Billing a Term
Raising the term's bills, and everything you can do to one afterwards.
Before you start
Bills are built from a published fee structure, so your fees must be set up and published first — see Setting Up Your Fees. A structure left in draft charges nobody, and that is far and away the most common reason a billing run produces no bills at all.
1. Open the billing run
Go to Finance → Invoices and choose "Generate invoices". Pick the "Academic year", then the "Charge cycle": "Sessional — once for the whole session" for fees charged once a year, "Termly — this term's recurring charges" for the ones that come round every term, or "One-off — admission, acceptance, excursion…" for something outside the normal pattern. A termly run also asks for the "Term".
2. Fill in only what you need
"Due date" is when the bill falls overdue — leave it empty to use the dates on your fee structure. "Charge name" appears on sessional and one-off runs, and it is more than a label: it is what tells one charge apart from another. Bill an excursion, then bill a second excursion the same session without naming it, and the run skips every student as already billed. Name each one — the form suggests a shape like excursion-michaelmas — and both bill. "Specific students" bills only a few children instead of the whole school: paste their student IDs, one per line, and leave it empty for an ordinary termly or sessional run.
3. Decide whether to issue straight away
"Issue immediately" is the difference between a bill a parent can pay and a draft nobody can. Issued bills are frozen records, payable at once. Left unticked, the run produces drafts you can check over first and issue afterwards from each bill — useful the first time you bill a new structure. Then press "Run billing".
4. Read what it tells you
The run reports what it did, count by count, and it is safe to run again: billing the same thing twice does not charge anybody twice, and the second run reports what it skipped. That is the rerun protection working, not an error. So after admitting a few more pupils you can simply run it again, and only the new ones are billed.
Finding a bill afterwards
Finance → Invoices lists what you have raised, and filters by year, "Term", "Document" status — "Draft", "Issued" or "Voided" — and "Settlement" status: "Outstanding", "Partially settled" or "Settled". It does not list children by name, so to see one family's bills put that student's ID in "Payer ID" and press "Filter".
What you can do to one bill
Open a bill and you can "Download PDF" to hand or send to a parent, "Record a counter payment" when they pay you directly, "Apply a concession", set up "Installments", or apply a sibling discount. A draft is issued here too, with "Issue invoice".
Letting a family pay in parts
Under "Installments", set the "First due" date and how many "Months apart" the parts fall, press "Suggest schedule" to see the dates and amounts, and "Apply this schedule" to put the plan on the bill. "Remove installment plan" takes it off again. The bill itself is not overdue while the parts are being paid on time — but do not carry that over to the arrears screen, which chases on the bill's own "Due date" and quotes the whole balance, because it does not know about plans at all. Read Chasing Unpaid Fees before you chase a family on one.
Correcting a bill
An issued bill cannot be edited — that is deliberate, so a bill a parent already has never changes behind them. To reduce one, use "Apply a concession": choose the "Type", say who is "Funded by", give the "Amount (₦)" or a "Rate %" and a "Reason", then "Apply adjustment". To cancel one outright, "Void invoice" and raise a fresh bill in its place.