The ledger

Underneath the fee system is a full accounting ledger. Fee transactions post to it automatically; this section is where the structure is defined and where anything that does not come from fees is entered.

Chart of accounts

Go to Finance → Chart of Accounts.

Accounts grouped by type, with their codes and active status.

Each account has a code, a name and a type — asset, liability, income, expense or equity. The type decides which statement the account appears in and how it behaves at year end.

Set the chart up once, with your accountant, before the first transaction. Restructuring a chart with a year of postings behind it means re-mapping history.

Account groups

Groups collect accounts for reporting — all staff costs, all utilities — so the income and expenditure statement reads as a summary with detail underneath rather than as eighty lines.

Bank accounts

Finance → Bank Accounts holds the school’s accounts.

Each card shows an account’s bank, account number and current balance.

Record the bank, branch, account name and number, and the ledger account it maps to.

Staff with View bank accounts can open the account cards, inspect balances and date filtered statements, and print or export those statements. Account creation and editing, opening balances and transfers remain finance-administrator actions. Assign the specialised role under Settings → Users → Rights → Finance.

Manual journals

Finance → Manual Journal posts directly to the ledger: accruals, prepayments, depreciation, corrections and opening balances.

A journal must balance — total debits equal total credits — and will not save otherwise. Record a narration on every line. “Adjustment” is not a narration; “Reverse Feb accrual for KPLC, invoice 88231” is.

Caution

Manual journals bypass the fee and procurement controls, so they are the most powerful screen in the module. Restrict the role that can post them, and review them in the audit trail as a matter of routine.

Bank reconciliation

Finance → Bank Reconciliation matches the ledger against the bank statement.

Reconciliations are listed by account and statement period.

1. Choose the bank account and the statement period.
2. Enter the closing balance from the statement.
3. Tick off the transactions that appear on both sides.
4. Investigate what is left.

What remains unticked is one of:

• Timing — a cheque issued but not presented, or a deposit banked after the statement date. These clear themselves next period.
• Missing from ShuleOne — bank charges, interest, a direct transfer nobody receipted. Post these, usually as other income or a journal.
• Missing from the bank — money receipted but never banked. Stop and investigate before doing anything else.
• An error — a wrong amount on one side. Correct it by reversal, not by editing.

Reconcile monthly. A reconciliation left until year end is a much harder piece of work than twelve small ones, and it delays finding the problems that matter.

Budgets

Finance → Budgets sets a budget per account for the financial year and reports actual against it.

The current Budgets screen, with an action to create a budget.

Budgets are set at the start of the year against the chart of accounts. The value is in reviewing them monthly rather than at year end — a line running 40% over in March can still be corrected.

Finance settings

Finance → Settings controls the module’s behaviour: receipt and invoice numbering, whether one-time codes are required, allocation rules across voteheads, and the default accounts new voteheads map to.

Numbering in particular should be set before the first receipt is issued and left alone afterwards.