EduLead

What EduLead is

One place to run your school: the students, the fees, the marks, and what you tell parents. Built for Ghanaian schools.

Three doors

Everybody uses the same system, but each group has its own way in. Give people the right link and they never see the others.

And two apps

The three doors above are web pages, and they need a connection. Two apps do not: they keep a copy of what they need and send up what they recorded when the network comes back. Which matters, because the network does drop, and a queue at a counter does not wait for it.

More about the desktop app in The desktop app.

You only get what you switch on

EduLead comes in parts, and a part you have not switched on does not appear anywhere. A day school never sees boarding. A school with no canteen never sees the till.

Setting up your school

Do these in order. Each one needs the one before it, so skipping around creates work you have to undo.

1. 1. Your school's details

   Settings → School Profile. Name, address, phone, and your logo and colours. These go on every report card, ID card, bill and certificate you print, so get the logo in now.

2. 2. Switch on what you use

   Settings → Modules. Tick only what your school actually does. You can come back and add more later; anything unticked stays out of the way.

3. 3. Terms

   Terms. Add the current term and mark it as current. Almost everything hangs off this: attendance, marks, bills and reports all ask "which term".

4. 4. Departments, then levels, then classes

   A department is a stage of school — Primary, JHS, the creche. A level is a year within it — Basic 1, JHS 2. A class is a room of children in that level — 4B, 4G. Build them in that order.

5. 5. Which days you teach

   Settings → Academic Management → School Days. Most schools leave this as Monday to Friday. A weekend madrasa ticks only Saturday and Sunday. Attendance counts and per-day fees both use it, so a wrong answer here quietly wrongs a lot of numbers.

6. 6. Subjects

   Add your subjects, then attach them to the classes that take them.

7. 7. Students

   Add them one at a time, or import a spreadsheet. Adding a student puts them in a class for the current term.

8. 8. Staff and their logins

   Manage Staff, then Users to give them a login and a role. See Staff and who sees what.

Signing in

Go to app.eduleadgh.com, enter your email and password. Forgotten it? Use Forgot password on the sign-in page — it emails you a link. If no email arrives, ask your administrator to check the address on your user record.

On a phone, and on the counter

Teachers and parents can use the EduLead app instead of the website, with the same sign-in. And if the fees desk or the canteen has an unreliable connection, install EduLead Desk on that machine — it keeps working with the network down. Download it.

Students and classes

Where the children live in the system, and how they move from one year to the next.

How it fits together

Department (Primary) holds levels (Basic 1–6), a level holds classes (4B, 4G), and a class holds students. A student being in a class for a term is called an enrolment, and it is the enrolment that attendance, marks and bills all attach to.

Adding a student

1. Students → New student
2. Fill in the name, date of birth and admission number
3. Choose the class. That creates the enrolment for you
4. Add the parent under Guardians on the student, or link an existing one

Got a spreadsheet? Use Import on the students list. Download the template first, fill it in, and upload it. Rows with problems are reported back to you and the rest still go in.

Day or boarding

If your school has boarders, each student is marked day or boarding. You can set it on the student, change it from the list with Update student type, or do a whole group at once. There is a filter on the list to show one or the other.

Moving up a year

At the end of the year, use Promotions. Pick the class, pick where they are going, and confirm. Children who are repeating are left where they are.

For the ones leaving school, use Graduations. That is also what prints their certificates.

A student who leaves

Do not delete them — you would lose their marks, their payments and their history. Set their status to transferred or withdrawn instead. They drop off your active lists and everything they did stays on record.

Attendance and the school day

Who came in, and what the timetable says should be happening.

Taking the register

1. Open Attendance and choose your class and the date
2. Everyone starts marked present
3. Change the few who are not, and save

Starting from "everyone came" is deliberate. On a normal day you touch two or three names instead of thirty.

Teachers can also do this in the phone app, which is the point of the app: it works with no network in the classroom and sends the register up when the phone finds signal again.

Holidays

Add them under Holidays. A day marked as a holiday is not counted against anybody's attendance, and does not appear on the timetable.

