The school running itself between your office and the parent.

The payments screen: M-Pesa payments matched to learners by admission number, each showing whether it settled the invoice or left a credit. — Money in, already placed against a learner, with the payer’s number masked.

Features

What a school gets

The messages write themselves, because the register, the fees and the assessment records all live in one place.

The daily register

Marked on a phone in under a minute, signal or no signal.

Absence messages

Marked absent at 8am; the mother knows at 8:05. Nobody typed anything.

Fees and statements

Invoices, payment plans, and a statement the parent opens from a message.

M-Pesa matching

Matched to a learner by admission number; the rest queue for a person to place.

Assessment and reports

Records against strands and sub-strands, and the report card they produce.

KNEC SBA assist

A completion board, and one sheet in the order the portal asks for.

The school bus

A matron taps each child on and off; the parent hears both ends.

An app, and a link for everyone else

One app for parents and staff — and every message carries a link for anyone without it.

The same app, on a teacher's phone and on a parent's

The teacher's Record screen: each class and learning area, the sub-strands started this term, and how many learners are still to record. — What the teacher has recorded this term, sub-strand by sub-strand, and what is still open.

The parent's Family screen: what the family owes this term and each child's own balance. — The parent’s home screen. What the family owes, then each child.

The parent's Fees screen for one child: the balance, an amount to pay with a Pay now button, and the M-Pesa account number to use instead. — A child’s fee balance, with Pay now and the account number for M-Pesa.

How it works

A Tuesday, once the school is running on Skuli

08:05Class teachers mark the register on their phones.60 seconds each
08:0623 absence messages reach guardians.Automatic
09:00The arrears sweep fires. 180 parents get their agreed instalment reminder.Automatic
11:0014 M-Pesa payments land, match to learners, and each parent gets a receipt.Automatic
15:30The bursar clears 3 payments that came in with the wrong reference.10 minutes
16:00You open your phone: collected today, arrears down 4% on last week.15 seconds

Messages sent ≈220 · Messages anyone typed 0 · Staff time <20 min — a worked day at a 450-learner school, not a measurement taken at one.

The 09:00 reminder is not nagging. It is the agreed payment plan, with a message before each instalment: “Your agreed instalment of KES 5,000 is due Friday” collects very differently from “your balance is KES 5,000.”

The register for one class on the teacher's phone: each learner with present, absent and late to tap. — 08:05. The register for one class, on the class teacher’s phone, signal or none.

Pricing

What your school pays

One more child is one more register mark, one more message and one more invoice. A timetable is the same work at 900 learners as at 200.

Essential

The child’s record, and it reaches the parent.

KES 75

per learner, per term

The daily register, and the absence message it sends when it closes
Assessment records, and the report card they print

A 450-learner schoolKES 33,750 a term

Our recommendation

Standard

Everything in Essential, and the money.

KES 140

per learner, per term

Fee structures, invoices and statements
M-Pesa payments matched to a learner on the admission number
Payment plans, and the reminder before each instalment

A 450-learner schoolKES 63,000 a term

Under 150 learners you are billed as 150; above 900 we work it out together.

Add to either plan, a flat price per term

The timetableKES 6,000
A week generated in a second, with the periods that would not fit named first — then every teacher’s own day on their phone, and the app tells them before each lesson and when a colleague asks them to cover.
The school busKES 8,000
Each child tapped on and off, and the family told at both ends of the journey.
The staff registerKES 5,000
Present, late, absent or on approved leave — and never a clock-in time.

In every plan

Learner and guardian records
Messages to a parent with the app — free, unlimited, on every plan
An SMS allowance on top, and you only pay past it
The app, for parents and for staff
And a link for anyone without one — no app, no password
Your data, exportable at any time

Terms

Billed termly, in the weeks your own fees land — nine billed months a year, not twelve.
If an invoice goes unpaid, messaging pauses. Your records, your exports and your read access never do.
Your school owns its data and can export all of it on 30 days’ notice.

What directors ask

The questions, in their own words

“Someone quoted me thirty thousand.”

That’s a fair price for a records database. Ask them three questions. When a child is marked absent, who tells the mother? When a parent pays with the wrong account number, who finds it? Does it help your Grade 7 teachers with the KNEC portal? All three answers are no, because it is a database.

“We already have a system.”

Then you’ve done the hard part. Two questions: does it message parents on its own, and does it help with the KNEC portal? If it does both, honestly, stay where you are.

“This is too expensive right now.”

Then start narrow: Essential now, and add the fee ledger or the bus once you have seen it work.

“Where is our data? Is it safe?”

Yours, and hosted in Nairobi. Every look at a child’s record goes onto an append-only trail that the database itself refuses to let anyone edit. And every guardian gets a private channel rather than a group: a school WhatsApp group shows two hundred parents’ numbers to each other beside photographs of other people’s children, which is what the Data Protection Act is about. Consent is recorded with a timestamp, and photo permissions stay off until a parent grants them.

“Our parents don’t have smartphones.”

Then they never need the app. Every message is also an SMS carrying a link that opens in any browser, and on a feature phone the SMS alone carries the balance and the absence.

Contact

Ten minutes at your school, and I come to you

I’m a software developer, and I live here in Kahawa West.

This weekAn hour with your bursar. No slides.
Two days laterThis, back with your school’s real numbers in it.
On signatureWe import your learner and guardian records and clean the phone numbers.
Before go-liveTwo training sessions — one for the office, one for teachers.
Term boundaryGo live, running alongside your current process for the first term.