8 Best School Accounting Software (2024)

If you are a school administrator, you probably want to know what accounting system schools use. You also want to find out the most user-friendly accounting software to choose for your school administration. All these and many more are questions of importance that this article will like to proffer answers to.

Managing school or student records can be very confusing without consolidating student records in one central location or database. With good accounting software, you can eliminate the confusion associated with integrating student records and then improve your record management.

Upfront Conclusion

The best school accounting software right now is Aplos and Sage Intacct.

What Is School Accounting Software?

When talking about school accounting software, many people think about how that will be helpful for school administration. But to be candid, there are so many aspects of school administration that using accounting software can help you improve. For example, education software can be used for automating school accounting and its finances. It can also be used for online registration and tuition management, among many others.

What Does School Accounting Software Contain?

It’s important you know what accounting software for schools should include so you know what you’re to expect. When we are talking about what school accounting should include, what we mean is the typical features it can offer the school for the efficient administration of the school. There are many features to look for but the key features are what we like to focus on here.

One of the fundamental reasons you need accounting software for your school is to help you streamline your school accounting and finances. A good school accounting solution should include fund accounting and, in that, it should be capable of helping you keep a record of your cash assets and liabilities. One of the usefulness of this app for tracking school funds is to ensure effective and sincere utilization of funds for the purpose for which they’re earmarked.

In schools, student records are another important and tedious data to keep. This is so as they’re sensitive and require proper documentation. Of course, you don’t want to exert many efforts or spend days trying to integrate all these data with your accounting system. But to simplify the whole, you need robust school software that will allow you to manage all your data from one centralized system.

Additionally, the world is going paperless and educational institutions aren’t an exemption. In fact, most activities like course registration and tuition payments are now being done online, and having strong school software will help tremendously in automating this process. A good school accounting solution will let students register for their courses and make payments online while this will be automatically linked to the student’s respective record.

Schools like other business industries deal with a variety of school inventories. In the case of schools, their inventory will include things like school supplies, lecture textbooks, computers, etc. Also, school assets such as buildings and school buses are part of the school physical assets that require regular maintenance and repairs. A robust school accounting software should be able to help you track all these assets and inventories.

Advantages of Using School Accounting Software

Reports Generation – One of the benefits you can derive from using accounting software for your school is that it provides you with clear and visual reports on how your funds are utilized. This helps you improve transparency in your institution and encourage people who will want to donate funds for the school.
Cost-Effectiveness – With school accounting software, costs of hiring human labor can be reduced and efficiency can be improved.
Standardized and Accurate Data – Accurate financial data is very important if you want to achieve error-free results in your financial planning. And you can only do this with a good accounting software
Team Collaboration – This is very important as you’ll have to share your financial data and accounting tasks with relevant stakeholders in your school. You need a dedicated tool to give these stakeholders access to the data and allow them to collaborate on them, as well.

What to Consider When Choosing Education Accounting Software

Before you select an accounting software to select for your school, it is very important to ask yourself why you need the software, in the first place. Taking this and other factors into consideration will go a long way to helping you make an informed decision. So when you’re set to make the choice, consider the following factors:

Data Management Capabilities. This is very important so you know from the outset if the app can integrate your school’s records with your school’s accounting system and lets you manage all the information in one centralized system. Bottom-line here is that you want to ask yourself the question: “how efficient is the software in managing a large school database of school records, all in one centralized system”.
Integration with Other Software. You need to consider the ease of integrating your current software with your new school accounting software.
Ease of Use. You don’t want to spend so much time getting your team up and running with the accounting software. So you must consider this while selecting your school accounting tool.
Accounting Functions. Sinceyour primary objectives is to maintain accurate fund accounting ledgers for your business, it’s very important you give priority to this factor when selecting an accounting solution for your school accounting
Online Registration and fee processing functionalities. Since you’ll certainly be dealing with student’s course registration and fee payment processing, you should consider the capability of your chosen accounting software to do this.

Best Accounting Software For Schools

1. Aplos

Aplos is a web-based entity management software designed for schools, churches, and other non-profit-oriented organizations to help them in areas like fund accounting, donation management, and member management. As an all-inclusive tool, Aplos is highly customizable and, as such, it takes off your neck the complexity found with most accounting software and saves you lots of precious time on your school administration.

What We Like About Aplos

It’s easy to use
It has a flexible report manager
It’s a web-based tool, which makes using or accessing it on any device easy for you
It has a fund tracking feature and allows integration with your bank
It can be used as an event planner

Pricing

There are different pricing that Aplos offers you based on your business needs and affordability. There is Aplos Suite plan which starts at $29.50/month (promotional pricing). The Aplos Suite + Text to Give plan costs $39.50/month and it’s also their promotional pricing. The Aplos + Advanced Accounting is another plan that is also available for you to explore but this is only available on request. You can contact Aplos sales on their official website here for more information.

