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, timetable with automatic substitution, transport with live GPS, parent app, school website and much more — in one installation that runs on your own domain.

This documentation is for Skoolnix SaaS 01 (version number 3.48.0). Your version is shown in Settings → System update.

Requirements#

• Hosting with PHP 8.1 or newer (8.2 recommended) and MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.4+
• PHP extensions: intl, mbstring, mysqli, curl, gd, zip, json, openssl (sodium recommended)
• An empty database (name, user, password)
• SSL (https) on the domain or sub-domain
• Cron jobs allowed (every 5 minutes) — available on all normal hosting such as Hostinger hPanel

Installation (10 minutes)#

1. Upload skoolnix_saas01_v3_48_0.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 4 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 as Super Admin and enter your licence key in Settings → Licence. Without a key Skoolnix runs as a 30-day trial.
6. Add the cron job in hPanel → Advanced → Cron Jobs (every 5 minutes). The exact line, with your own key, is shown in Settings → Integrations.

First things to set up#

Roles and portals#

Staff sign in at the admin login; parents and students at the portal. 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 (same passwords), students and parents (same usernames and passwords), fees and old receipts, transport, attendance, exams, marks, report-card templates, certificate history and photos.
• Safe to run again: only new records are added. An Undo import button is available.
• From other software, use the Excel / CSV templates for students, staff, opening fee dues and old receipts (with a "check only" option).

What's new in SaaS 01#

Menu style & colour theme#

Click your name (top right). Under Colour theme and Menu style choose how Skoolnix looks for you.

Press Use for everyone to make your choice the default for all users. Each person can still change their own.

Quick session change#

Click the session in the top bar (for example 2026-27 ✎) and pick another session to work in. It changes only for your own login; everyone else stays in the current session.

• While you work in another session, the session pill turns yellow and a yellow bar on every page says so, with a Back to current button.
• Attendance, fees and marks you enter are saved in the session you are working in.
• To change the session for the whole school use Academics → Sessions → Set current.
• Super Admin always has this. For other roles tick Quick session change (top bar) in Settings → Roles & permissions.
• On phones it is in the account menu (your name) as a Session drop-down.

QR, letterhead & signatures on report cards#

Every report card and admit card now carries a QR code. Scanning it opens a page on the school's own website that shows the student's photo, name, class and session, and says Genuine — issued by this school. A report card's QR also carries the printed overall %, grade and result, so a changed paper is easy to catch.

Printing on your own letterhead: in Settings → Print → Report cards & admit cards choose Leave the top blank and set the blank space in mm (default 45 mm). The same choices — header, top space, QR on/off — are also on the print page itself, just above the cards. On letterhead, admit cards print one per page.

Sign & stamp space: report cards have tall boxes for Class Teacher, Exam In-charge, Principal (with a faint SEAL circle for the stamp) and Parent / Guardian, with Place and Date lines above. Signature images set in the report-card template still print inside the boxes.

Dashboards#

Principal, Coordinator and Teacher dashboards show 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. Group dashboard shows all branches together.

Attendance#

• Student attendance by class-section, monthly register, attendance by date, leave approval.
• Staff attendance and staff register; approving a teacher's leave for today triggers automatic substitution.
• QR attendance — scan the ID-card QR with a phone camera or USB scanner.
• Biometric — ZKTeco / eSSL / Realtime devices via cloud push; User ID = employee code / admission no.
• Period (subject) attendance by subject teachers, with subject-wise % report.
• Parents get an absent alert once a day if switched on in Settings → Notification settings.

Timetable & automatic substitution#

Build a clash-free timetable in Timetable → Timetable Studio: periods per week and teacher per subject; Skoolnix spreads subjects across the week with no teacher or class clash. Preview, then apply.

When a teacher is marked absent or their leave for today is approved, all their periods are given to free teachers automatically (same subject first, least busy, a daily maximum per teacher) and the substitutes are notified. Only staff with a Teacher login are used as substitutes. A printable substitution chart is available.

Homework, lesson plans & syllabus#

• Homework with submission and checking; parents see it in the portal.
• Syllabus with topics done per section, progress bars and parent view.
• Lesson plans and lesson-plan diary; Smart tools can draft plans for a topic or a whole chapter.
• Download centre for study material, assignments, syllabus and circulars.