Timetable

Two steps, and the first is easy to forget:

1. Generate Time Periods — say when your periods start and end, and how long break is. Do this once. There are ready-made patterns to start from, including one for a preschool day
2. Timetables — put a subject and a teacher in each slot, class by class

Timetable Viewer shows the finished thing, by class or by teacher, and prints. Parents and teachers can see it in the app too.

Exam timetables

Kept separately under Exam Timetables, because exam weeks do not follow the normal day. Build it the same way and it shows to parents alongside the ordinary one.

Marks and reports

Entering marks, and turning them into the report card a parent reads.

Set these up once

1. SBA Categories — the pieces a mark is made of, and what each is worth. A common split is class work 30% and exam 70%. Say which one is the exam, because the report card treats it differently
2. Grading Schemes — the bands. 80–100 is an A, and so on. You can have a different scheme per department, so JHS and Primary need not share one

Entering marks

Use Grading Entry. Pick the class, the subject and the category, and type down the list. It saves as you go.

Cumulative Entry is the same thing with every category on one screen, which suits a teacher catching up on a whole term at once. Teachers can also enter marks in the app.

Remarks

The class teacher's and head's comments go under Remarks. You can keep a list of ones you use often and pick from it instead of retyping.

Report cards

1. Open Terminal Reports
2. Choose the class and the term
3. Generate, check one on screen, then print or download the lot

They come out in your school's colours with your logo on them. Parents see the same report in the portal and the app, so you do not have to hand every one out.

The little ones

A creche or nursery child does not get marks out of a hundred. They get a checklist instead: can they hold a pencil, do they share, do they answer to their name.

1. Child Development → Development Report — decide what you want to ask about. Group the questions into areas
2. Development Entry — the teacher works down the list per child. There is a button to fill the rest in one go when most answers are the same

Fees and payments

What each child owes, and taking the money.

Set these up first

1. Fee Types — the things you charge for: tuition, feeding, books, PTA. For each one you say
   • how often — every term, once a year, or once ever
   • who — tick boarding fee and only boarders are charged it
2. Fee Rates — how much, per level. Basic 1 pays one figure and JHS 3 another. Leave the level blank and it applies to everybody

Raising bills

From Bills, use Generate Bills. Pick the class and the term and it works out each child's lines from the rates you set. Anything unpaid from last term is carried on as arrears.

You get a preview before anything is saved. Read it once on the first class you do — it is far easier than unpicking a wrong bill afterwards.

Taking money

Collect Fees is the counter screen. Find the child, see what they owe, enter what they are paying, print the receipt.

Parents can also pay from the portal or the app by mobile money or card. Those payments appear against the bill by themselves — nobody has to key them in.

When a child should not be charged

Use Fee Exclusions for a staff child or a scholarship — the fee simply never appears on their bill. Use Student Discounts to take a percentage or an amount off instead. Discounts show on the bill so a parent can see what they were given.

Paying by instalments

Instalment Plans splits a bill into agreed dates. Standing Orders takes an amount automatically each month from a parent who has set that up.

Knowing where you stand

Fees Dashboard for the term at a glance. Fees Analytics for who owes what, which you can download as a spreadsheet to work through. Student Fees Breakdown answers one parent's question about one child.

Canteen and wallet

Children buy lunch with a card instead of cash. Parents top the card up and can see what was bought.

Setting it up

1. Outlets — each counter you sell from. Most schools have one, called the canteen
2. Product Categories — Meals, Drinks, Stationery
3. Products — what you sell, and the price
4. Wallets — each child gets one. Top up at the office or the parent does it from the app

Cooked food and shelf items

When you add a product you say which it is, and it matters. A cooked dish is only on sale on the days it is on the menu, and what is left at closing is gone. A shelf item — water, biscuits, exercise books — is on sale every day and its count carries over.

Buying in cartons, selling by the piece

Stock is counted in what you sell: sachets, not cartons. But nobody buys sachets. So on the product you can say bought as a carton and how many in one.

