School software for Rajasthan has to pass four local tests

It is the third week of February in a private school in Sikar. The Class 8 state exam starts on Thursday, the RTE application window on Raj PSP opens the next day, and two parent members of the School Level Fee Committee want to see how this year's activity charge fits the fee the committee approved. The accountant has the approved fee sheet in one file and the receipts in another, and last session's RTE reimbursement claim still says ‘under process’. The principal's WhatsApp has sixty unread messages from parents about the exam timetable, most of them in Hindi. None of this is unusual in Rajasthan. What is unusual is school software built for it.

The claim of this guide is that a Rajasthan private school should judge school management software on four local tests before anything else. Can a Hindi-medium office run it, and can parents read it in Hindi? Can it show that every rupee charged matches the fee approved under the 2016 Fee Act? Can it track RTE admissions and reimbursement claims the way Raj PSP works? And does it keep student and exam records ready for RBSE's calendar, now that Classes 5 and 8 sit real exams again? Software that passes these four earns the rest of your evaluation; software that fails any one of them will cost you more than its price.

What a Rajasthan school actually needs from school management software

Rajasthan's school market is large, private and increasingly competitive. UDISE+ 2025-26 data shows that 52.5% of the state's enrolment is now in private unaided schools, well above the national figure of about 40%. Many of these schools are Hindi-medium or bilingual, run with a small office team, and collect fees partly in cash and partly by UPI. Start your requirements from that reality:

The Rajasthan rules your software has to respect

Four sets of rules shape a private school's year in Rajasthan, and each leaves a trail of records behind it.

The Rajasthan Schools (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2016. Every private school sets its fee through a School Level Fee Committee: the principal, three teachers and a management representative, with five parents drawn by lottery from the Parent-Teacher Association. Once approved, the fee holds for three academic years, and disputes go first to a Divisional Fee Regulatory Committee. The Supreme Court upheld the Act on 3 May 2021 in Indian School, Jodhpur v. State of Rajasthan, reading down some provisions — among them, that the parents drawn by lottery should come from families whose children did not get RTE seats. The practical consequence is simple: your fee records must show what was approved and what was charged, with nothing in between.

RTE admissions and reimbursement on Raj PSP. Private schools do not use Shala Darpan, which serves government and aided schools; they use the Private School Portal at rajpsp.nic.in. Through it, 25% of entry-level seats — pre-primary (PP3+) and Class 1 — are filled by an online lottery. For 2026-27, applications ran from 20 February to 10 March 2026 and the lottery was held on 12 March, with families verified through Jan Aadhaar. The state then reimburses the school for those children — under Section 12(2) of the RTE Act, the lower of the school's fee and the state's notified per-child cost — through claims filed on the same portal.

RBSE's exam calendar. The Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan conducts the Class 10 and 12 board exams and state-level exams for Classes 5 and 8. In 2026 the Class 8 exam began on 19 February and the Class 5 exam on 20 February, both running into early March. In February 2026 the state also ended automatic promotion in Classes 5 and 8: a child must now reach the minimum marks, with one more attempt within 45 days. Marks, attendance and re-exam records suddenly matter in classes that schools used to treat lightly.

UDISE+. Every recognised school files its annual return, and the student details in it — PEN, APAAR, Aadhaar, category, attendance — have to match what the school holds.

How to test school software in a Rajasthan demo

Do not judge from a slide deck. Put your accountant, a class teacher and a parent's phone in the room, and run these seven checks in one sitting:

1. Switch the office screens to Hindi and hand the laptop to your accountant. If they can add a student and collect a fee without help, the software passes. If only the menu headings change, it fails.

2. Enter your SLFC-approved fee for one class and print a receipt. Every head on the receipt should match the approved sheet. Ask what stops the office from adding a charge that is not in the approved structure — and what record it leaves if someone does.

3. Collect ₹500 in cash and send a UPI link for the balance. Both receipts should arrive on the parent's WhatsApp, in Hindi, within a minute.

4. Mark three RTE students and build last session's reimbursement claim. Add the students, record the Raj PSP reference, then record a part-payment. You should be able to see, on one screen, what was claimed, approved, paid and still owed.

5. Enter Class 8 marks and produce a Hindi report card. Then ask how the vendor handles a child who has to re-sit within 45 days — this is new, and many products have not caught up.

6. Pull the UDISE+ data. Export the attendance sheet and check that student records carry the SR or admission number, PEN and APAAR ID without a second spreadsheet.

7. Get the all-in yearly price for your enrolment in writing. Per student, with WhatsApp and SMS charges and payment-gateway fees spelled out separately.

The options you will run into

Rajasthan schools see three kinds of product. Regional vendors market themselves specifically to Rajasthan and RBSE schools — names you will meet include ShalaPro, EduGradUP and SchoolDeck. National school ERPs such as Teachmint, Entab, Fedena, Vidyalaya and MyClassboard sell across boards and states. And a large number of smaller schools still run on registers, a desktop accounting package and Excel. None of these is wrong by default. Judge each against the four local tests and the seven demo checks above, with your own staff at the keyboard, rather than against a feature list written for another state.

What school software costs in Rajasthan

Vendors quote in three ways: a flat fee per school per year, a price per student per year, or a price per module. Convert every quote into one yearly figure for your enrolment before comparing, and add the two costs outside the software: payment-gateway charges on online fee payments, and per-message charges for WhatsApp and SMS.

For reference, Inkwelly publishes flat per-student prices with no enrolment slabs: ₹49 per student per year on Lite, ₹99 on Standard and ₹199 on Premium. A 400-student Hindi-medium school pays ₹19,600 a year on Lite, which covers student records, student and staff attendance, fees with online payments, exams and report cards, WhatsApp and SMS notices, the school calendar and ID cards; Standard at ₹39,600 adds admissions, timetable, homework, transport, library and more. Whatever you buy, compare the price with what one term of unclaimed RTE reimbursement or one fee dispute costs your school.

Where Inkwelly fits

Inkwelly is built for this kind of school — Hindi-medium or bilingual, budget-aware and WhatsApp-first. The office screens and parent messages work in Hindi, and fee collection runs on class-wise fee structures with named fee heads, so the SLFC-approved fee can be entered as it was approved. Fees can be collected in cash at the counter or through a UPI link via Razorpay, and the receipt reaches the parent on WhatsApp in Hindi. RTE students are marked in the fee record, and each reimbursement claim is tracked by period: the students on it, line-by-line verification, the portal reference when it is submitted, and every disbursement as it arrives — so the school always knows what is still owed. Our guide to tracking RTE reimbursement walks through it.

Student records carry the admission number series, PEN, APAAR ID, ABC ID and Aadhaar, and attendance exports as a workbook laid out in UDISE+ column order. Marksheets can be printed in Hindi. For how the same approach works next door, see our Uttar Pradesh guide.

“In Rajasthan the real test of school software is not the demo. It is whether the fee committee, the RTE claim and the Hindi-medium office all come out right in the same week of February.”

Decide before the RTE window opens

February and March are the worst months to change software in Rajasthan: the RTE lottery, the Class 5 and 8 exams and next year's admissions all land together. Shortlist two or three products in October and November, run the seven-step test with your own accountant and a class teacher, and go live before December so the new system has a quiet term to settle in. The product your office is still using happily by the end of that term is the right one — whatever its brochure said.

See Hindi-first school software built for Rajasthan's rules

A 20-minute walkthrough: your SLFC fee structure, a Hindi receipt on WhatsApp, an RTE reimbursement claim and a Hindi report card.