Every boarder counted, every night. Every gate pass on record.
Hostel management software for Indian boarding and residential schools: beds and rooms, night roll call, outpass and gate release, mess headcount and hostel fees in one place. If a child is unplaced when a count closes, or late back from leave, their parents get a message with the warden's number, even during quiet hours.
Hostel management software for schools starts at 10 p.m.
It is 10 p.m. in a boys' hostel in Dehradun, the hour that decides whether hostel management software for schools is worth anything. The night warden walks the corridor with a torch and a hardbound register, ticking names room by room. Two boys from Room 14 went home for a cousin's wedding, but the leave slip is pinned to a board downstairs, so he pencils a question mark. The kitchen has cooked for the usual number. In the accounts office, a clerk is still matching old caution-deposit receipts against an Excel sheet.
The cost of that register shows up on the worst night, not the normal one. A question mark in blue ink looks like a tick when nobody reads the page until breakfast. A boy who didn't come back from an outpass is discovered at 7 a.m., and his mother, 300 km away, hears it from another parent before the school calls. A local guardian whose permission the father withdrew in August still collects a child on Saturday, because the letter sits in a folder the gate never sees. When a family asks for its deposit back in March, nobody can say whether it was ever collected. Each of these ends in the principal's office, and some end with the police asking to see the school's records.
If you run a boarding school in Mussoorie, a residential CBSE school in Ajmer or a 40-bed girls' wing attached to a day school in Gwalior, you know these nights. Inkwelly Hostel is built around them: a roll call where nobody starts as present, a gate that checks who may collect a child at the moment of release, a mess that counts who is actually eating, and hostel fees that treat a caution deposit as money you owe back.
What Inkwelly Hostel replaces in a boarding school
Walk into the hostel office of most residential schools and you will find the same collection: a night register for each block, an outpass slip book, a gate diary, a folder of local guardian letters, a mess headcount chit, a contractor's bill nobody can check and a caution deposit register. None of them talk to each other, so the warden, the gate, the kitchen and the accounts office each hold a different version of who is in the hostel tonight.
Inkwelly Hostel puts all of it on one record per boarder: the bed, every count they were marked at, every outpass and who collected them, the diet and allergy the kitchen must know, and every rupee billed, paid or held as a deposit, across every room they have moved through. The warden works from a phone in the corridor. The office works from the web, in English or Hindi. Parents hear about the moments that matter on WhatsApp, SMS, email or app notification.
What changes from the first night
- Every boarder starts each count as not yet counted, so an unfinished sheet never passes for a full hostel
- Children away on approved leave are marked on leave before the warden opens the list
- Closing a count with a child unplaced messages their parents with the on-duty warden's name and number
- Approving an outpass and releasing the child at the gate are separate steps with separate permissions
- A six-character gate code goes to parents on approval, and the gate asks for it at handover
- Local guardian permission is checked at the moment of release, so a withdrawal stops the very next pickup
- A boarder still out after their expected return time is marked overdue within 15 minutes, and parents are told
- The mess sees today's headcount by block and diet, and the printed slip names every child with a food allergy
- Hostel fees bill each room for the days it was held and credit the mess for approved leave
- Caution deposits are tracked as money owed back, with every refund or forfeiture recorded with a reason
Everything the hostel office opens in a day
Inkwelly Hostel is not a tab tucked inside the fee module. It has its own menu: occupancy, boarders and incidents at the top; roll call, leave and mess under Every day, because that is where wardens spend their evenings; the money screens below them; and blocks, room categories, night duty, registers, import and settings at the bottom. The warden's phone carries the jobs that happen away from a desk: the count, the gate and tonight's duty list. Here is what each part does.
Twelve parts of one hostel
Blocks, rooms and room types
Set up each block as a boys' or girls' wing, add rooms as a range such as 101 to 120, and group them by room type, from an AC two-seater to an open dormitory. The room type carries the price.
Bed allotment and room moves
Give one student a bed, or fill a block from a class list in a single pass. Room moves keep the full bed history, and parents are told the block, room and warden's number each time.
Night roll call
Run the counts your hostel actually takes, from morning to lights-out, on the web or the warden's phone. Everyone starts as not yet counted, and children on approved leave are marked before the list opens.
Leave and outpasses
Out pass, home leave, medical, emergency and school trip. Request, approval, gate release and return are four recorded steps, with the gate code, the person who collected the child and the return time on file.
Local guardians
Record who in the city may collect a child, with relation, phone, the ID they will show and only its last four digits. An authorisation can carry an end date and be withdrawn with a reason.
Mess and weekly menu
One kitchen can feed several blocks. Keep the weekly menu for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, see today's headcount by block and diet, and check the contractor's monthly bill in boarder-days.
