Skoolnix documentation

Welcome to Skoolnix

Skoolnix is a complete school ERP for Indian schools: admissions, attendance, fees with online payment, CBSE / ICSE / State board exams and report cards, the NEP holistic progress card, timetable with automatic substitution, transport with live GPS, CCTV, a parent app, a school website and a robot helper — in one installation on your own domain.

Requirements

• Hosting with PHP 8.2 or newer and MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.4 or newer (Hostinger hPanel and similar)
• PHP extensions: intl, mbstring, mysqli, curl, gd, zip, json, openssl (sodium recommended)
• An empty database (name, user, password) and SSL (https) on the domain or sub-domain
• One cron job every 5 minutes

Installation (about 10 minutes)

1. Upload the Skoolnix zip to public_html (or a sub-domain folder) and extract it.
2. Set the writable folder and its sub-folders to 755.
3. Open https://your-domain/install/ and follow the four steps: server check → database → school details (board: CBSE / ICSE-ISC / State / Other) → admin login.
4. Delete the install folder when the wizard asks.
5. Sign in and enter your licence key in Settings → Licence. Without a key Skoolnix runs as a 30-day trial.
6. Add one cron job (hPanel → Advanced → Cron Jobs, every 5 minutes). The exact line with your own key is shown in Settings → System health:
   wget -q -O /dev/null "https://your-domain/cron/run/YOUR-KEY"

Getting started checklist

Settings → Getting started lists the twelve things a new school sets up, and ticks each one by itself when it is done. The dashboard shows the next step until all are done (you can hide it).

Roles and portals

Staff sign in with their username; parents and students can also sign in with their mobile number and a one-time code. What each staff member sees is set in Settings → Roles & permissions.

Moving from old software

Open Settings → Import from old software, upload the old software's .sql backup or connect to the old database (read only).

• Brings sessions, classes, subjects, staff, students and parents (same usernames and passwords), fees and old receipts, transport, attendance, exams, marks, report-card templates, certificates and photos.
• Safe to run again — only new records are added — and it can be undone.
• From any other software use the Excel / CSV templates in Settings → Import from Excel (with a "check only" option).

Dashboards

The dashboard shows students, staff, present today, collected today, fee dues by zone, notices, birthdays, charts of collection and expense, and quick actions — each person sees only what their role allows. The group dashboard shows all branches together.

Attendance

• Attendance → Mark attendance: choose the class and section, everyone is present by default — tap the absent ones and save.
• Monthly register, attendance by date, period (subject) attendance by subject teachers.
• QR attendance from the ID card, biometric devices (ZKTeco / eSSL / Realtime), and staff selfie attendance.
• Staff attendance; approving a teacher's leave for today starts automatic substitution.
• Parents get one absent message a day if it is switched on in Settings → Notification settings.

Timetable and automatic substitution

In Timetable → Timetable Studio set bell schedules, lessons (periods per week, teacher per subject) and teacher rules, then press Generate: subjects are spread across the week with no teacher or class clash. Fine-tune by drag and drop and save a version.

When a teacher is marked absent or their leave for today is approved, all their periods go to free teachers automatically — same subject first, least busy, with a daily limit per teacher — and the substitutes are told. Only staff with a Teacher login are used.

Homework, lesson plans and syllabus

• Homework for a class and subject, with a due date; parents see it in the app.
• Syllabus with topics done per section, lesson plans, download centre, online courses and live classes.
• Question bank, question-paper maker and online exams.

Admission and students

• The admission form has photos, documents, Aadhaar, PEN / APAAR; brothers and sisters are found automatically by the phone number.
• Upload a photo or PDF of a filled form, birth certificate, Aadhaar, TC or report card and the form is filled for you — yellow boxes show what to check.
• Online admission on the website with mobile OTP; the admission CRM tracks enquiries from first call to admission.
• Student profile with fees, attendance, documents, class history, privacy choices and change history.
• Promotion to the next session, disable with a reason, alumni, houses and custom fields.

