Case Study
SchoolBillDesktop Fee Software
Fee collection, admissions and ID cards for a multi-branch private school, with a Windows app that keeps working offline.
- Industry
- Education
- Services
- desktop app development, custom software development
- Platforms
- Windows · Web · Android
- Live for the client school
- Jul 2026Live for the client school
- Desktop app version
- 2.7.0Desktop app version
- Admission form fields
- 52Admission form fields
- Offline sync retry
- 20 sOffline sync retry
1. Project Overview
Our client, a private school with more than one branch, needed fee collection, admissions, receipts and ID cards in one system. It also needed a way to keep entering students when the office internet goes down.
We built SchoolBill as a web system with a Windows desktop app in front of it. The desktop app installs without admin rights and lets staff keep adding students when the line is down. Entries upload on their own once the connection returns.
At a Glance
- Client
- A multi-branch private school in India
- Product
- School fee and admissions software
- Platforms
- Windows desktop, web, Android
- Live since
- July 2026
- Desktop version
- 2.7.0
2. The Challenge
- Fee plans that run monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly or one time, across an April to March session.
- Families with several children who get tiered sibling discounts.
- An admission form with 52 fields that staff must fill without losing work.
- Internet outages at the front office that would otherwise stop admissions.
- Branch staff who should only see their own branch and their own tasks.
3. What We Built
- Fee collection with proportional or oldest-first allocation, advance fees and family discount tiers.
- Fee structures that schedule themselves across April to March by frequency.
- Student records with year-by-year history, promotion, admission cancellation and import.
- An admission form with 7 sections and 52 fields.
- ID cards in the CR80 size as PDF or JPEG, with a QR code that opens a public verify page.
- Receipts with the amount in words, shareable on WhatsApp, and daily, monthly, yearly, pending and cash-book reports.
- Branches with super admin, admin and accountant roles, module permissions, an activity log and backups.
4. How It Works
The core runs on Laravel 11 with MySQL, Bootstrap 5 and DomPDF for receipts and ID cards. A Sanctum API serves both the desktop app and a Flutter Android app.
The Windows app is built on Electron and ships as an installer and a portable exe. Each PC gets its own device key, stored encrypted with Windows DPAPI, so no browser session is needed. When the network drops, new admissions go into a local queue file with a backup copy. The app retries every 20 seconds, and each entry carries its own id, so a repeated upload never creates a duplicate student.
A PC signs in online once to receive its key. After that, offline entry works for as long as the outage lasts.
5. The Outcome
SchoolBill went live for the client in July 2026, and a second deployment on the school’s own domain followed in September. Version 2.7.0 of the desktop app brought offline student entry into the Windows build.
Before each release, smoke and API test scripts run against both the local and the live system, and the offline flow has its own test suites, including a run inside the real Electron app. The web side has moved from version 2.0 to 5.37 since launch.
- Live for the client school
- Jul 2026Live for the client school
- Desktop app version
- 2.7.0Desktop app version
- Admission form fields
- 52Admission form fields
- Offline sync retry
- 20 sOffline sync retry
- Platforms: Windows, web, Android
- 3Platforms: Windows, web, Android
Technologies Used
- Laravel 11
- Electron
- MySQL
- Bootstrap 5
- DomPDF
- Sanctum
- Flutter
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