Then Receive stock asks for cartons, shows you what that comes to before you save, and adds the right number of sachets. Enter the cost per carton and it works out the cost per sachet for you. Buying a few loose is still one tap away.

Menus

Optional. Switch on Plan menus in Canteen & Wallet settings if the kitchen cooks to a weekly plan.

• Menu — lay out the week. Copy last week saves retyping five days to change one
• Sittings — breakfast, lunch, snack and supper. Tick what you serve. A boarding school gets supper without asking
• Kitchen list — how many of each dish to cook today, counted from what parents chose

At the counter

Canteen staff use /pos and see nothing else. Fill the basket, scan the card, charge. Three actions.

The child's photo comes up before anything is charged, which is the honest answer to a borrowed card — a server who can see the face does not need a PIN a seven-year-old will forget. If the child has an allergy recorded, it comes up in red at the same moment.

Spending limits

Set a daily cap for the whole school in Canteen & Wallet settings, or per child on Wallets. Parents can set their own child's cap from the app. Leave it empty for no cap; set it to zero to stop the card buying anything.

Reports

Download report on the Sales, Products and Wallets screens, as a spreadsheet or a PDF. Sales by day, by product or by counter; stock on hand and what it is worth; wallet balances and every top-up and purchase.

Boarding

Which room each boarder sleeps in. Five screens, and you only really use two of them.

Setting up, once

1. Buildings & blocks — add the building, then its blocks inside it. No blocks in your building? Add one named after the building and put the rooms in that
2. Rooms — the room number and how many it sleeps. That number is all you need; individual beds are not tracked, because "Room A1, sleeps 4" is the same fact without four more rows to keep

Got a lot of them? Import on Buildings takes a spreadsheet, one row per room. Download the template first.

Putting a child in a room

1. Open Boarders
2. Find the child and choose Assign a room
3. Pick the room and the date they move in

The list reads Unity House · Block A · Room 101 (2/4) — the building, the block, the room, and how many are in it out of how many it sleeps. You can choose without knowing room numbers by heart.

Moving a child is the same action. Choose Move room, pick the new one, and the old one is closed off for you. They are never in two rooms and never in none. Use Check out when they stop boarding; the stay stays on their record.

You do not redo this every term

A room assignment has a start date and runs until you change it. A child who stays in the same room for three terms is entered once.

Charging for it

Through ordinary fees, not here. Make a fee type, tick boarding fee, and set how often you charge it — per term or once a year. See Fees and payments. Where a child sleeps and what you charge them are kept apart on purpose: you can move a child between rooms without touching a bill.

Repairs

Maintenance logs a broken window or a blocked drain against the room, with who reported it and whether it is done.

Going home mid-term

That is Exeat, a separate part you switch on alongside boarding. A boarder is signed out and signed back in, and the dashboard shows who is away and who is overdue. Their teacher sees it too, so nobody marks a child absent who is signed out.

Health, activities and safety

The things about a child that are not marks or money.

Allergies

Open Health & Allergies, find the child, and fill in what they are allergic to and any long-term condition. There is a filter to list everybody in the school who has one.

Once it is in, it shows up wherever somebody needs it:

• on the child's profile, near the top
• at the canteen till, in red, the moment the card is scanned
• on the emergency screen if you run a sickbay

Better still, let the parent keep it current. They can fill it in themselves from the portal or the app, and they are the only ones who know when it changes. The system nudges any parent who has not. An allergy list a year out of date is worse than none, because it is believed.

Sickbay

If you run one, switch on Sickbay. You get a visit log, consultations, and an inventory for medicines going in and out. A parent is shown when their child is in the sickbay and what was done.

Clubs and practices

Football practice, the debate club, choir. Open Activities and answer four questions: what, when, who, where.

For who, pick a class and everybody is ticked — untick the ones who are not in it. Pick a second class to add more; the ticks you already made stay. That is the whole point: nobody ticks fourteen boxes from scratch.

Tick repeats weekly for something that happens every Thursday, and give it an end date. One entry, not fifty.

Parents of the children in it see it on their dashboard and in the app. Only those parents — there is no reason to tell a family their child is not expected at football.

