Not all academic institutions have the luxury to start big. Most start as small or medium-scale that caters directly to nearby communities. Basically, a start-up business, small private schools have a lot of factors to consider to succeed. One of the essential ones is, of course, finances.
When you’re having trouble managing your finances, the answer is investing in a better financial system such as accounting software systems.
You might ask why accounting software for small private schools is necessary. One thing to remember is that a school is a business, first and foremost. It requires enough capital to use and reuse to continue serving its target population. Accounting software is a necessary tool to carry out this goal.
What is school accounting software?
But, before anything else, let’s break down the components of effective school accounting software.
The primary role of accounting software, in general, is to record and manage financial transactions that affect the business. So, basically, it pertains to all the elements in the business’s cash flow.
Accounting includes recording, summarising, analysing, and reporting these transactions to the affected stakeholders.
In a streamlined perspective, school accounting accounts for all school financial processes collected and dispersed from a student’s enrollment to graduation. Aside from that, it also accounts for all the other necessary expenses for the school’s development efforts.
Why is school accounting software necessary?
One thing is for sure, the use of accounting software is essential because money is, likewise, essential. It is a valuable and necessary asset that keeps the institution running, thus, handling it requires proper management and tracking.
In a stricter sense, let’s see why accounting software is essential for small-scale private schools.
Reasons Why You Need School Accounting Software
1. Real-time Tracking
Practical accounting is possible when each and every financial transaction is recorded correctly.
Keeping a close eye on these transactions is necessary when starting, but it is time-consuming and repetitive. Moreover, It is overwhelming for smaller-scale institutions that have a lot on their plate. Real-time financial tracking requires your full attention and a keen eye for details.
If you are still waiting to get the hang of this process, it’s better to jump into a school accounting software. It will save you time and effort. You don’t need to wait until you get the flow of the process; the system will do it for you.
2. Ensures Data Security
Cybercriminals are everywhere. They target everyone, regardless of the organisation’s services.
Deciding where to keep your financial records is a major decision. If done haphazardly, the disclosure of these details will compromise the school’s operations and reputation. So, the best choice is to invest in a school accounting software that keeps these data in a secured cloud system.
Always keep in mind that school accounting software systems provide additional layers of data security to ensure maximum protection. Despite the availability of several cloud storage providers nowadays, it pays to pay for maximum security.
3. Requires Less Effort from Users
Small private schools, naturally, have a smaller staff population. This fact can mean two things: (1) the ratio of staff to students is proportionate, or (2) the ratio is skewed towards the number of students.
Most of the time, the latter persists. The teaching and non-teaching staff often end up swamped with work.
School accounting software lessens the required effort from the staff. The software automates everything from recording to reports generation. All that’s left to do is to feed the data.
4. Generates Comprehensive Reports and Analyses
Finally, another reason why your institution needs an accounting software system is because of the automated generation of comprehensive reports and analyses.
These comprehensive financial reports are essential pools of data for decision-making processes. These are pieces of evidence to support or deny other academic decisions.
This feature is especially beneficial for small private schools that have limited capital to build on. Each decision should be data-driven to manage the school funds efficiently.
Other than the efficiency, generating reports shows trends of the financial transactions. The school admin can use these trends as a check and balance tool when it comes to annual budgeting.
It is an excellent basis to know where the school should allocate a big chunk of the budget.
Top Benefits for Private Schools
Cost-efficient
One of the most welcome school accounting software benefits for private schools is cost-efficiency.
For smaller-scale schools, expenses should always be well-thought. It should be beneficial to the organisation in the long run. If possible, each expense should have an ROI that is greater than its initial value.
Following this line of thought, school accounting software offers just that. It is a software system that is used every day and for all types of transactions. It isn’t something that is only useful for special circumstances.
More than that, having an accounting software system makes all your financial transactions easier to manage. With this tool, you can also make cost-efficient decisions for the school’s other facets.
