works in 1410SMS, and\n",[18,302,304],{"href":303},"\u002Fdocs\u002Froles-permissions","Roles & Permissions"," covers splitting the sensitive ones.",{"title":130,"searchDepth":131,"depth":131,"links":307},[308,309,310,311,312],{"id":171,"depth":134,"text":172},{"id":191,"depth":134,"text":192},{"id":238,"depth":134,"text":239},{"id":254,"depth":134,"text":255},{"id":270,"depth":134,"text":271},"Finance","2026-07-27","Most money lost in a school office is not stolen. It goes missing because one person recorded it, nobody checked, and the mistake was found six weeks later. Here are four controls that catch it early.",{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fschool-fee-controls-that-actually-work",{"title":157,"description":315},"blog\u002Fschool-fee-controls-that-actually-work",[321,151,322],"fees","security","IoIa-XgvPT3ngur0kNIb7s2r4sqkgv2rmnWOOGAMqFk",{"id":325,"title":326,"author":6,"body":327,"category":434,"date":435,"description":436,"draft":142,"extension":143,"featured":146,"image":144,"imageAlt":144,"meta":437,"navigation":146,"ogImage":144,"path":438,"seo":439,"stem":440,"tags":441,"updated":144,"__hash__":443},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fhidden-cost-of-manual-school-administration.md","The Hidden Cost of Manual School Administration",{"type":8,"value":328,"toc":426},[329,332,335,339,342,345,348,352,355,369,372,375,379,382,385,388,392,395,398,402,405,408,411,415,418,423],[11,330,331],{},"Ask a school owner what their administration costs and you will usually get a figure for\nstationery, printing and maybe a bursar's salary. That is the visible part. The larger cost sits in\nthe hours, and nobody bills for those, so nobody counts them.",[11,333,334],{},"Here is the shape of it.",[34,336,338],{"id":337},"the-cost-of-answering-simple-questions","The cost of answering simple questions",[11,340,341],{},"A parent calls on a Tuesday afternoon. They want to know two things: what their son still owes, and\nhow many days he has missed this term.",[11,343,344],{},"In a school running on paper, neither answer exists yet. Somebody has to build it. The fee balance\nmeans finding the right receipt book or the right tab in the right spreadsheet, then checking it\nagainst whatever was recorded at the gate during fee week. The attendance figure means counting\nmarks in a register by hand, one day at a time.",[11,346,347],{},"Call it eight minutes. That is not a disaster on its own. But a school of 400 students fields that\ncall, or one like it, several times a day through a busy term. Eight minutes, twenty times a week,\nis close to three hours. Every week. For an answer the school already technically has.",[34,349,351],{"id":350},"reports-get-produced-late-or-not-at-all","Reports get produced late, or not at all",[11,353,354],{},"Most heads of school want the same four things regularly:",[74,356,357,360,363,366],{},[77,358,359],{},"Who is behind on fees, and by how much",[77,361,362],{},"Which classes have an attendance problem",[77,364,365],{},"How enrolment is tracking against last term",[77,367,368],{},"Which subjects are underperforming",[11,370,371],{},"On a manual system each of these is a small project. Somebody pulls figures from two or three\nplaces, checks them against each other, finds a discrepancy, chases it down, then formats the\nresult. By the time it lands, the term has moved on.",[11,373,374],{},"So in practice these reports get requested when something has already gone wrong. The school ends\nup managing by exception rather than by observation, which is a much more expensive way to run\nanything.",[34,376,378],{"id":377},"reconciliation-is-where-the-money-leaks","Reconciliation is where the money leaks",[11,380,381],{},"Fee collection is the part that actually costs schools money, not just time.",[11,383,384],{},"The failure is almost never the first entry. A bursar who records a payment records it correctly.\nThe failure is the second entry: the summary sheet that was supposed to be updated afterwards and\nwas not, because the queue at the desk was twelve parents long and it was the first week of term.",[11,386,387],{},"Now two numbers disagree. Nobody notices until a parent produces a receipt for a payment the school\nhas no record of, and at that point the school has a choice between an argument and a write-off.\nBoth are expensive, and the second one is invisible in the accounts.",[34,389,391],{"id":390},"what-growth-does-to-all-of-this","What growth does to all of this",[11,393,394],{},"Schools usually adopt spreadsheets for good reasons. They are free, everyone understands them, and\nat 80 students they genuinely work.",[11,396,397],{},"The problem is that the workload does not scale with student numbers. It scales with student\nnumbers multiplied by the number of things you track per student. Double the enrolment and add\nper-subject assessment breakdowns, and the admin burden goes up by considerably more than double.\nThat is why so many schools describe a specific term where administration stopped being manageable,\nrather than a gradual decline.",[34,399,401],{"id":400},"what-this-is-not-about","What this is not about",[11,403,404],{},"It is worth saying plainly: none of this is an argument for replacing staff with software.",[11,406,407],{},"Schools that digitise well do not end up with fewer administrators. They end up with administrators\nwho spend their week on admissions conversations, fee negotiations with families in difficulty, and\nfollowing up the students who are quietly slipping, instead of on assembling numbers by hand.",[11,409,410],{},"The work that gets removed is the work nobody wanted to do anyway.",[34,412,414],{"id":413},"a-reasonable-test","A reasonable test",[11,416,417],{},"If you are trying to judge whether your current setup is costing you more than it looks, one\nquestion tends to settle it:",[11,419,420],{},[44,421,422],{},"How long does it take to answer \"which students owe money, right now, across the whole school\"?",[11,424,425],{},"If the answer is under a minute, your system is fine and you should keep it. If it involves opening\nseveral files, or asking a specific person who happens to know where things are, you already know\nwhat it is costing you. You have just never had a reason to add it up.",{"title":130,"searchDepth":131,"depth":131,"links":427},[428,429,430,431,432,433],{"id":337,"depth":134,"text":338},{"id":350,"depth":134,"text":351},{"id":377,"depth":134,"text":378},{"id":390,"depth":134,"text":391},{"id":400,"depth":134,"text":401},{"id":413,"depth":134,"text":414},"Guides","2026-07-05","The cost of running a school on paper and spreadsheets is rarely the paper. It is the hours your staff spend assembling answers that the system should already know.",{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fhidden-cost-of-manual-school-administration",{"title":326,"description":436},"blog\u002Fhidden-cost-of-manual-school-administration",[151,442],"buying-guide","0AphcSraqtpIwmvNTCcCGQ0lxR-78WzK9Y7FO558Hpw",1787681228793]