Who may collect a child

Switch on Student Safety and you get Pickup Authorizations — the named people allowed to collect a particular child — and Student Movements, a log of them leaving and coming back. Parents can see and manage their own list from the app.

Parents

What parents can see for themselves, and how you reach the ones who need reaching.

Giving a parent access

1. Open the student and add the parent under Guardians, with their email and phone
2. Under Users, create their login and link it to that guardian record
3. Send them family.eduleadgh.com, or tell them to get the app

One parent can have several children, including at different schools, and switches between them. They see their own children and nobody else's.

What they can see

• Bills, what has been paid, and pay by mobile money or card
• Report cards and marks
• Attendance, day by day
• The timetable, and the school calendar
• Wallet balance, top-ups, and every canteen purchase
• Their child's meal choice for the week, where you plan menus
• Medical details, which they fill in themselves
• Where their child sleeps, if boarding
• Messages from the school

The app

Search for EduLead, or send a parent one of these links. It does what the portal does, and it holds on to what it has when the network drops. Teachers use the same app to take the register and enter marks.

They sign in with the same email or phone number and password as the portal — there is no separate account to set up.

Messages

Switch on Communication and you can write to parents from Messages — a whole class, a level, or the whole school.

• Message Templates — the ones you send every term, saved. Write once, use every time
• SMS credit — what you have left, if you send texts

Messages reach parents in the portal and the app. Texts and email go out as well if you have those switched on and configured under Settings → Communication.

The school calendar

Events holds speech day, mid-term break, PTA meetings. Anything you mark as visible to guardians shows on their dashboard and in the app. You do not need the messaging module for the calendar — whether you send texts has nothing to do with whether you have a sports day.

Cards, certificates and applications

The things you print, and how new families apply.

ID cards

Set the look once under ID Card Settings, then print as many as you like.

• Which details go on it — gender, level, department, programme, admission date, class, date of birth. Add and remove them, and drag them into the order you want
• Colours and logo — taken from your school profile, so a card matches your report cards without setting anything twice
• How long it lasts — the "Valid" dates. Leave it empty and a card runs until the child finishes their department: a JHS 1 card for three years, a JHS 3 card for one. Or set a fixed number of years for every card

The preview beside the settings shows a real student's card and updates as you change things. Use it — it is much cheaper than a printed batch you have to bin.

Then go to Student ID Cards, generate for a class or the whole school, and download. Each card carries a code that can be checked against the school, so a card can be verified without a login.

Graduation certificates

Set the wording and the layout under Certificate Settings — there are several designs, portrait and landscape. Your logo and colours again come from the school profile.

Record the leavers under Graduations, then print or download them, one at a time or the whole year at once.

Online applications

Switch on Online Applications and you get a public form new families can fill in without an account.

1. Application Forms — decide what to ask and which fields are required
2. Share the link. It sits at /applications/your-school
3. Applications — read what comes in, accept or decline

Accepting one turns the application into a student, so you are not typing the same details a second time.

Staff and who sees what

Two different things, and mixing them up is the usual cause of "I cannot see the screen".

Adding someone who will use the system

1. Manage Staff → add them, with their department
2. Users → create the login and link it to that staff record
3. Give them a role

Roles

A role is a set of screens. Everything in EduLead is closed until a role opens it, which is why a new screen is invisible until somebody grants it.

• Administrator — everything
• Teacher — their classes: attendance, marks, remarks
• Bursar or accounts — fees and payments
• Canteen — the till only

Who may use the desktop app

EduLead Desk has two halves and each is its own permission on the role, because they are two different jobs:

• Offline fees — for whoever sits at the fees desk
• Offline till — for whoever stands at the canteen or tuck shop counter

A canteen role deliberately holds the till and nothing else. Selling a child lunch is no reason to be able to read what their parents owe, so the fee screens are not merely hidden from it — they are not granted.

Departments

Staff can be limited to their own department, so a Primary teacher is not looking through JHS. Set the department on the staff record.