Time-saving Option
Using an automated system for any process is a sure-fire way to cut off the time spent on it daily. Let’s say an average school employee spends an hour or two every day to keep track of all the financial transactions for that day. Several accounting tasks are cramped up within those hours to make way for other responsibilities.
Thus, the accuracy of these details is also in the line.
Excellent accounting software will take off those burdens from your shoulders.
With software available, the only task that remains under your wing is to feed it with data. All the organising and analysis methods will be under the responsibility of the software. If there are mistakes, it’s easier to rectify and process again than to start from scratch when done manually.
Lessens Legwork
Proportionally related to the abovementioned benefit, automation and digitalization reduce the demanded legwork from the employees.
For a process that only requires a bulk of various documents, accounting can be seriously physically taxing. Backtracking your process to make sure that all financial transactions are well-accounted for is demanding and time-consuming, even for a small private school.
With a readily-available software, you can feed the data from the daily transactions and then forget about it afterward. Anyone can track the record by accessing the software without going through a mountain of receipts and vouchers.
Lessens Stress
This last benefit is a result of all the prior benefits. Relying on cost-efficient software that saves time and effort will definitely lower the overall stress level associated with the task.
You will notice immediate effects when you assign someone to do accounting work. Before using an accounting software, everyone will dread that task. No one wants to get stuck in front of a computer to face a series of costs and liabilities.
Ideal School Accounting Software for Small Private Schools
Now that you’re well-acquainted with the benefits of school accounting software for private schools, I’m pretty sure you’re looking for software systems that are available in the market today. Well, worry not! We have the perfect list for you.
1. GoSchooler
GoSchooler is an all-in-one school management software that includes a feature for general financial management.
This school management software has a Finance tab that lets you track income and expenses easily. On top of that, it has a separate common for fee collection and reminder. Lastly, the Reports feature organizes and summarizes all the inputted financial data.
It is undeniably wise for small private schools to invest in a holistic school management software that will automate all essential school management processes. It saves money, and you only need to learn the methods of one software.
For small-scale schools, think about it this way; the population is indeed fewer, but the admin processes remain the same. Investing in multiple school software will be more costly. It will also take time to learn how to use various systems at once. You’ll end up spending over your budget.
But, with GoSchooler, you only need to spend on one software that will deliver the services of two or more software systems.
2. Zoho Books
As a stand-alone accounting software, the dashboard of Zoho Book’s website presents graphs and tables of the registered account’s payables and receivables. It is a non-sense design that serves its purpose, first and foremost.
Zoho Books also uses a graph to show the trend of the institute’s cash flow. Users can also access the same data through the mobile app.
Aside from the features that are accessible through the dashboard, Zoho Books also offers banking and time tracking features. These are essential features for effective expense management. It also has a Reports segment that lets you access the bulk data.
3. Synergetic
Synergetic is another comprehensive school management software that provides emphasis on providing financial management and analytics.
Analytics is an essential data group for schools, especially for the small private ones, because decisions for growth and expansion rely on these details.
Aside from the finance-related features, Synergetic also provides information management, communication, and property management services. It is a relational database that interconnects each aspect of the organization seamlessly.
It is fully customizable and flexible, so it’s guaranteed to work well with growing organizations.
4. Creatrix Campus
Lastly, we have Creatrix Campus that is specially formulated for higher education institutions. It uses academic analytics to arrive at ideal data-driven decisions for the organization. Moreover, it uses the same data to predict the school’s growth in the following years.
More than day-to-day financial management, Creatrix Campus makes use of these data for long-term decisions. It processes strings of data into discernible information that everyone can understand after close inspections.
FAQs
What are the common systems of accounting for schools?
Wrap Up
Accounting is needed for every school, but not everyone who is part of the school’s staff knows how.
This is where the services from accounting software come in handy. School accounting software manages income and expenses accurately. It costs more than manual accounting, but it costs less than hiring a parter accounting firm to do all the tasks annually.
Small private schools should consider investing in this type of software as early as possible. The cash out will be hefty, but the rate of return on investment is fast. On top of that, an accounting software system will let you manage your finances better for all the different facets of the school.
