Where to find it
Admissions › Scheduled Challan Generation. It carries its own permission, so if you cannot see it, ask your school administrator to give you Scheduled Challan Generation in Users & Privileges.
What it does
Today somebody has to remember to open Generate Challans on the 1st of every month and bill the school. A schedule writes that down once: on the date you choose, EDUBase generates the challans itself, with the due date and expiry date you set, and — if you ask it to — sends the parents the same SMS the manual screen sends.
Nothing happens until you switch a schedule on
A new schedule is created switched off. You can write all the settings, read the summary at the bottom of the form, and save without anything being billed. It only starts when you turn the switch on and confirm.
The challan month is RELATIVE, not a fixed month
This is the setting most worth getting right. You do not pick "September" — you pick how the billed month relates to the month the run happens in:
- The next month — a run on 25 August bills September. This is the usual choice for schools that bill in advance.
- The current month — a run on 1 September bills September.
- The previous month — a run on 1 September bills August, for schools that bill in arrears.
The form shows the whole rule as a sentence before you save, for example: On the 25th of each month at 2 AM, generate challans for the next month, due on the 10th, expires on the last day of the month. Read that line rather than the boxes — it is the thing that will actually happen.
Dates in short months
🔴 Every day you choose — the generation date, the due date and the expiry date — is moved back to the last day of a month that is shorter. A schedule set to the 31st runs on 28 February, and a due date of the 31st becomes 28 February on that month's challans. Nothing is ever skipped because a month is short.
A schedule cannot bill the same month twice
Two things stop it. A schedule runs once per calendar month however many times the system checks; and a student who already has a challan for a month is skipped. So if you press Run now after the automatic run has already happened, the result is Nothing to bill — which is the system working, not a failure.
Who gets billed
Leave Campus and Class empty to bill the whole school, including campuses and classes you add later. Choose some and the schedule is fixed to exactly those — useful for a campus with a different billing date, but remember to revisit it when the school grows.
Telling the parents
Two independent switches: Send an SMS when the challan is generated and Send a Parents app notification. The SMS uses your school's own Challan Generated template from Exam Settings, so the wording is the wording you already use.
🔴 You must tick at least one contact (father, mother or student). With none ticked nothing is sent — including the Parents app notification, because it is delivered against a contact number. The screen will not let you save a schedule that would message nobody.
One message is sent per challan created. A student who has never been billed is billed from the month their fee plan starts, so they may receive several messages at once — one per month, each with its own amount and due date.
Who the schedule runs as
A schedule runs as the person who last saved it, and it can only bill the campuses that person can see. If that member of staff leaves, the schedule stops working and the list shows Runs as a user who is no longer active. Open it and save it, and it becomes yours.
Run now
Run now does exactly what the schedule would do, immediately, without waiting for the date. It is the safe way to try a schedule before switching it on — students who already have a challan for those months are skipped, so it cannot bill anybody twice. Note that it does message parents if the schedule is set to.
Reading the history
Every run is listed underneath, automatic and by hand alike, with what it billed and how many parents were told. View opens the full result: how many students matched, how many challans were created, and — the useful part — exactly why each student was skipped.
A run marked Failed still keeps the challans it managed to create before it stopped. Check Pay or Print Fee Challans before running it again; the duplicate guard means a second run will simply fill in what is missing.
This is not Bulk Challan Generation
🔴 Admissions › Generate Challan still has its Bulk Challan Generation block for billing a filtered set of students right now, by hand. This screen is the standing instruction that does it on a date, every month, without anybody opening the app.