Certificates and ID cards

• TC in the CBSE proforma, bonafide, character, date of birth, fee paid (80C), award and merit certificates, staff certificates, and your own templates.
• Every certificate carries a QR code; scanning it shows whether it is genuine or cancelled.
• Parents can request a certificate from the portal; the fee is added to their fees.
• ID cards for students, parents and staff — 3 designs, A4 or PVC card printer.

Scholarships

Open Fees collection → Scholarships.

1. Add a scholarship: who gives it (government — e.g. NSP or the state; a trust; or the school), how it helps (money to the family, fee concession by the school, or the giver pays the school), the amount or % of the year's fees, classes, last date and documents needed.
2. Add students by admission numbers or whole sections. Tick "Families can see it" to let parents apply from the portal.
3. For each student keep the status (applied → documents pending → verified → approved → money received, or not approved), the NSP / application ID, and the amounts sanctioned and received.
4. For a school scholarship press On fees: the amount is taken off the student's unpaid fees, earliest first. When a trust pays the school, record it in Collect fees.

Students who need attention

Students → Students who need attention lists the children who may be slipping, worked out every hour from:

• attendance below 75% in the last 30 days, or absent three or more school days in a row;
• marks below 40% in the latest exam, or a fall of 15 marks or more since the exam before;
• two or more behaviour notes in 30 days; and, for people who handle fees, fees pending more than 60 days.

Call or WhatsApp the parent from the list. Teachers see only their own classes. Every Monday class teachers get a reminder in the app.

Fees home and the fee plan

Fees collection → Fees home shows today's and this month's collection and finds any student as you type (name, admission number, father's name or phone).

Fees setup → Make a fee plan (easy) makes the whole year in one page: tick the classes, type the monthly fee, choose the months and the due day, add one-time fees (admission, annual, exam) and a late fine. Skoolnix makes the fee types, groups, amounts and due dates and gives them to the students.

Collecting fees

• Open a student, tick the fees being paid (or type an amount — the oldest dues are paid first), choose cash, UPI, cheque or bank, and save. The receipt prints and can go to the parent on WhatsApp.
• Discounts, fines, carry forward of old dues, and cancelling a receipt with a reason (it is kept in the cancelled-receipt register).
• Parents can report a bank / UPI payment with a slip from the portal; the office approves it.
• Automatic reminders before and after the due date by WhatsApp or SMS: Fees collection → Fees reminder.

Online payments and UPI Autopay

Razorpay, Easebuzz, PhonePe, Cashfree, PayU and others are set in Settings → Integrations. Parents choose which fees to pay, oldest first. With UPI Autopay a parent approves once and monthly fees are collected on the due date.

No payment is lost: the return page, the gateway's webhook and an automatic check every few minutes all record it. The settings page shows when each webhook was last received.

Fee lock and holds

Lock the parent portal when fees are unpaid a number of days after the due date (and above an amount), or only hold the report card and admit card. Per-student Allow / Hold rules are available. The portal opens again by itself after payment.

Accounts and reports

Income and expense, day book, ledger, trial balance, Receipts & Payments and Income & Expenditure accounts, cash and bank books, Tally export and closing the books up to a date. The Reports hub lists every report by category with search, print, Excel and CSV — including UDISE+ data and the APAAR / PEN / Aadhaar check.

Exams and marks

• Terms, assessments with parts (PT / notebook / subject enrichment / written; theory / practical) and grade sets — CBSE patterns for Classes I–XII are ready-made.
• Exams with sections, subjects and a schedule; marks entry with AB for absent — teachers see only their own subjects.
• Class XI–XII: tick each student's subjects in Examinations → Subject choice (XI–XII); CBSE "best five" is a report-card option.
• Co-scholastic grades, attendance and remarks, results with rank, exam analysis, student growth and expected result.