Admission & students#

• Admission form in coloured sections with photos, documents, Aadhaar, PEN / APAAR, sibling found automatically by phone, fee groups, transport and hostel at admission.
• Smart tools can fill the form from an uploaded filled form, birth certificate, Aadhaar, TC or report card — boxes are filled in yellow for checking.
• Student search by class or any keyword; student profile with fees, attendance, results and documents.
• Promotion to the next session, disable with reason, alumni, houses, custom fields.

Online admission & admission CRM#

Parents apply on the website with mobile OTP, review before submitting and check status by application number. The office reviews and admits in one click. Since 3.46.6 the form links to the school's privacy policy.

Admission CRM: a pipeline board (New → Contacted → Campus visit → Test → Form & fees → Admitted / Lost) with follow-ups due, call / WhatsApp buttons and conversion reports.

Certificates & ID cards#

• TC (CBSE proforma), bonafide, character, date of birth, fee paid (80C), award and merit certificates, staff experience certificates, custom templates with a designer.
• QR code on every certificate → public page shows genuine or cancelled.
• Parents can request certificates from the portal; the fee is added to their fees.
• ID cards for students, parents and staff — 3 designs, portrait or landscape, A4 or PVC printer.

Fees collection#

• Fee heads, groups, masters, discounts, fine rules, carry forward, instalments (Quick fees).
• Colourful collection page; receipt with Office / Student copy and PARTIAL / PAID stamp; A5, A4, thermal 80 / 58 mm.
• Offline bank payments reported by parents, revert with reason, cancelled-receipt register.
• Automatic reminders before / after the due date by WhatsApp or SMS.

Online payments#

sequenceDiagram
  participant Parent
  participant Skoolnix
  participant Gateway as Payment gateway
  Parent->>Skoolnix: Pay fees in the portal
  Skoolnix->>Skoolnix: Save the order as pending
  Skoolnix->>Gateway: Open checkout
  Gateway->>Skoolnix: Webhook confirms payment
  Skoolnix->>Gateway: Check every 5 min if no webhook came
  Skoolnix-->>Parent: Receipt on WhatsApp

Razorpay, Easebuzz (or both — parent chooses), Cashfree, PhonePe and others in Settings → Integrations. Parents choose how many fees to pay, oldest first.

No lost payments: return page, webhooks and an automatic gateway check every 5 minutes (cron). Settings shows when each webhook was last received.

Fee lock & 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. The portal opens again by itself after payment.

Exams & marks#

• Terms, assessments with parts (PT / NB / SE / Written, Theory / Practical), grade sets — CBSE patterns for I–XII ready-made.
• Exams with class-sections, subjects, schedule (date, time, room); marks entry grid with AB for absent; teachers see only their subjects.
• Co-scholastic grades, attendance and class-teacher remarks (Smart remarks can draft them).
• Result with totals, %, grade, rank, Pass / Compartment; exam analysis, toppers, student growth and expected result.

Class XI–XII: subject choice & best five#

In Class XI–XII students take different subjects. Open Academics → Subject choice (XI–XII), choose the section and tick each student's subjects. Tick students on the left and press a stream button (PCM, PCB, PCMB, Commerce, Humanities) to fill their subjects at once, then add any extra subject such as Physical Education by hand.

• Admit cards print only the student's own subjects.
• Marks entry for a subject lists only the students who take it.
• Report cards and results show only the student's subjects — no empty rows.
• A student with nothing ticked takes every subject of the class, so Classes I–X need nothing here.

CBSE best five: in the report-card template set Overall % to CBSE best five. The overall % is English plus the best four other subjects (marked * on the report card). If four other subjects are passed, a failed additional (sixth) subject is replaced and does not stop the result.

Report cards#

Marksheet templates join exams with weightage (e.g. Term 1 50% + Term 2 50%), choose what to show, signatures with images, portrait or landscape. Print one student, a whole section or many sections; publish to the parent portal.

Since 3.46.4: QR code, letterhead mode and sign & stamp boxes — see QR, letterhead & signatures.

Admit cards & seating#

• Admit cards 2 per A4 (1 per page on letterhead) with photo, schedule, room, instructions, principal's signature and QR code.
• Show in the parent portal only when the school switches it on for that exam.
• Exam seating plan: rooms with benches, mixed-class seating, room charts, seat slips, invigilator duty.

