Many schools in Ghana run on Excel, and for a small school that is a fair start: it is familiar and costs nothing. The trouble starts as the school grows.
Where Excel breaks down
- Several copies. The bursar’s fee file and the head’s class list disagree, and nobody knows which is right.
- Report cards. Formulas get copied wrongly, positions are worked out by hand, and one mistake means reprinting a class.
- Fees. Every payment has to be typed in, matched to a learner and receipted separately.
- Parents. Parents cannot see anything without calling the school.
- Safety. A lost laptop or a broken flash drive can take a term’s records with it.
Signs it is time to switch
- More than one person needs to update the same records.
- Report cards take more than a few days at the end of term.
- You cannot say, today, how much is owed and by whom.
- Parents call to ask things the school already knows.
Moving without starting over
You do not have to retype everything. A good system imports learners, parents, staff and fee balances from your existing Excel files, and lets you download everything back to Excel whenever you want.
How Fusadems does it
Fusadems imports your learners from a spreadsheet, keeps one set of records for the office, teachers and parents, and exports to Excel at any time. It is free for schools. Book a demo.
Questions schools ask
Is Excel enough to manage a school?
For a very small school it can be a start, but it breaks down with several users, report cards, fee tracking and keeping parents informed.
Can we move our Excel records into school management software?
Yes. Learners, parents, staff and fee balances can usually be imported from Excel, and a good system lets you export them back.