School fees

Collecting school fees through Alviyora is optional. A school can run attendance, academics and communication without ever touching this section.

If you do use it, money is settled directly into your school’s own bank account. Alviyora never holds your fee money.

alviyora.com

The shape of it#

Three pieces, in order:

1. A fee structure — the annual fee for one grade in one year.
2. Fee items — optional extras billed on their own cadence.
3. A learner fee assignment — what a specific learner owes, and over how many instalments.

Fee structures#

Finance → Add fee structure.

One per grade per academic year, carrying the annual amount. Grade 8 costs R24,000 for 2026; Grade 12 costs R28,000.

That annual figure is the source everything else divides up. Set it once and the schedules do the arithmetic.

The amount shown beside each structure is the one held in Alviyora’s invoicing system — the figure a learner is actually billed. If it could not be checked at that moment it is marked Last known.

Fee items#

Optional add-ons, billed independently of the grade’s annual fee:

A once-off camp fee and a monthly transport charge are both fee items; the cadence is what makes them behave differently.

Learner fee assignments#

This is where a learner meets a fee structure. Each assignment carries:

A payment schedule — one of three:

Monthly fees run through all twelve months, school holidays included: a twelfth of the year’s fee each month.

A discount, as a percentage. This is where a sibling discount or a pay-in-full incentive goes. It is standing, not per-invoice.

With a discount entered, choose the Reason for the discount — Sibling, Staff member’s child, Bursary or Other — so the school’s records say why it was given. Alviyora never gives a discount on its own: whether a learner qualifies is your school’s policy, so the person setting up the fee decides and types the percentage.

Optional items, ticked from the fee-item list.

One assignment per learner per academic year. A learner promoted into a new grade gets a new assignment against that grade’s structure, and the old one stays — so last year’s history is intact.

Who pays: the learner’s fee account#

Finance → Learner fee accounts. Search for a learner by name or grade and open their Fee account. One screen holds everything about who pays for that learner.

Saving creates the learner’s account in the invoicing system: the learner, each guardian you ticked with their share and how they pay, and the fee they are on. There is nothing to set up separately. Beside each guardian the screen shows In the invoicing system once it has arrived.

If the invoicing system cannot be reached at that moment, your change is still saved. The screen says it has not arrived yet, and it is sent automatically without you doing anything more.

The bottom of the same screen shows the account as it stands right now — the balance, unpaid and overdue invoices, and the payment reference a guardian quotes on an EFT so the payment finds the right account.

When invoices go out#

Nobody presses a button. Every night Alviyora works out what falls due that day — a monthly instalment on the 1st, a term’s instalment on the first day of term, an annual fee on 1 January — and issues those invoices for the whole school.

Each charge can only ever be issued once. If a night’s run is interrupted and starts again, nothing is billed twice; and a once-off item such as a registration fee is billed once, not with every instalment.

A fee is billed in its own academic year. Last year’s assignment stays on the learner’s record as history and is not billed again.

Each run records what it issued and what it skipped. A learner who was skipped appears under Needs attention on the Finance screen with the reason, and a Fee account button that takes you straight to where it is put right. Fix it within a week and the fee goes out by itself.

Every amount on an invoice is the fee as it stands in the invoicing system on the day the invoice is issued.

Reminders and statements#

Finance → Fee reminders and statements.

Alviyora emails each paying guardian about their invoices, and you choose when:

Type the days you want, separated by commas, and Save. Leave a box empty to switch that kind of reminder off. Use the defaults puts the starting values back.

A few things worth knowing:

• A guardian is sent at most one reminder about an invoice on any one day.
• A guardian who shares the fees is reminded about their own share, and gets their own statement.
• An invoice that is out with the bank on a debit order is not chased until the bank answers.
• A period with nothing on the account sends no statement.

On a learner’s Fee account you can see every statement that has been sent, open any of them, and create one for any other period — the year to date for a parent who asks what they have paid, for instance — with the option to email it straight to the payers.

How parents pay#

Debit order or card, collected automatically, settled to your school’s account.

Manually, by EFT or cash at the office, recorded by somebody holding Capture Payments — the bursar’s permission.

Both end up in the same place, so a parent’s balance is complete regardless of how they paid.

What it costs you#

Fee collection is charged per successful collection:

• A flat rate, whatever your size and whatever the amount collected.
• Nothing when a collection fails.
• Capped per month, so the maximum is a number you can put in next year’s budget.

The current rate and cap are on your billing page and on Alviyora’s pricing page.

What guardians see#

Billing contacts see, in the parents portal: what is owed, what has been paid, their schedule, and their next instalment.

Their account statements are listed there too. Each opens as a page they can save or print, so one that went to a spam folder can still be found.