Closing the books: fee ledgers that reconcile on the first try
Fee heads, waivers and multi-campus ledgers — how to structure them so the year-end audit is uneventful.
Most school finance pain traces back to one decision made early and never revisited: how fee heads were structured.
One head per thing you would ever report on separately
If the board might one day ask "how much did we collect for transport", transport needs its own head. Merging it into a general fee is cheap today and expensive at audit.
Waivers belong on the ledger, not in the fee amount
Discounting by editing the invoice amount destroys the audit trail. Record the full fee and apply a named waiver against it — scholarship, sibling, staff child — and the reporting stays honest.
Multi-campus
Each campus keeps its own ledger with consolidated roll-up at the trust level. Inter-campus transfers post as paired entries, so nothing goes missing between them.
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Closing the books: fee ledgers that reconcile on the first try
Fee heads, waivers and multi-campus ledgers — how to structure them so the year-end audit is uneventful.