Paper, Excel or school management software?

Paper registers and Excel are enough for a very small school. Once several people enter marks, collect fees and print report cards, school management software cuts copy errors and makes every change traceable.

Task-by-task comparison

The table describes common paper and Excel practices, then what ClassMata does. Each ClassMata row links to a manual page.

Task Paper / Excel ClassMata
Attendance One register per class; totals are counted by hand. Daily roll call recorded per student and date, with discipline tracking.
Averages and report cards Formulas copied from class to class; one edited cell silently skews a result. Averages computed with the school's rules (percentage weighting, make-up, bonus) and report cards generated from the marks.
Tuition fees Cash book or tracking sheet; a student's balance needs a manual lookup. Payments allocated in order to fee lines (registration, tuition, other required fees), with receipts and financial reports.
Access to data The file travels by email or USB stick; everyone sees everything. Roles and permissions: each user sees only the pages and actions that concern them.
Traceability Little or no history: hard to tell who changed what. Audit log of sign-ins and of record creations, edits and deletions.
Working as a team One file open at a time, or several copies to merge. Several users on the same database, online or on-site with synchronization.
Cost No software to buy, but many hours of typing and checking. Fixed annual licence per school: 50,000, 100,000 or 250,000 XAF depending on the plan.

When Excel is still enough

If one person keeps the lists, enrolment is very small and you neither print report cards nor track payments in detail, a well-kept spreadsheet can be enough. The need for software appears when copy errors cost time, when several people enter data at once, or when you must show who changed a mark or a payment.

Moving over without starting from scratch

You do not have to retype students one by one: ClassMata imports a whole class from an Excel file, starting from a downloadable template. The step-by-step guide explains the expected format. Import students from Excel.

Next steps

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