Payroll

Under Human Resource, if you use it. Set up earnings and deductions and the tax rules once, put the recurring ones on each staff member, then run a payroll run each month and print payslips. Salaries post through to Accounting on their own.

The desktop app, for when there is no internet

EduLead Desk is a Windows program for the two counters that cannot stop when the network does: the fees desk and the canteen.

What it does

Setting it up

1. Install it on the machine that sits on the counter
2. Sign in once while there is internet — it needs one connection to learn which school it belongs to and fetch the records
3. After that, it does not need the network again until you want to sync

Light or dark

There is a switch on the sidebar. A counter under a window in the morning and in a back room by the afternoon is the same laptop, and the choice is remembered on that machine.

Keeping it current

It does not update itself. When a new version is out, download it from the same page and install over the top — nothing recorded on the machine is touched. Sync before you do, so anything still waiting has gone up first.

Settings

You set these once. Most schools never come back to them.

Modules — switching things on

The most useful screen in Settings. Each module is one part of the system, and switching it off hides it completely — menu, screens and all.

So a day school turns off Boarding and never sees a room again. A school with no canteen turns off Canteen. No sickbay, no Sickbay.

Two of them are what let EduLead Desk sign in at all: Offline Fees for the fees desk and Offline Till for the counters. With the module off, an account holding the permission still cannot open that half — which is the right way round, because it is the school that decides whether money may be taken on a laptop that is not talking to the server.

School Profile

Your name, logo, contact details and colours. Worth doing properly on day one, because everything else borrows from it: report cards, ID cards, certificates, the parent portal, the sign-in page.

• Logo — the square one, for cards and reports. The horizontal one is for page headers
• Primary and secondary colour — set these and the whole system takes your school's colours
• Short name — the abbreviation, for places too small for the full name

Academic Management

Four things here matter:

• School Days — the days you actually teach. Get this right or every attendance percentage is wrong, because a school that runs Monday to Friday and one that runs Saturdays are counting out of different totals. A weekend madrasa sets Saturday and Sunday only
• Student ID — let the system number new students for you, and set the prefix
• Student Type Display — whether the day-or-boarding column shows in student lists. A day-only school hides it and stops looking at a column that always says the same thing
• Class capacity — a maximum per class, and whether to refuse enrolment once it is reached

Take a register for each activity session is also here — see Health, activities and safety.

Assessment Management

What a report card looks like. Pick the style, then choose whether to show class position, the class teacher's comment, the head teacher's comment.

The labels are yours to change — if you say "Form Master" rather than "Class Teacher", write that. Choose the Arabic style for a madrasa and you can fill in both languages side by side.

Finance

Your currency, and what your office accepts — cash, mobile money, bank transfer.

Accept payments online is the one that takes real setting up: a provider account, the keys they give you, and where the money should be paid out. Use Check this account to confirm the payout number is right before any money moves, and Test connection to confirm the keys work. Both are safer than finding out on a Friday afternoon.

Accounting settings say which ledger account each kind of money lands in. Set them once and fee payments, salaries and expenses post themselves.

Communication

Which ways you reach parents: in-app notifications, email, text messages, WhatsApp. Each is a separate switch, and off means nothing is sent and nothing is charged.

In-app notifications cost nothing and need no setting up, so start there. Text messages need credit and a sender name registered with the networks — ask us and we will do it. Email needs your provider's keys.

What we text about lets you choose the occasions — a new bill, a payment received, an absence — so you are not paying for messages you did not want. There is a Send a test message button; use it before you trust any of it.

Canteen & Wallet

• Plan menus — off means the till just sells; on means you set what is cooked each day
• Let parents choose — parents pick their child's meal from the week's menu
• Changes close at — the kitchen counts heads in the morning, so choices lock after this time
• Default daily limit — how much a new card may spend in a day. Change it for one child on their wallet
• Offline overdraft cap — how far below zero a till may go while it cannot reach the server

Security

Password rules, how often passwords must change, and whether admin users need a second step to sign in. Sensible defaults are already set.

ID cards and certificates

These have their own screens rather than living in Settings — see Cards, certificates and applications.