In short. Define fee types, build a fee structure per class, generate invoices, then record payments — either taken online by card or entered by hand. What has not been paid shows under Outstanding.
Fee types
Start with Fees › Fee Types: the individual things you charge for — tuition, boarding, transport, examination fees, uniform. Defining them separately is what lets you see later which part of a bill is unpaid.
Fee structure
Fees › Fee Structure sets what each class is charged, per term. A class with boarders might carry a boarding fee that a day class does not. This is the template invoices are generated from, so it is worth getting agreed before you issue anything.
Amounts are whole naira. Fee amounts do not take kobo. Enter 45000, not 45000.00 or 45,000 — a value with decimals is rejected rather than silently rounded.
Invoices
Generate invoices under Fees › Invoices. An invoice belongs to a student and a term, and lists what is owed against the fee structure for their class. Any scholarship the student has been awarded is applied here — see Students, parents and admissions.
Students see their invoices under My Fees, and parents under Fees for their own children.
Recording payments
There are two ways a payment gets recorded:
- Online — a parent or student pays by card from their own portal. The payment is confirmed with the payment provider before it is recorded, so a failed or abandoned attempt does not mark an invoice as paid.
- By hand — an administrator or accountant records a payment made by transfer or in cash, under Fees › Payments.
Partial payments are supported. A parent paying part of a bill reduces the balance; the invoice stays open for the remainder.
Setting up online payment
Online payment is step 8 of the setup checklist. Until your payment details are configured, parents will not be able to pay by card — invoices still work, but only manual payments can be recorded against them.
Payments are processed by Paystack. Academiq does not store card numbers; only the transaction reference and the outcome are kept. This is set out in the Privacy Policy.
Outstanding
Fees › Outstanding is the collections view: who owes what, across the school. The same figure appears on the dashboard next to fees collected, so the gap is visible daily rather than at the end of term.
Receipts
A payment produces a receipt that can be downloaded as a PDF. Access is checked on download — a parent can fetch receipts for their own children only, and a student only their own.
Accountants
If you have the accountant portal, finance staff work entirely from it: Fee Invoices, Fee Payments, Payroll and Financial Reports. They can see students because invoices belong to students, but not academic records. See Staff, teachers and payroll.