School fee reminders, mobile money reconciliation and WhatsApp for private schools

The bursar’s problem

Every term follows the same pattern. Invoices go out. Some parents pay on time. Many pay in parts, by M-Pesa or other mobile money, sometimes quoting a sibling’s admission number, sometimes no account number at all. The bursar spends days matching payments to learners. Reminders go out late, by SMS or a phone call, and the amount quoted is not always right.

Meanwhile the school office answers the same WhatsApp questions from parents all day.

What we set up

Fee reminders on WhatsApp. Polite, accurate reminders go to parents on the official WhatsApp Business API, with the balance, the due date, your Paybill number and the learner’s account number. Reminders follow a schedule you approve, for example a week before the due date and again when a balance is overdue. Parents who have paid in full hear nothing.

Mobile money and bank payments matched to learners. Paybill and bank receipts are matched to the right learner automatically, using the account number, the payer’s phone number and the amount. The ones that cannot be matched go to the bursar with a suggested match to confirm or correct. Each parent gets a receipt on WhatsApp.

A WhatsApp assistant for parents. It answers common questions about term dates, the fee structure, transport routes and uniform, and passes anything sensitive to a member of staff. Parents get answers in the evening, when they actually have time to ask.

A weekly picture for the head and the board. An AI digital employee summarises collections, arrears by class and the parents who need a personal call, so the head teacher can act on the list instead of asking for it.

Statutory payroll and staff training. If you run Odoo, we set up payroll with SHIF, NSSF and Housing Levy deductions. A practical half-day workshop shows your office and teaching staff how to use AI in their own work.

Built on a pattern we already run

We built the same pattern for a Nairobi services company: invoices and messages go out on WhatsApp from its business system, and the directors get a daily briefing of what needs attention. Its Paybill matching, built and tested and awaiting the company’s production M-Pesa keys, matches each payment to the invoice or order number the customer types, pays an order’s open invoices oldest first and sends anything unmatched to a review list. A school’s fee cycle is a close match.

How we work

1. Audit. A free 30-minute call and a one-page map of where fee collection and parent questions take your team’s time.
2. Build. We start with reminders or reconciliation, tested on a copy of your fee records before a single parent is messaged.
3. Run. We watch the first fee cycle closely, then monitor and improve every month.

Learner and parent data stays in your systems, and you keep your Paybill and WhatsApp number.