2. Sage Intacct

This accounting software is mainly designed for non-profit educational institutions to do their school accounting. As a financial management solution, Sage Intacct provides a spectrum of benefits such as easy management of your accounting and financial operations, real-time visibility into your school’s data, and smooth integration with other apps, secure cloud-based data, and quarterly updates of your system.

What We Like About Sage Intacct

GAAP- and FASB-compliant reports
Streamlined operations so you can improve your efficiency right from the start.
Real-time visual reports so you can have an insight of your receivables and so reduce them to the very minimum.
Seamless integration with multiple third-party applications

Pricing

Sage Intacct offers custom pricing plans to suit their customer’s needs and, as such, you can fill out their form and get the pricing of your choice here.

3. TeacherEase

TeacherEase is a cloud-based and all-inclusive financial management software designed especially for small to medium-sized schools for efficient and simplified school fund accounting. With this tool, there is so much you can do including payroll and human resources management, receivable and payable management, and budget planning, among others.

What We Like About TeacherEase

Easy-to-use and customizable budget planner
Intuitive Reports
Accounts payable and receivables tracking functionalities

Pricing

TeacherEase offers a variety of pricing plans based on active employees using the software. You can find out what pricing plan will best suit your employee needs here.

4. Ellucian

Ellucian is a financial management software with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) made for schools. It’s designed to help school administrators automate their workflows, fund accounting processes, accounts payable and receivable management, research, and budgeting, among many more. Ellucian offers other exciting features such as real-time financial reports, seamless procurement process, etc.

What We Like About Ellucian

Secure and robust database
Automated workflows

Pricing

Ellucian has no specific pricing as of the time of writing this review because their prices vary based on a number of factors such as features, training or support required, and more. So you can contact their sales for what will best suit your school’s needs.

5. Account Edge

AccountEdge is a school management software designed to cater to the needs of a small school or childcare facility managers or administrators. As an accounting software for daycares and schools, the tool helps you manage your finances. This covers all you have to do with tracking fees payments, process employee payroll, and recurring payments.

What We Like About AccountEdge

Automated tuition billing which makes managing recurring payments and billings very easy.
Secure online payment integration
Seamless payroll payment and tracking

Pricing

AccountEdge Pro plan starts at $499 and this is a one-off fee.

6. MyStudentProgress.com

MyStudentProgress.com is an exciting school information management solution designed by Pelagian Softwares to help school administrators in tasks like attendance management, invoice management, billing, procurement, and receiving, among others. It’s an accounting software specially designed for private PK-12 private, dioceses, and other schools.

What We Like About MyStudentProgress.com

Enhanced teacher-parents communication
Effective school attendance tracking
Breath-taking classroom and card report management

Pricing

MyStudentProgress.com pricing plan begins at $20.00 per month per feature.

7. Fedena

Most people like us, prefer school management software that lets them manage all their school administrative and academic processes from one centralized system. Fedena is an extensive school management app that will help you automate all your activities within the system. From automating your school’s daily workflows to generating information-rich reports and from collaborating with parents on their child’s performance to organizing online classes, there are limitless features Fedena can offer you. Most interestingly, the tool offers a 360-degree tracking feature so you’ll be able to keep a tab on your school productivity and quickly take a control measure to improve the situation if the need arises.

What We Like About Fedena

Real-time reports that gives you an insight into the school productivity
360-degree tracking functionality so you can quickly turn around the situation positively
Total cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) that makes handling all the processes hassle-free for you
ICSE- and CBSE-compliant
Advanced data security and recovery

Pricing

For more details about Fedena’s various pricing plans, and to choose the best plan for your school, kindly check out their official website here.

8. SlickPie

SlickPie offers the latest education system particularly designed to help students improve their knowledge and skills of accounting, finances, and technology. As an online education program, SlickPie provides students with the practical skills they will need to fit into the labor market by integrating technology into the school curriculum.

What We Like About SlickPie

Unrestricted and zero-cost access to the system upon registration
Cloud-based software which makes accessing it on any device easy
Benefits of learning practical skills for preparing your students for the workforce.

Pricing

SlickPie offers a free version for their users but they don’t offer a free trial. Their paid plan starts at $39.95 per year.

Wrapping Up On Best Accounting Software For Schools

The list can’t be exhausted as there are so many accounting software schools use for managing their funds and for other school administrative processes. The most important thing is you can’t go wrong choosing from the list above. Above all, the most important factor to put first is the features you like to have in your school accounting software. Once you get this right, you can then go ahead make a choice.