Night duty roster
Put a warden on duty for each block and night, with a number to reach them. The screen warns when a block has nobody on tonight, because missing-child messages name whoever is on duty.
Incident register
Log medical events, theft, property damage and absconding with severity, witnesses and action taken. The full account locks after 24 hours, and later corrections are added as updates nobody can edit or remove.
Hostel fees
Rate cards by room type, charges for mess, laundry and electricity, a billing calendar that can raise invoices on its own, concessions, extra charges and late fees that stay off until you switch them on.
Caution deposits
Deposits are recorded as money the school is holding, not as income. The screen shows the total still owed back to families, and every refund or forfeiture is recorded with how and why.
Leavers and settlements
When a boarder leaves, one screen brings together unpaid bills, charges never billed and the deposit held, adds your adjustments and shows whether the family owes the school or the school owes the family.
Registers and import
Print the hostel strength statement, outstanding fees by class, the mess headcount slip and a month-end reconciliation. Moving from another system? Bring boarders, opening dues and deposits across in three files.
Hostel attendance at night roll call: nobody starts as present
A hostel roll call answers one question: can we place every child who should be sleeping here tonight? Inkwelly treats each count as an event with a start and a finish, not a column of ticks. The warden picks the block and the count, and Inkwelly lists everyone who holds a bed there, room by room, with each child's photo on the web sheet so a face can be matched to a bed.
Your hostel decides which counts it takes. Every school starts with morning, evening and night counts at 6:30 a.m., 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.; rename them, add a study-hour count or switch one off. A count that has already been taken can be switched off but never deleted.
The office sees the day on one board, every block against every count, with counts nobody took shown plainly as not taken. The month register lays boarders down the side and days across the top, ready to print for an inspection. Reports lead with whether the counts happened at all, then who was present, and list the children who were unplaced again and again.
Everyone starts as not yet counted
When a count opens, no boarder is marked present. Each child stays not yet counted until someone who can see them marks Present, Absent, In the infirmary or Returned late. Only children away on approved leave that day are marked in advance, as On leave, so nobody rings a parent at 10 p.m. about a child sitting at home with them.
Marks are saved in batches, which matters on hostel wifi. If the phone drops the connection halfway down the second floor, the warden opens the same count again and the saved marks come straight back. A count that runs past midnight stays on the evening it started, so one night never splits into two half-counted days.
Closing a count with a child unplaced
Finishing a count with everyone accounted for is one tap. Finishing it while any child is still not counted is a deliberate act: Inkwelly lists the children nobody could place and asks the warden to keep looking, or to close and alert parents.
Closing sends each unplaced child's parents an urgent message on WhatsApp, SMS, email or app notification, whichever your school has connected. It names the block, room, count and time, gives the on-duty warden's name and number, and arrives in English or Hindi. It goes out immediately, even inside quiet hours, because a message held until 7 a.m. tells a family at breakfast that their child was missing all night. A child marked Absent does not trigger it, because that mark means the warden knows where the child is.
Hostel leave and gate pass: request, approve, release, return
An outpass is the record a school produces if something happens to a child off campus, so Inkwelly keeps it as four separate acts, not one slip. Someone requests the leave, usually the warden after a parent's call. Someone with authority approves it. Someone at the gate hands the child to an adult. Someone marks the child back. Each step is recorded with who did it and when, and each has its own permission, so the person handing a child over cannot also be the one who approved it.
The leave screen opens on what the gate is asked all evening: who is awaiting approval, who is out, who is overdue and who is due back today. Search by name, admission number, room or the gate code on the pass. Five kinds of leave are built in: out pass, home leave, medical, emergency and school trip.
Request and approval
A leave request records the type of leave, when the child leaves, the time they are expected back, where they are going and why. A switch stops counting the child in the mess while they are away; on a school trip it should stay off, because the school usually still feeds children on a trip.
Approval creates a six-character gate code and sends it to the parents with the leave dates and the expected return time. The code leaves out characters that get confused when read aloud over a phone, such as O and 0. A rejected request is deliberately not messaged: that conversation belongs to the warden, not to a WhatsApp that arrives before the reason does.
Release at the gate, with the code
The gate sees approved passes waiting to go. Releasing a child asks who is collecting them, whether a parent, a local guardian, the student themselves or a member of staff, and records that person's name, phone and relation. The release screen shows the gate code with a plain instruction: ask them for this code before handing the child over.
That name and number are frozen onto the leave the moment it is saved, so editing a guardian's record later never rewrites who took a child out in October. Parents are told straight away that their child has left campus and who collected them. They are told again when the warden marks the child back, and the return time and any remark about a late arrival stay on the record.
