The Sematime Finances quick start guide
You have just finished activating your Sematime Finances account. Good job! Now lets take a look at the top five essential functions you need to master and become a pro user.
Exiting demo mode
After familiarizing yourself with how the service works, it is now time to start adding your own school data. To do that, click the red 'Exit Demo' button as shown below.
The system will prompt you to confirm that you indeed want to exit demo mode and consequently delete the demo data; click 'Yes, remove' to proceed. This will launch the 'Sematime Finances' setup process where you will be expected setup your classes, import opening balances, etc.
If you have already setup your classes in Sematime Academics then you do not need to setup classes, academic years etc. Neither do you need to re-admit students as explained in step 2 below.
To add opening fee balances, we need an Excel file with: student ID(admission number), student name and the amount - see the image below. Fee balances greater than zero are converted to invoices while those less than zero are converted to prepayments.
Click 'Next' to proceed, add your voteheads plus school bank accounts and finally 'Finish' the setup process.
Admitting students
If you are coming from Sematime Academics, there is no need to re-admit students as their records are also available in Sematime Finances. If not admitted, then here is how to do it. Go to the 'Students' view and click the 'Admit New Students' button.
There are two ways to add new students: importing from an Excel file or adding manually one-by-one. If you choose to import from an Excel file, you need to have three columns: student ID(admission number), full name and** parent's phone number(optional).** On clicking the 'Admit New Students', you will be prompted to select your Excel file then shown a preview of the students data. Make any necessary changes to this data and click 'Add Students' to save. Repeat this process for all the classes.
Adding school fees payments
There are two ways you add payments: importing from an Excel file or adding them manually by keying-in one by one. The Excel file option is the one you'll be using mostly to import payments data from M-PESA paybill and bank statements. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Payments' from the menu then click the '+ New Payments' button.
The system will prompt you to upload your Excel file either by drag-and-drop from your computer to the dotted area or clicking the 'Choose File' button.
Your file needs to have 4 mandatory columns: student ID(admission number), amount, reference and date paid. We recommend dates to be in these formats: dd/MM/yyyy or dd-MM-yyyy.
After uploading, the system will generate a preview of the data extracted from your file - verify and ensure everything is well then proceed to 'Add Payments'. Your payments have been added successfully, current balances updated and a receipt sent to the parent acknowledging their payment plus new student balance.
Generating new invoices
You need to invoice parents at the beginning of the term for school fees payments, bus transport costs, special meals, school tours etc. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Invoices' from the menu then click the '+ New Invoices' button.
The first step is to specify academic year, term and the due date for your invoices. Then proceed to input the voteheads you are billing students for - specify both unit cost and quantity. Remember to also input a brief description of what you are invoicing for.
On the last step, specify the students that you are invoicing - you can enter class names, individual student names or admission numbers or student group names in the area highlighted in green. Check the 'Send SMS message...' box to send parents a text message of the invoice plus new fees balance.
Your invoices have now been created, student balances updated and if there were any students with prepayments their new fee balance has been reduced as well.
Generating student's fees statement and other reports
Occasionally you may need to print school fees statements for a student showing invoices(debits) plus payments(credits) and how their fee balances was arrived at. Your school head may also need a weekly report on student fee balances by class, payments made per day etc.
To generate these reports, go to 'Home' view and select 'Reports' from the menu then choose the kind of report you want as shown by the red box. We provide options to download or print reports.
How to send fee balance reminders to parents
Reminding parents occasionally of their fee balances is a great way to increase school fees collections. Sematime makes it very easy to do so via SMS messages. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Balances' from the menu then go to 'Balances Actions' and choose 'Send Reminders'.
Start by specifying the criteria to use to filter student fee balances. For example, you can choose to only send balances of students with more than KES 1,000 - see the red box area below. In addition, you may also limit the sending of balances to students from a specific year group and/or stream. Optionally, you can append an extra message to each SMS, for example, instructions on how to pay.
After sending your message, you will get a delivery report summary. At first, all the messages will be in the '**Pending'** status but will gradually get updated to either 'Delivered' or 'Failed' based on the delivery confirmation report we get from the mobile network operator e.g Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom etc.
You can then click on 'View Report' to see a detailed delivery report for each parent. Come with us to the next section to understand more about SMS message delivery reports.
At this point, you are now pretty good to go. We have covered the most essential functionalities you need to master to be super-good at using Sematime Finances. If what you were looking for is not covered in this quick start guide, consider checking or searching for it among our other 'how-to' articles on the Help Center.
