School expense and petty cash management
Enaton tracks what a school spends, not just what it collects. Expense categories, petty cash floats with every item recorded, transfers between accounts, receipts attached where they belong, and sources of income beyond fees.
This is set up with you during rollout rather than switched on from a menu. We configure it against how your school already works, then train the team on it.
Schools measure income far better than spending
Almost every school we meet can tell you what it billed. Far fewer can tell you what it spent, at the same level of detail, in the same week. Petty cash in particular tends to live in a hardback book, reconciled monthly if somebody remembers, and it is where small losses hide for years.
It also makes the collection conversation harder than it needs to be. When a director pushes on arrears without visibility of spending, they are only looking at one side. Sometimes the problem is not that fees came in late. It is that the money went somewhere nobody recorded properly.
How Enaton handles it
Spending is recorded against categories the school defines, and against the same accounts and vote heads the fees use. That means the question of whether transport covers its own costs has an actual answer, because the income and the diesel are in the same place.
Petty cash is treated as a real float rather than an afterthought. Money issued, money spent, itemised, with receipts attached, and a running balance that somebody can check today rather than at the end of the month.
Expenses
- Categories the school defines, matching how you already report
- Spending posted against the right vote head, so each fee line carries its own costs
- Receipts and invoices attached to the record rather than filed separately
- Sources of income other than fees, such as hall hire, farm produce, grants and donations
Petty cash
- Floats issued to named people, with a balance you can check at any time
- Every item recorded rather than a single monthly total
- Transfers to and from the main accounts, tracked properly
- Attachments on the items that need them
Why it matters at board level
A director who can see collection and spending in the same place can answer the two questions a board actually asks: are we collecting what we are owed, and is what we are spending justified. Schools that only have the first half of that picture end up making decisions on instinct.
Who this is for
Bursars stop reconstructing petty cash from a notebook. Directors see both sides of the position. Auditors get itemised spending with the paperwork attached. Department heads can see what their area has actually used.
Want to see this on your own school?
Bring a fee structure and a class list. Thirty minutes, no slides, and we will tell you what it would cost and how long moving would take.
From as low as KES 4,060 a month, never per learner. Every module, migration, training and support included.
Questions we get about this
Can we track petty cash per person?
Yes. Floats are issued to named people with their own running balance, so reconciling is a check rather than an investigation.
Can we record income that is not school fees?
Yes. Hall hire, farm produce, uniform sales, grants and donations can all be recorded as their own sources, which matters for schools whose income is genuinely mixed.
Does spending link back to vote heads?
Yes, and it is the main reason to do this properly. It is what lets you answer whether transport or boarding is covering its own costs rather than being subsidised by tuition.
How does this get set up?
During rollout, mapped to your existing categories and the way your school already reports, rather than a generic template you would have to adapt to.
Bring your own numbers. We will show you this working
Thirty minutes with your classes, terms and fee structure. No slides.