How to choose school ERP software: a checklist for Indian schools

Write down three things first: your board or boards and the exact marksheet format you issue; how many students, sections and campuses you have; and how you collect fees today — at the counter, online, or both. Every vendor demo looks polished. These three facts are what let you see whether it fits.

Then decide who sits on the committee. The people who will use the system every day — the office manager who runs fees, the examination in-charge and one class teacher — will see problems in a demo that a principal or trustee will not.

Result processing is where school software is most often subtly wrong, and it is the hardest thing to change after you have signed. Boards differ in their result format, pass rules, grading scales and treatment of absence. A system that computes one format and relabels it for every board produces marksheets that look right and are not.

• Can you produce last year's marksheet for our board from our actual marks, in the demo?
• Where do the grading scale and pass rules live — in configuration we can see, or in your code?
• How are absences, exemptions and grace marks handled for our board?
• If we need a variation on the board's standard rules, how is it set up, and does it survive your next update?

AcadiFlow's approach is on the solutions pages, with separate pages for CBSE schools, ICSE and ISC schools and state board schools.

Nearly every vendor supports online payment. The questions that separate them are about the record behind the payment.

• Are fee structures tied to a class and an academic session, so that revising next year's fees leaves last year's receipts untouched?
• Are concessions — sibling, staff ward, RTE, merit — recorded with a reason, or simply subtracted from the total?
• Do receipt numbers run in one sequence with no gaps, even when two cashiers are working at once?
• Is an online payment recorded when the gateway confirms it, or when the parent's browser comes back to the site?
• How are part payments, bounced cheques and refunds handled?

The fee management guide covers each of these in more depth, and the fee module page shows how AcadiFlow answers them.

A school ERP holds children's personal data, and under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 the organisation that collects that data is responsible for protecting it. The practical questions are about access.

• How does a parent get access to a child's record? An invitation from the school is safer than self-registration with an admission number, which is printed on documents the child carries.
• Can a teacher see marks for sections they do not teach?
• Is there an audit log showing who changed a mark or reversed a fee?
• Are public result pages and certificate verification pages kept out of search engines?
• Which third parties process the school's data, and where?

Our security page answers these for AcadiFlow. Ask every vendor for the same answers in writing.

A system that is slow for daily tasks does not get used, and a system that is not used holds stale data. Time these in the demo rather than taking them on trust:

• A class teacher marking attendance for one section.
• The office recording a counter payment and printing the receipt.
• A teacher entering marks for one subject across one section.
• A parent finding out what fees are due, and paying them, on a phone.

If any of those takes more than a minute or two, it will end up being done on paper and typed in later.

• Can students, guardians and staff be imported from a spreadsheet, with errors shown before anything is saved?
• Who does the migration — you, the vendor, or both — and is it included in the price?
• Can historical marks and fee records be brought across, or only current data?
• If you leave, can you export your data in a usable format, and how long is it kept afterwards?

The exit question matters more than it seems. A vendor that makes leaving hard has less reason to keep you happy.

Ask for the total cost over three years, in writing and including GST, for your current enrolment and for the enrolment you expect. These are the line items to look for:

AcadiFlow publishes its plan prices on the pricing page.

• What are the support hours, and is support available in your language?
• What happens on results day or fee-deadline day, when load is highest?
• How often is the product updated, and are updates included in the subscription?
• Can you speak to two schools of your size and board that have used it for more than a year?

The last question is the most useful one on this list. A reference call with a school like yours will tell you more than any demo.

Score each vendor from 1 to 5 on the seven areas above, and for most schools weight results and fees double. Note what was demonstrated separately from what was claimed — the gap between the two is usually where the problems are.