How to bill students for a one-off charge

Some fees do not belong in a fee structure: a science trip, a hospital bill the school paid for a boarder, a lost library book, a replacement uniform. A charge bills one student, a group of students or a whole class a single amount, once. Each student gets an ordinary fee due, so it is paid, receipted and reminded about like any other fee. Raising one takes about ten minutes.

Before you start

You need permission to manage fees, which is usually the accountant or school admin. The Charges tab does not appear without it, because a charge can carry a private reason such as a medical bill.

You also need a one-time fee category. Charges can only be filed under one. Go to Fees → Categories, click Add category, and set Frequency to One Time: for example Medical, Trip or Damage. If you open the New charge form without one, it says so and takes you straight to this form.

Step 1 — Start a new charge

Go to Fees and open the Charges tab. It lists every charge, newest first, with how much has been collected. Click New charge.

To bill a single student, there is a shortcut: on the Fee dues tab, open the row's menu and choose Add a one-off charge. The form opens with that student already chosen.

Step 2 — Enter the details

Field	What to enter
Title	What it is for, such as Science trip. Parents see this in the app.
Category	One of your one-time categories.
Amount per student (₹)	The default amount. You can change it for individual students later in this form.
Due date	Today or later. A past date is refused.
Tell parents now	Ticked by default. Untick it to raise the charge without sending any notification; parents still see it in the app.
Reason (optional)	An explanation for the family.

Parents can read the reason inside the app, but it is never put in a push notification, SMS or email. The notification says only that a new fee of a given amount is due for the child, and the title is not in it either. Anything sensitive stays inside the app.

Click Next.

Step 3 — Choose who is billed

Pick one of three ways:

• Classes — tick one or more classes. Use Limit to to bill only Boarders only or Day scholars only from them.
• Specific students — type at least two letters of a name, click Add beside the student, and repeat. Remove anyone with the cross on their name.
• Whole school — every active student. You see the full list before anything is created, and Limit to works here too.

Only active students are billed. Click Next.

Step 4 — Review and create

The review is the system's own preview: exactly who will be billed, and for how much. Check it.

• To leave a student out, click the cross at the end of their row.
• To bill one student a different amount, type it in their Amount (₹) box. Leave the box empty to use the default.
• Two warnings can appear. "N students have no linked parent, so nobody will be notified for them" means those students are still billed, but nobody receives a notification. "N are already billed under a charge with this title and due date" is a hint that you may be repeating a charge.

The button at the bottom states the result, for example Bill 15 students · ₹21,800.00. Click it. One charge can bill up to 2,000 students; split a bigger group into several charges. Pressing the button twice, or retrying after a poor connection, cannot bill anyone twice.

What happens next

The charge opens, showing Billed, Collected and Still owed, and a row for every student. If you left Tell parents now ticked, each student's parents receive a notification, one per child. Notifications go out in the app, by push and by email. SMS is not available yet.

On the parent's phone, the due appears on the Fees tab marked One-off charge, with your reason beneath it. They pay it like any other fee.

On your side, the dues appear on the Fee dues tab with a One-off tag. Record cash, cheque, UPI or bank-transfer payments, send payment links and print receipts exactly as in How to track fee dues and collect payments. Overdue reminders pick them up automatically. They follow the student's oldest overdue fee, so a student already being reminded about tuition hears about the charge in the next reminder instead of getting a separate one. No late fee is added to a charge.

Changing a charge afterwards

Open the charge from the Charges tab.

To	Do this
Correct the title, reason or due date	Edit details. A new due date applies to students who still owe money; those who have paid in full keep theirs.
Bill someone you forgot, or a new joiner	Add students. Anyone already on the charge, including a student you cancelled, is skipped. Not possible once the due date has passed or the charge is cancelled.
Bill one student a different amount	The row's menu, then Change amount. It can never go below what the student has already paid.
Cancel one student's fee	The row's menu, then Cancel this fee. For a fee split into installments the item reads Cancel what is still owed and cancels what remains of the whole plan; Change amount is not offered for it.
Cancel everything still owed	Cancel what is still owed. A reason is required, and it cannot be undone.

Cancelling never takes back money. What a student has paid stays paid and keeps its receipt; a part-paid fee closes at the amount collected, and a fee nobody paid on disappears from the parent's list. Cancelled fees stay visible under Fee dues → Cancelled. A student who has paid in full is never cancelled.

If a parent started paying within the last 30 minutes, the change waits, because they may be mid-payment: "A payment for this fee was started in the last 30 minutes and may still be in progress. Try again shortly." Try again in a few minutes. A payment link or checkout that was abandoned for longer than that is closed for you.

Common problems

"None of your categories are one-time." Add a category with Frequency set to One Time (see Before you start).

"The due date cannot be in the past." Choose today or a later date.

"No students match this selection." The classes you chose have no active students, or everyone was left out. Go back and change the selection.

"These students are not active: …" A student chosen by name has left the school. Remove them.

"This selection has N students; the limit is 2000. Split it into several charges." Raise the charge for part of the school, then again for the rest.

"… has already been paid, so the amount cannot be lower than that." Change the amount to at least what has been collected, or cancel the remainder instead.

"This fee was cancelled; there is nothing to pay." You tried to record a payment on a cancelled fee. Nothing was changed.

"Every student has already paid or been cancelled; there is nothing left to cancel." The charge is fully collected, so there is nothing to cancel.

What to do next

• Collect and receipt the payments: How to track fee dues and collect payments.
• Learn how Fee Management and Fee Receipts fit together.