In short. Two optional modules. Hostel manages boarding houses, rooms, who sleeps where and who visits. Transport manages vehicles, routes, stops and which students are on which route. Both appear only on plans that include them.
Hostel
For boarding schools, Hostel covers four things:
- Buildings — the boarding houses themselves, with the warden responsible for each.
- Rooms — the rooms in each building and how many they hold.
- Allocations — which student is in which room, for the session.
- Visitors — a log of who visited which student and when.
Set them up in that order; a room needs a building, and an allocation needs a room.
Why the visitor log matters
The visitor log is a safeguarding record as much as an administrative one. It sits alongside the wider activity log described in Security, audit and recovering data.
Transport
Transport covers three things:
- Vehicles — the buses you run, with their registration and capacity.
- Routes — the journey each vehicle makes, and the pickup and drop-off stops along it.
- Assignments — which students travel on which route, per academic year.
Because assignments are held per academic year, a new session starts clean rather than carrying last year's list forward.
What students and parents see
A student assigned to a route sees it on their own portal under My Transport, including their stop. Parents see their child's arrangements from the parent portal.
Charging for them
Boarding and transport are charged like anything else: create a fee type for them and include it in the fee structure for the relevant classes. See Fees, invoices and payments.
Plan availability
Hostel Management and Transport Management are separate plan features. If either menu is missing, your plan does not currently include it — see Your subscription. Switching plans does not delete data; a module that is turned off simply stops appearing until it is available again.