Fee Management System

Stripe or Razorpay can collect a payment, but they cannot generate the fee structure, apply scholarships, compute late fees, send reminders, track partial payments, post to GL, or generate aging reports tied to the student record. According to a 2023 NACUBO survey, 78% of US HEIs use a fee management system layered on payment gateways. OpenEduCat is that management layer — Stripe/Razorpay (or any of 25+ gateways) handle the card transaction; openeducat_fees handles everything else.

Yes. Front-desk cash collection logged via the cashier role; receipt printed/emailed instantly. Bank transfer with reference number tracked; auto-reconciled when bank statement imports. Demand-draft / cheque tracked with bounce handling. Many Indian institutions still see 30-40% offline collection — fully supported alongside online.

Parent or student submits scholarship application via portal (or admin uploads bulk). Configurable approval chain (e.g., scholarship committee → principal → trust board, or single-step approval for sibling discount). Approved scholarship auto-adjusts the fee structure for the academic year; audit log tracks who approved when and on what basis. Government scholarship (e.g., India post-matric SC/ST) workflow integrates with state portals where supported.

Yes. Configurable late-fee rules per institution policy: typical "INR 50/day after 7-day grace period, capped at INR 1,500" or "USD 25 flat after 15-day grace period, recurring monthly". Auto-applied on overdue balance. Parent visibility via portal. Optional restriction policies (block library/exam-hall-ticket if fees overdue > X days) per institution policy. Aging analysis (current / 30 / 60 / 90+ days) generated live.

Fees billed in the parent's currency (institution-configured per program or per parent country). FX rate refreshed daily from configurable source (institution bank, fixerio, exchangerate-host, etc.). Payment gateway routing per parent country — Stripe for Western Europe, Razorpay for India, Paystack for Africa, MidTrans for Indonesia. Bank settlement in institution base currency. GL posting in base currency with FX gain/loss tracked.

PCI-DSS scope is minimised because card data never touches OpenEduCat or institution servers. All card-on-file and one-time card payments process via PCI-DSS-Level-1-certified gateway (Stripe, Razorpay, etc.); only a tokenised reference is stored. For institutions requiring formal compliance attestation, Enterprise Edition hosted on SOC 2 Type II infrastructure available. Self-host deployments retain PCI-DSS-SAQ-A scope (the simplest tier) by relying on gateway-hosted card-input.

Yes. Parent portal aggregates all children's outstanding fees; parent selects which to pay (full, partial, by child) and pays once. Receipt covers all selected fees with per-child breakdown. Sibling-discount logic applied automatically. Saves time vs separate logins per child.

Withdrawal refund policy configured per institution (typical: 70-80% refund if withdrawn before 30 days into term, sliding scale thereafter, 0% after a cutoff date). Refund computation automatic on withdrawal workflow. Refund processed to original payment method where gateway supports refunds (Stripe, Razorpay, PayPal, etc.), or paper cheque otherwise. Audit trail preserved for regulator inspection.