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Whether your organization is a private school, a university, or a public school district-the profit motive may not be the final word when it comes to organizational success. But, in order to achieve your organization’s goals, it is critical to have strong accounting tools. The right accounting software can help you ensure efficient operations through the optimization of often limited time and financial resources. At the end of the day, the pressure to lower operational costs and maintain error-free books is just as real for your educational organizations as it is for any commercial enterprise. Discover more about the capabilities of accounting software designed for schools and the educational field–and how it can help your organization–in this article.
School accounting software helps manage financial and administrative tasks that are unique to educational institutions. Some schools may use general accounting software. However administrators may opt for specialized systems that help manage school fund accounting, student fee collections, student records, class registration, classroom supply inventories, or parent-teacher communications.
Schools and other educational organizations operate with a different mission than a commercial company. Not surprisingly, their accounting needs differ in many ways. That being said, educational organizations and commercial companies both share certain key accounting practices: cash management, analytical report tracking, creating budgets, as well as identifying and tracking operational costs. Software developed specifically for usage in schools, school districts, and training companies is designed to meet these needs.
Solutions designed generally for commercial use often aren’t adequate for meeting the full needs of educational organizations. Many educational organizations operate on a non-profit basis. Consequently, support for fund accounting practices is an important part of accounting software designed for the educational organization. Additionally, educational organizations typically need to database a considerable amount of information about students and tie it back to accounting records.
Regardless of whether your educational organization is a professional training company, a university, a private school, or a school district, there are benefits to be gained by utilizing software specifically designed to support educational operations. One of the key elements of software specifically designed for educational groups is integration between financial data and student records. Integrated information allows educational entities the ability to lower the total cost of ownership by creating efficiencies associated with keeping all relevant information within one centralized database. Hardware requirements are significantly reduced when records are not duplicated across multiple systems. There is a major time savings impact, as well, when staff can access information easily from within one single system.
In order to track the allocation of funds for specific purposes, many educational organizations use fund accounting practices. Funds are essentially accounting entities with self-balancing accounts designed to record cash and other assets, as well as related balances and liabilities. A fund accounting approach allows educational entities to track all expenditures back to specific fund sources.
All schools, public and private, need to manage their finances, however, finding the right program for your organization can be a difficult and time consuming adventure. Whether you are looking for a complete accounting and student management system or specific functionality to augment existing software, through a brief phone call, our software specialists will look to better understand your business and software needs to help you locate the most relevant solutions for your requirements. Get started today!