Coaching centre fee management — batches to receipts

The fee management challenge in coaching centres

A coaching centre with four subject batches of 40 students each has 160 students paying fees every month. The challenges stack up quickly:

• Different batches have different fee amounts and schedules
• Some students pay the full term in advance; others pay month by month
• Some students pay in installments and always have a partial outstanding balance
• Parents lose receipts and call to ask for duplicates before tax season
• Following up on dues consumes hours of staff time every month
• GST receipts must include correct CGST/SGST amounts and your institute's GSTIN

Managing all of this in a notebook or a shared spreadsheet is error-prone and does not scale. BillRaja's membership workspace was built for exactly this use case.

Setting up fee plans for each batch

Every batch at your centre has its own fee structure. In BillRaja, you define a Plan for each batch. A plan contains:

• Plan name — e.g., "Class 10 Science Morning Batch", "NEET Foundation Weekly", "English Speaking Monthly"
• Duration — monthly, quarterly, 6-month, or annual. A monthly plan renews every 30 days; an annual plan is paid once and covers 365 days.
• Fee amount — the base fee for the plan period
• Registration / admission fee — a one-time fee for new enrollments, separate from recurring fees
• Grace period — the number of days after the due date before a student's fee is marked overdue (typically 5–10 days for coaching centres)
• GST rate — confirm with your CA; most private coaching centres apply 18% GST on tuition fees

You can create as many plans as you have batches — there is no limit. You can also create sibling plans with the same fee but different durations: monthly and quarterly versions of the same batch for students who prefer different payment cycles.

Adding students and enrolling them in batches

With plans in place, add your students. For each student, BillRaja stores:

• Student's full name
• Mobile number (the parent's or the student's — used for WhatsApp reminders and the bill portal)
• Enrollment date
• Assigned plan (batch)
• Optional notes (e.g., scholarship status, sibling discount)

Once enrolled, BillRaja calculates the first due date from the enrollment date and the plan duration. The student appears in the Active list immediately.

If you are migrating from a spreadsheet, you can add students in bulk without entering each one separately. Go through your existing roster batch by batch and add each student to the correct plan.

Fee collection and receipt generation

When a student or parent pays — at the counter, by UPI, or by cheque — open BillRaja, find the student, and tap Collect Fee. Enter the amount received and the payment mode. BillRaja:

• Records the payment with date and mode
• Generates a GST invoice with a sequential BR-YYYY-NNNNN number
• Shows the CGST and SGST breakdown
• Updates the student's due date to the next period
• Shares the receipt as a PDF over WhatsApp or email with one tap

Handling installment payments

For students who cannot pay the full fee upfront, BillRaja supports partial payment recording. The first time a student pays a partial amount, BillRaja creates an invoice for the full fee and records the partial payment against it. The outstanding balance is visible at all times. When the student pays the remainder — in one or multiple further installments — you record each amount until the invoice is fully settled.

The student's status remains Active during the installment period. You can configure the grace period to give students a few days past the due date before marking them overdue.

Tracking dues: active, expiring and overdue

The BillRaja membership dashboard segments your students automatically:

• Active — fee is current. No action needed.
• Expiring Soon — fee due within 7 days (configurable). These students should receive a reminder before they fall overdue.
• Grace Period — fee is past due but within the grace window. Collect urgently; the student can still attend class.
• Overdue — beyond the grace period. You may wish to restrict access until payment is received, depending on your institute's policy.

From any segment you can send a WhatsApp message to selected students. BillRaja pre-fills a message with the student's name, plan, amount due and due date. You review and send. Most parents respond within the day.

Attendance tracking

BillRaja's membership workspace includes a daily attendance log. Each time a student attends, mark them present in the app. The attendance record is stored against the student's profile and you can view a calendar-style monthly report for each student.

Practical uses of attendance data in a coaching centre:

• Minimum attendance enforcement — many coaching centres require 75% attendance to sit for internal tests. BillRaja's report shows each student's attendance percentage at a glance.
• Parent communication — if a student's attendance drops, you can share the attendance report with parents via WhatsApp directly from the app.
• Dispute resolution — if a student or parent claims the student attended X sessions but the record shows fewer, the digital log is your evidence.
• Correlation with dues — students with low attendance and overdue fees are the highest dropout risk; prioritise their outreach.

Students accessing their own fee receipts

Parents frequently need duplicate fee receipts for:

• School fee reimbursement programs
• Section 80C tax deductions (some coaching fees qualify)
• Scholarship applications that require proof of educational spending
• Corporate HR portals for employee dependent education benefits

Instead of calling your office, parents can visit the customer bill portal at billraja.in/customer, enter the mobile number registered in BillRaja, verify with OTP, and download all past fee receipts as PDFs. No staff intervention needed, no waiting.

Month-end reporting for your accountant

At the end of each month, BillRaja generates a summary report with:

• Total fees billed for the month
• Total fees collected
• Outstanding dues carried forward
• GST collected (CGST + SGST or IGST) for GSTR filing

Export this report and hand it to your chartered accountant. No separate accounting software needed for the GST summary. All underlying invoices are stored in BillRaja's cloud and accessible any time — even years later if required for a tax audit.

Common coaching centre fee management mistakes

• Issuing handwritten or non-GST receipts — if you are GST registered, every fee collection must be accompanied by a proper tax invoice. Handwritten receipts that omit CGST/SGST amounts are not compliant.
• Using the same plan for batches with different fees — create a distinct plan per batch. This ensures the correct fee is collected every time and the right GST amount is calculated.
• Not recording the mobile number at enrollment — the mobile number is how students find their receipts in the bill portal. A missing or wrong number means they cannot self-serve.
• Letting installment balances accumulate untracked — check the outstanding dues report weekly rather than monthly. Small balances compound into large write-offs if ignored.