Report cards, admit cards and seating

• Report-card templates join exams with weightage (for example Term 1 50% + Term 2 50%). Print one student, a section or many sections; publish to the parent portal.
• A QR code on every report card and admit card opens a page on the school's website that confirms it is genuine.
• Print on your own letterhead (leave the top blank), with sign and stamp boxes, place and date.
• Admit cards with photo, schedule and room; exam seating plans with mixed-class benches, room charts and invigilator duty.
• CBSE registration IX / XI and LOC X / XII, registration cards and the verification list.

Holistic progress card (NEP 2020)

The progress card follows the NEP 2020 idea: the teacher, the child and a classmate each look at a set of "I can…" statements, and parents add how the child is at home.

Set it up once

Examinations → Progress card setup has ready-made domains and statements for the Foundational (Nursery – Class 2), Preparatory (3–5), Middle (6–8) and Secondary (9–12) stages. Change the words, switch any off, add your own; set the number of terms, the four teacher levels (Beginning, Progressing, Proficient, Advanced) and which class uses which card.

Teachers fill it

1. Open Examinations → Holistic progress card, choose the class, section and term.
2. For each domain tap a level 1–4 for every child; the small buttons under a statement fill the same level for the whole class, then change the few that differ.
3. Optionally choose a classmate's view (peer) and write a remark for the domain.
4. Under "Strengths & next steps" write a line or two for each child. The percentage on each domain shows how much is filled.

Children and parents add their part

In the app, Progress card lets the child fill "All about me" and pick a face for each statement (😐 I need help, 🙂 I am getting there, 😄 I can do it well). Parents answer six short questions about the child at home. Both can be switched off in setup.

Print and publish

Print one child's card or the whole section (Save as PDF works too). Press Publish to families to let parents see the term's card in the app.

Using the Skoolnix Robot

The robot sits at the bottom-right of every page. Tap it and type, paste or speak (the microphone works in Chrome and Edge). It understands English, Hindi and Bengali — in their own script or in Roman letters.

• Questions are answered straight away and never change anything.
• Work (collect fees, attendance, homework, notice, TC, certificate, discount, book issue, admission, leave) is prepared as a card; it is saved only when you press Yes, through the same checks as the page itself.
• Attach an Excel sheet, a PDF or a photo of a marks list and the robot fills the marks by admission number for you to confirm.
• Drag the robot anywhere on the screen (with a finger on a phone); it stays where you leave it. On a computer the chat window can be dragged by its top bar.

Robot permissions, report and smart mode

• The robot follows Settings → Roles & permissions live. If a role cannot do something, the robot says so politely and does nothing.
• Settings → Robot activity shows every question and every saved action — who did what and when (for example fees collected through the robot). You can also rename the robot there.
• Smart mode understands long and free sentences. It works with the Skoolnix licence (a monthly allowance), or with the school's own API key in Settings → Integrations. Without it the robot uses its built-in dictionary for everyday requests.

Parent and student app

Parents install the portal as an app from the browser (Add to Home screen). It is in English, हिंदी and বাংলা.

• Attendance calendar, homework, timetable, date sheet, results, report card and progress card.
• Fees and online payment, receipts, wallet, certificate requests, scholarships.
• Live bus with arrival time, PTM booking, messages to teachers, leave, library, notices.
• One login for brothers and sisters; mobile number + OTP sign-in.

Notices, SMS, WhatsApp and app notifications

• Communicate → Send SMS / email to parents (all, a class, a section, fee defaulters) or staff, with templates, scheduling and a delivery log; WhatsApp shows delivered and read ticks.
• Choose whether a message is school work or general news. General messages are not sent to families who said no in their privacy choices.
• More than twenty events send messages by themselves — admission, fee received, absent, homework, result, leave, certificate ready and more — set in Settings → Notification settings.

Staff, leave and payroll

• Staff records and logins, departments, designations, ratings, duty roster and staff handbook.
• Leave with balances and approval.
• Payroll with PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS; PF ECR and ESIC files; yearly salary statement.

Transport and GPS

Routes, stops, vehicles (insurance, fitness, permit and PUC reminders) and transport fees. Track the bus live from the driver's phone (no app needed) or a GPS tracker; parents see the bus, their stop and the arrival time.