CBSE tools#

• Registration IX / XI and LOC X / XII: data check, CBSE-style CSV, import of the CBSE final-list PDF, registration cards and verification lists.
• Mandatory Public Disclosure page in CBSE Appendix IX format.
• CBSE-only menus appear only for CBSE schools.

Notices, SMS, WhatsApp & app#

• Send SMS / e-mail / WhatsApp to parents (all, class, section, fee defaulters) or staff, with templates, scheduling and delivery log; WhatsApp delivered and read ticks.
• 12 automatic events (admission, fee received, absent, homework, result published, leave, certificate ready…) set in Settings → Notification settings.
• Installable app (PWA) for parents, students and staff with push notifications.
• Parent portal in English, हिंदी and বাংলা.

Staff, leave & payroll#

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

Transport & GPS#

• Routes, stops, vehicles (expiry warnings for insurance, fitness, permit, PUC), student transport fees.
• Live bus tracking from the driver's phone (no app install) or a GPS tracker; parents see the bus, their stop and arrival time.

Hostel, library & inventory#

• Hostel rooms, night roll call, gate passes, visitors, mess menu.
• Library with barcodes, scan to issue / return, member cards, fines.
• Inventory: items, stock, issue and purchase.

Accounts & reports#

Income and expense heads, financial-year dashboard, Receipts & Payments and Income & Expenditure accounts, cash and bank books, closing the books up to a date. The Reports hub lists every report by category — finance, students, exams and academics, staff and campus — with search, print, CSV and Excel.

School website (Front CMS)#

• Home page with banners, notice ticker, counters, principal's message, facilities, news, events, gallery, reviews, admission button, contact and map — 5 colour themes or your own.
• Pages with a simple editor, media manager, alumni registration, mandatory disclosure.
• Contact and admission enquiries go to Front office.

Privacy policy & Grievance Officer#

Since 3.46.6 every school website has a ready-made Privacy Policy at /site/page/privacy-policy, linked in the website footer and on the online admission form. It is filled from your school details and stays reachable even when the website is switched off.

1. Open Front CMS → Settings.
2. Under Privacy policy & Grievance Officer fill the name, designation, e-mail and phone (blank fields use the school's e-mail and phone; designation defaults to Principal).
3. Set how many years records are kept after a student leaves (default 5).
4. Save and open the Privacy Policy link to check.

Roles & permissions#

In Settings → Roles & permissions tick, for each role, which modules it can open. A role can be fine-tuned with Custom ticks per screen (View / Add / Edit / Delete). New roles can start from another role's rights. Super Admin keeps every right and cannot be locked out.

New in 3.46.3: Quick session change (top bar). Super Admin always has it; give it to other roles here.

Print settings#

• Header image (your letterhead banner) and footer line for printed pages.
• Fee receipt size: A5, A4 two copies, thermal 80 mm / 58 mm.
• Report cards & admit cards: school header or blank top for letterhead, blank space in mm, QR on/off.
• Principal's signature image, certificate background, ID-card colours.

Login security & licence#

• Two-step verification by e-mail / WhatsApp / SMS, trusted devices, forgot password by OTP — Settings → Login security.
• Licence bound to the school's domain; daily check; 30-day trial; after expiry and 7 grace days the software becomes read-only — data is never deleted and online payments keep working.

Backup & restore#

• Daily automatic backup by cron; manual backup in Settings → Backup (last 10 kept, download).
• Restore from a server copy or an upload (Super Admin only; a safety backup is taken first).
• Keep a copy outside the server at least weekly — download it or save it to Google Drive.

Online updates#

1. Open Settings → System update. When a new version is out you see New version … is available with what is new.
2. Press Update now. Files are replaced, your settings, uploads and data stay, and any database changes run automatically.
3. If the page asks to update the database, press the button once.

Every online update is signed by Skoolnix. Since 3.46.5 a school site checks the signature first; if it is missing or wrong you see This update is not signed by Skoolnix and nothing is downloaded or changed. This protects every school even if the update server were ever attacked.

You can also install an update zip manually under Update from a zip file, and undo the last update there.

Troubleshooting#

Support#

E-mail skoolnix@gmail.com, WhatsApp +91 70333 76343 (Mon–Fri 8 AM–4 PM, Sat 8 AM–12 PM). Please send the page, a screenshot and the steps to reproduce. Video guides: Skoolnix on YouTube. Try everything on the live demo.