Admissions, collections and parent payments for three centres, on one platform
Small Wonders runs three early child development centres across Kolkata. As the school grew, its fee process had grown one spreadsheet and one payment link at a time. We re-engineered it from the ground up and delivered a platform, built on our Classly accelerator, where parents pay admission fees, quarterly fees and uniform orders online, and every team sees every payment in one place.
What was getting in the way.
The fee spreadsheet uploaded each quarter had quietly become the school's student register, with every file carrying each child's and parent's details again.
Admission payments made before enrolment sat apart from the fees that followed, so a family's full picture was pieced together by hand.
With no single place to see dues, pay or download a receipt, families called and emailed each centre.
Centre teams needed their own students' payments, without the whole school's data or the ability to change records.
Cash and cheque payments, and late fees after due dates, depended on someone remembering to record them.
Process first, then software.
Understand
We mapped how fees actually moved through the school, not how they were documented: a one-time admission payment, quarterly statements each term, and uniform orders.
Analyse
Several years of records showed the root cause: the same information captured in several places, with no single source of truth. Records from before the student register existed had to be preserved as history, not corrected.
Re-engineer and build
We built on Classly, our accelerator already in production, and shaped it around this process.
The platform, role by role.
For parents
- Sign in with a mobile number and a one-time SMS code, with no password to remember
- See the fees due for each child, pay online and download receipts
- Order uniforms by size, with a size chart and a live total
- A simple link to pay admission fees before enrolment is complete
For leadership
- Every admission, fee and uniform payment, searchable and filterable
- Quarterly statements uploaded from a template, with the due date set at upload
- Late fees applied automatically once the due date passes
- Cash and cheque payments recorded in seconds, with who recorded them and when
- A log of every email and SMS sent, and whether it was delivered
For branch teams
- View-only access to their own centre's academic and uniform payments
What changed.
- One source of truth: every child, parent and payment recorded once and connected
- Less administrative effort, with late fees, receipts and reconciliation automated
- Families check dues, pay and download receipts from their phone, at any time
- Years of history preserved intact, including records from before the register existed
Two payment gateways (historic and current), SMS and email services with delivery tracking.
The next phase extends the platform further into admissions, from first enquiry to enrolment.
Ascent has been instrumental in transforming the way we manage our operations, developing a bespoke technology platform that is closely aligned with the nuances of our business. From streamlining admissions to simplifying fee collection, the platform has delivered meaningful operational efficiencies while enabling our team to focus more of its time and attention on what matters most: our children and parents.
What particularly distinguishes Ascent is the depth of engagement they bring to the process. They take the time to understand the underlying business context before proposing a solution, resulting in technology that is thoughtful, practical and built to scale as the organisation evolves.
Your process could be next.
Tell us what is holding your team back. We will show you what it would take to fix it, and how fast.