In short. Register your institution, then work through the eight setup steps on your dashboard. Until those are done, most of the other screens have nothing to show — classes need an academic year, results need subjects, invoices need a fee structure.
What Academiq is
Academiq is a school management platform. One system holds your students and staff, the register, exam results, assignments, fee invoices and payroll, and gives everyone in the school their own way in: administrators, teachers, students, parents, other staff and accountants each sign in to a portal showing only what they need.
Each school on Academiq works in its own private space. Your records are not visible to any other school on the platform.
Registering your institution
Go to the sign-in address and choose Register. The form runs in two steps:
- Your institution — its name, a short code, contact email and phone, and its address. The code is how your school is identified internally, so pick something short and permanent.
- Your account — the name, email and password of the first administrator. This is you. You can add more administrators later.
When you submit, your institution is created along with a set of default roles, and you are signed in as an administrator with a 14-day free trial. No card is needed to start.
The eight setup steps
Your dashboard shows a setup checklist with a progress bar. Each item links straight to the screen that completes it. They are in dependency order — later steps need earlier ones — so work down the list:
| Step | What it is | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Academic Year | The current session, e.g. 2026–2027 | Nearly every record is filed against a year |
| 2. Terms | The terms within that year | Attendance, results and fees are reported per term |
| 3. Classes | The classes you teach, e.g. Grade 1, SS1 | Students are admitted into a class |
| 4. Sections | Divisions within a class, e.g. SS1 A and SS1 B | Registers and timetables are per section |
| 5. Subjects | The subjects taught | Results and assignments attach to a subject |
| 6. Teachers | Your teaching staff | Subjects have to be assigned to someone |
| 7. Subject Assignments | Which teacher teaches which subject to which section | This is what puts a class on a teacher's portal |
| 8. Payment Setup | Your payment details for collecting fees | Needed before parents can pay online |
You do not have to finish all eight before using the system. Steps 1 to 5 are enough to start admitting students and marking attendance. Step 8 only matters when you want to collect fees online.
Reading your dashboard
Once setup is under way, the administrator dashboard becomes the daily summary:
- Needs attention — the things waiting on you right now: pending leave requests, new admission applications, open complaints and absent staff.
- Headline figures — students and staff on roll, fees collected and fees outstanding.
- Fee collection — what you have taken in over recent months.
- Attendance today — the proportion of students and staff present.
- Students per class — how your roll is distributed.
The current academic year and term are shown at the top. If they look wrong, it is because a different year or term is still flagged as current — see Academic years, classes and subjects.
Adding everyone else
You do not sign people up individually from outside. Accounts are created inside Academiq by the school:
- Teachers, staff and accountants are added from their sections of the menu, and are invited by email.
- Students are added when you admit them, or accepted from an admission application.
- Parents are added and then linked to their children, which is what gives them access to those children's records and nobody else's.
Full detail is in Students, parents and admissions and Staff, teachers and payroll.
Where to go next
If you are setting the school up for the first time, read the next section in order. If you are looking for one particular job, the contents list on the left goes roughly in the order a school year runs: set up the structure, admit students, teach and assess, then bill.