School parent app
Most school apps are a web page in a wrapper with a one-and-a-half star rating, installed under duress and deleted by October. A parent app earns its place by answering the three questions a parent actually has: how was the day, what do I owe, and where is the bus.
The parent app: how the day went, what is owed, where the bus is. Illustrative data.
One feed, in the order things happened: attendance marked that morning, homework set with its attachments and voice notes, behaviour notes, and the class announcement the school would otherwise have put in a WhatsApp group at 11pm. Circulars, homework, attendance and report cards all arrive free over in-app push notification, which is why we do not sell SMS credit packs.
Pending dues broken down by fee head, the instalment choice where the school allows one, and payment in a tap — UPI, QR, cards, net banking or a recurring UPI Autopay mandate. The receipt is tax-compliant and issued instantly. On the school’s side the payment is reconciled on arrival against the admission number and the exact fee head, which is the part that removes the queue on fee day and the accountant’s week of bank-statement matching.
The route on a map with a live position and an ETA, geo-fence and speed alerts, and a confirmation when the child boards and when they get off. "The bus is two stops away" is a better answer than a parent standing at a gate in the rain wondering whether to call the school office.
Moderated in-app messaging between parent and teacher. No personal numbers in a WhatsApp group, no messages at midnight, and a record that exists if a conversation ever needs to be reviewed. Teachers get their evenings back and the school gets a boundary it can actually enforce.
Parents compare schools on what they can see. A clunky app, an SMS blast and a queue at the bank branch are all visible; your curriculum is not, until much later. Every parent who cannot find out whether their child was marked present is an admissions conversation you lose next season to the school down the road whose app works.
Straight answers
No. The parent app is part of the cloud licence, because it needs servers, payment rails and push infrastructure to exist. The free desktop edition is the offline half that runs inside your building.
A native-speed app on iOS and Android. The wrapper approach is exactly what produces the ratings schools are embarrassed by.
No. The school holds the licence. Fee payments carry a platform fee that is stated in your quote in writing rather than discovered later.
Nothing in the school stops working. Receipts still print at the office, notices still go on the board, and critical alerts can go by SMS, billed on usage.
Install SCHOOL OS Desktop on one office computer this week and run your admissions, receipts, attendance and report cards on it for nothing. When you want the parent app and online fees, we are one call away.