Exiting demo mode
After familiarizing yourself with how the service works, it is now time to start adding your own school data. To do that, click the red 'Exit Demo' button as shown below.
The system will prompt you to confirm that you indeed want to exit demo mode and consequently delete the demo data; click 'Yes, remove' to proceed. This will launch the 'Sematime Finances' setup process where you will be expected setup your classes, import opening balances, etc.
If you have already setup your classes in Sematime Academics then you do not need to setup classes, academic years etc. Neither do you need to re-admit students as explained in step 2 below.
To add opening fee balances, we need an Excel file with: student ID(admission number), student name and the amount - see the image below. Fee balances greater than zero are converted to invoices while those less than zero are converted to prepayments.
Click 'Next' to proceed, add your voteheads plus school bank accounts and finally 'Finish' the setup process.
Admitting students
If you are coming from Sematime Academics, there is no need to re-admit students as their records are also available in Sematime Finances. If not admitted, then here is how to do it. Go to the 'Students' view and click the 'Admit New Students' button.
There are two ways to add new students: importing from an Excel file or adding manually one-by-one. If you choose to import from an Excel file, you need to have three columns: student ID(admission number), full name and** parent's phone number(optional).** On clicking the 'Admit New Students', you will be prompted to select your Excel file then shown a preview of the students data. Make any necessary changes to this data and click 'Add Students' to save. Repeat this process for all the classes.
Adding school fees payments
There are two ways you add payments: importing from an Excel file or adding them manually by keying-in one by one. The Excel file option is the one you'll be using mostly to import payments data from M-PESA paybill and bank statements. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Payments' from the menu then click the '+ New Payments' button.
The system will prompt you to upload your Excel file either by drag-and-drop from your computer to the dotted area or clicking the 'Choose File' button.
Your file needs to have 4 mandatory columns: student ID(admission number), amount, reference and date paid. We recommend dates to be in these formats: dd/MM/yyyy or dd-MM-yyyy.
After uploading, the system will generate a preview of the data extracted from your file - verify and ensure everything is well then proceed to 'Add Payments'. Your payments have been added successfully, current balances updated and a receipt sent to the parent acknowledging their payment plus new student balance.
Generating new invoices
You need to invoice parents at the beginning of the term for school fees payments, bus transport costs, special meals, school tours etc. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Invoices' from the menu then click the '+ New Invoices' button.
The first step is to specify academic year, term and the due date for your invoices. Then proceed to input the voteheads you are billing students for - specify both unit cost and quantity. Remember to also input a brief description of what you are invoicing for.
On the last step, specify the students that you are invoicing - you can enter class names, individual student names or admission numbers or student group names in the area highlighted in green. Check the 'Send SMS message...' box to send parents a text message of the invoice plus new fees balance.
Your invoices have now been created, student balances updated and if there were any students with prepayments their new fee balance has been reduced as well.
Generating student's fees statement and other reports
Occasionally you may need to print school fees statements for a student showing invoices(debits) plus payments(credits) and how their fee balances was arrived at. Your school head may also need a weekly report on student fee balances by class, payments made per day etc.
To generate these reports, go to 'Home' view and select 'Reports' from the menu then choose the kind of report you want as shown by the red box. We provide options to download or print reports.
How to send fee balance reminders to parents
Reminding parents occasionally of their fee balances is a great way to increase school fees collections. Sematime makes it very easy to do so via SMS messages. To get started, go to 'Home' view and select 'Balances' from the menu then go to 'Balances Actions' and choose 'Send Reminders'.
Start by specifying the criteria to use to filter student fee balances. For example, you can choose to only send balances of students with more than KES 1,000 - see the red box area below. In addition, you may also limit the sending of balances to students from a specific year group and/or stream. Optionally, you can append an extra message to each SMS, for example, instructions on how to pay.
After sending your message, you will get a delivery report summary. At first, all the messages will be in the '**Pending'** status but will gradually get updated to either 'Delivered' or 'Failed' based on the delivery confirmation report we get from the mobile network operator e.g Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom etc.
You can then click on 'View Report' to see a detailed delivery report for each parent. Come with us to the next section to understand more about SMS message delivery reports.
At this point, you are now pretty good to go. We have covered the most essential functionalities you need to master to be super-good at using Sematime Finances. If what you were looking for is not covered in this quick start guide, consider checking or searching for it among our other 'how-to' articles on the Help Center.
Updated on: 20/08/2024
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