Gone are the days when schools used to stack loads of paperwork as a regular routine of keeping records.
There is now an innovative approach to running schools in a post covid era, with a paperless digital system dubbed – School Suite – that has immensely reduced the amount of valuable time spent by both parents and school administrators on handling school fees as well as managing academic affairs with much less clutter.
School Suite is a digital product that has an in-built school pay system that enables academic institutions to conduct timely transactions even beyond banking hours. The school-friendly system is an innovation by Service Cops – a Fintech with Business Processes outsourcing business organisation.
School suite was created to manage school operations as most schools in Uganda majorly rely on paper-based manual systems, where they have to track hundreds of thousands of receipts, admissions, enrollments, teachers, staff, management and all those many papers and files.
In a bid to reduce the excessive paperwork, Service Cops opted to digitize these school operations and introduced School Suite, a one central data management point where a school administrator can see the various departments or various operations that are going on in the school. School Suite is, in a nutshell, a school management system.
Mustafa Sserufambi, an Accountant at Katalemwa Junior School is a gratified school administrator whose school has been using School suite for close to three years now, since the 22nd day of June 2019.
He spoke to CEO East Africa Magazine’s Rhyman Agaba about his experience as a daily consumer of this web-based product and also shares how this digital innovation has transformed his school.
Mustafa credits School Suite for many positive changes in running the school operations; he says the system has helped in managing the school more efficiently way by providing a central collection center where all monies are collected to a single bank account.
He and several school administrators that CEO Magazine spoke to mutually agree that this digitized system makes processes easier to manage to the old manual paper work system.
“This system is so convenient in a way that transactions are done at the convenience of the parents wherever they would be without reaching out to banks,” says Mustafa. “This is so since mobile phones can be used to make transactions.”
Parents get instant notifications on their phones as proof of payment for future reference compared to the previous methods where in case bank slips would get lost, therefore evidence would be lost in the process.
Muhammad is another school administrator at Nakawa Vocational Training Institute that has been using School Suite and School pay for four years now since 2018.
He says School Pay has simplified his school’s administrative work because “it has made reconciliation of fees and other incomes easy.”
“The old manual work was tiresome and a bit difficult to authenticate but now the system reconciles automatically,” he notes with a delightful grin.
Muhammad says this data-backed digital system has also improved decision-making, cash flow and record keeping noting that it is now easier to run reports and make informed decisions.
He also happily testifies of how this online system has greatly improved record keeping and decision making ever since the Nakawa-based vocational institute began using school suite.
Like any other brilliant innovation in this modern world, School Suite has its own setbacks albeit minor as observed by one of the end users we spoke to.
“Being an Internet based system, when the connection is poor we have challenges. Also, sometimes the system is slow especially at the beginning of the term,” notes Muhammad.
Mr Sserufambi of Katalemwa Junior School says as a central management data portal, School Suite enables real time monitoring of his school’s key functions
Centenary Group and Service Cops Sign Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Digital Financial Inclusion“Logins are available to allow for review of all payments and this controls the mode of payment,” he acknowledges.
The school accountant concurs that this digital system, has improved decision-making, cash flow, and record keeping in so many ways.
“School fees balances and total fees collected can be easily viewed to inform decisions,” he quips, adding that: “Transactions can be easily done even beyond the normal bank’s working hours; thereby giving chance to collect fees 24/7.”
He also notes that payment records can be followed and retrieved at the convenience of the school administrators. And this enables bank reconciliation done from the record.
School Suite as a reliable system has enhanced record keeping since it gives personal record of payment from the initial payment to the last.
Managers of academic programmes in partner schools like St. Maria Goretti in Katende have pointed out that options are available to control the mode of payment by using percentages or amounts below which the system cannot allow.
Another major highlight of this education-enhancing technology is that decision-making is quick since real time payment records are received.
Among the challenges that School suite users tend to encounter include;
“The system cannot allow for viewing bank statement from the Bank,” says Mustafa.
“When using more than one bank, the system cannot filter out payment for a particular bank,” notes a financial manager for one of the partner schools.
This is one notable glitch that this technological innovation – School Suite – seems to struggle with.
Despite that minor drawback, when asked if they would recommend this product to other academic institutions, there was a unanimous and definite answer from all partner school administrators using School Suite – “Yes.”
They gave reasons to back their answers as follows;
“The system brings efficiency and effectiveness in the collection of fees, the system is economical, time saving quick and convenient,” notes a school accountant we spoke to.
Another said: “Transfers can also be made directly from a bank account using this system.
Also noting that; “School Pay also allows self-check of any payment made using a unique ID /Payment code.”
When queried about the existing relationship with Service Cops – the innovators of School Suite, the response from the product’s end users was a quite pleasant one.
“There has been a good relationship with the Service Cops team ever since we enrolled for this platform. We have had timely responses to most of the technical queries raised and we are glad to have them as our financial partners,” notes Mustafa in his final submission during a recent interview with this publication.
