Automated Account / Debtor Creation

The Staffroom Finance module can be configured to automatically create accounts for parents and students. Once created accounts can be transmitted to other financial systems such as accounting systems.

NB: In Staffroom we use the term “account” to describe someone who may need to pay funds to the school, however, accounting systems may use other terms such as “debtors” or “contacts”.

Automated Account Creation

Account records are created automatically on Staffroom and can then be transmitted to other accounting systems like Pastel and Xero. The accounts are created based on settings and rules that are configured in the Staffroom Finance module Account Settings page.

Accounts will be automatically created by Staffroom when students are updated to one of the selected student statuses e.g. when a student status is set to “Registered” in the Infobase module.

Account creation settings include the following options:

• Per student – accounts will be created on Staffroom for each student. This is useful when students will pay funds to the school.
• Per account paying parent – accounts will be created on Staffroom for each parent marked as an account payer.
• Allow multiple account payers – this option allows a family in Staffroom to have more than one account payer specified.

Note that it is possible to have both per student and per account paying parent options enabled so that Staffroom will create accounts for both students and parents.

New accounts will be created with a status of “active” in the Staffroom Finance module. Accounts will automatically be set to “inactive” when the registration status of a student record is updated to a status other than one of the ones specified in the “For student status field”.

Account Numbers

Account numbers for both student and parent accounts are automatically created based on flexible account number format settings in the Staffroom Finance module Account Settings page:

Different account number formats can be specified for student account payers and parent account payers. Account numbers can be defined to use:

• Static text e.g. “STU” for student accounts
• Data from student or parents e.g. the first three letters of the surname
• Incremental numbers aka duplicate counter

Note that Staffroom will automatically allocate a new account number only when a new account is created. Changes to the account number format do not affect existing accounts. It is also possible to edit account numbers in the Account List page (see below).

Accounts List

The accounts that have been created in Staffroom can be viewed in the Accounts List page:

The accounts list page includes helpful search, filtering and export features:

• An account name search on account holder surname
• Alphabetical filter for accounts on the account holder surname
• Filters for the type of account (parent or student)
• Filters for the status of an account (active or inactive)
• Account list export to PDF, Excel or CSV file

It is also possible to:

• Edit account numbers by double clicking the account number you wish to edit on this page.
• Delete an account from Staffroom by clicking the delete button next to the account on this page (deletion can only be completed for manually created accounts).

Sending Account information to Accounting systems

Once accounts have been created by Staffroom they can be sent on to accounting systems for further use. At present, the accounting systems that are supported are Pastel and Xero. For further information please see the documentation on these accounting systems.