CCTV

Add cameras in CCTV → Cameras & settings (HLS stream, viewer page, MJPEG or snapshot link) and choose which class each camera belongs to. Admins see every camera; a class teacher sees only their own class's camera and the cameras marked for all staff. Short clips can be recorded and kept in CCTV → Recorded clips.

Library, digital library, inventory and hostel

• Library with barcode labels, scan to issue and return, member cards, reservations, fines and stock check.
• Digital library with e-books, videos, story time and websites; a starter set can be loaded in one click.
• Inventory: items, stores, purchases and supplier payments, assets, issue to staff and students, staff requests.
• Hostel rooms, night roll call, gate passes, visitors and mess menu; health and sick-room records.

School website

Front CMS builds the school's website: home page with banners, notice ticker, counters, principal's message, facilities, news, events, gallery, reviews and admission button — 5 colour themes or your own. Pages, media, alumni registration and the mandatory disclosure page are included. Enquiries arrive in Front office.

Privacy and data requests (DPDP Act 2023)

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 asks schools to tell families how their data is used, to take their consent and to answer their requests. Skoolnix does this in three places:

• The privacy notice: when a parent first signs in, a short notice explains what is kept, why, who sees it, for how long, their rights and the Grievance Officer. They choose about photos on the website and general messages. When you change the notice, tick "show it to every family again".
• My privacy in the app: parents download their child's data, change their choices, and ask to correct or remove data, take back a consent or complain.
• Settings → Privacy & data requests: the office sees how many families accepted, answers each request (the date to reply by is shown), downloads a family's data, and — for a student who has left — removes personal details, photos and documents while fee, marks and TC records are kept.

The public privacy policy page on the website is filled from these settings.

Roles and permissions

In Settings → Roles & permissions tick which modules each role can open, and fine-tune with View / Add / Edit / Delete per screen. A new role can start from another role's rights. The Super Admin keeps every right. The robot follows the same rules.

Audit trail

Settings → Audit trail records every change to fees, receipts, discounts, marks, attendance, students, staff, salary, logins, settings, scholarships and progress cards — by itself, from every page, import and the robot. Each entry shows who, when, from which page and each field's old and new value.

• Filter by date, person, area, student or any text (for example a receipt number), and download to Excel.
• The student profile has a Change history button.
• The first entry of marks and attendance is normal work and is not listed; later changes are. Entries are kept for two years (you can change this).

System health and backups

Settings → System health shows in green, amber or red: the daily backup, whether the latest backup can really be restored, when a copy was last kept away from the server, the cron job, errors, disk space, the software version, 2-step login, https and PHP.

• Press Check the latest backup once a month: it reads the whole backup and makes sure every table is inside, without changing anything.
• Download a backup every week from Settings → Backup & restore and keep it on a pen drive or Google Drive.
• Restore from a server copy or an upload (Super Admin; a safety backup is taken first).

Login security and licence

• Two-step verification by e-mail, WhatsApp or SMS, trusted devices and forgot password by OTP — Settings → Login security (2FA). Turn it on at least for admins.
• The licence is bound to the school's domain and checked daily. After expiry and seven grace days the software becomes read-only — data is never deleted and online payments keep working.

Print settings

In Settings → Print: header image and footer line, fee receipt size (A5, A4, thermal 80 / 58 mm), report cards on letterhead, QR on or off, principal's signature, certificate background and ID-card colours.

Online updates

1. Open Settings → System update. When a new version is out you see what is new.
2. Press Update now. Files are replaced; your settings, uploads and data stay.
3. If the page asks to update the database, press Run update once.

Every update is signed by Skoolnix; a school site refuses an update without the right signature. The last update can be undone.

Troubleshooting

Support

E-mail skoolnix@gmail.com or WhatsApp +91 70333 76343 (Monday–Friday 8 AM–4 PM, Saturday 8 AM–12 PM). Please send the page name, a screenshot and the steps. Everything here can be tried on the live demo.