Local guardians, checked at every release
Many boarding families nominate a local guardian, an uncle in Dehradun or a family friend in Ajmer, to take a child out on Sundays. Inkwelly keeps each boarder's guardians with name, relation, phone, city, the ID they will show and only its last four digits. The full Aadhaar, licence, voter ID or passport number is never stored.
Authorisation is checked at the moment of release, not when the leave was requested. If a father withdraws an uncle's permission, the withdrawal, which needs a reason, applies the next time the uncle turns up: the release is refused with a message telling the gate not to hand the child over. An authorisation can also carry an end date, after which the gate refuses that person until the parents renew it.
Overdue back: checked every 15 minutes
Every 15 minutes, Inkwelly looks for boarders released on leave who are still not back after their expected return time. Each one is marked overdue and moves to the top of the leave screen and the warden's app. Their parents receive one urgent message with the expected return time, how late the child now is, and the on-duty warden's name and number.
That message also ignores quiet hours. It is sent once for each leave, not every quarter of an hour, so a family is never buried in repeats. The moment the warden marks the child back, the leave closes and parents get the return message.
Registers, slip books and WhatsApp groups vs Inkwelly Hostel
Hostel mess management: one kitchen, three wings, one bill
Most schools with junior boys, senior boys and girls' wings run one kitchen, on one contract, at one rate. In Inkwelly a kitchen is set up once, with the contractor's name, phone and the rate the school pays per head per day, and you tick the blocks it feeds. A separate girls' kitchen, or separate veg and non-veg kitchens, is simply a second entry.
The rate paid to the contractor is kept apart from what parents are billed for mess, so neither what you owe the caterer nor what you earn is misstated. Nobody taps a card at the mess door: the day's count comes from who holds a bed, minus those away on leave with the mess switched off. Our vendor-neutral guide to hostel and mess software lists what else to test on any demo.
The weekly menu and today's headcount
The menu is a grid of seven days across breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. Type the items for each meal, such as poha, banana and tea, and change a meal whenever the kitchen does; the new items apply from that day.
Today's headcount shows how many boarders are eating and how many are away, by block and by diet. Vegetarian, non-vegetarian, eggetarian, Jain and sattvic are separate pots, so they are separate numbers. Diet and food allergy sit on the boarder's bed record, so a change made today shows up in the next count. The printable mess slip names every child with a food allergy under a line that reads: read before cooking.
The contractor statement, in boarder-days
At month-end the accountant and the caterer sit down with a bill. Inkwelly's contractor statement for the month so far counts boarder-days, not heads multiplied by calendar days, so a boy who joined on the 12th and a girl who went home for nine days both change the figure. Each boarder is a line showing days in residence, days away and chargeable days, and the total shows its own working.
On a room change, the day of the move is counted once, so one lunch is never paid for twice. The statement takes off every day a child was away, because the caterer is paid for meals served; parents' mess charges follow the school's own leave rule instead.
Hostel fee management that bills the way boarding works
Hostel billing breaks fee engines built for tuition in three places: the mess rate changes mid-year, children move rooms mid-term, and the caution deposit is not a fee at all. Inkwelly Hostel keeps its own invoices, receipts and numbering next to Student Fee, so tuition billing stays exactly as it is.
Setup is one rate card for each session. Every room type gets a monthly rate. Charges such as mess, laundry, electricity and admission are added with how often they are billed and any tax. A billing calendar lists the periods you bill, with due dates, and each period can raise its invoices automatically a set number of days before they fall due. Before any bill is raised by hand, a preview shows who is charged for part of the period, who is skipped as already billed, and which room types still have no rate.
Rate cards with dated price changes
When the contractor raises the mess rate from September, add a price change to the mess charge from September onwards; bills already raised for April to August do not move. The same tool handles a charge levied only in some months, such as air-conditioning from April to October.
Billing follows the boarder from bed to bed. A boarder who spent two months in a ₹4,000 room and one month in a ₹12,000 room is billed a line for each room, about ₹20,000 for the quarter rather than ₹36,000. Joiners and leavers pay for the days they held a bed, one-time charges such as admission are billed only once, and at year-end the whole rate card copies into the next session with every date shifted.
Leave credits the mess, never the rent
Mark one charge on the rate card as the mess charge, and set in hostel settings how many days of approved leave earn a deduction. When a boarder's approved leave in a billing period reaches that number, the mess line on their invoice is reduced pro-rata and says exactly how many days came off.
The room rent is never reduced, because the bed was held either way, and shorter absences change nothing on the bill. That settles the question parents raise after Diwali and the summer holidays before anyone has to ask it at the fee counter.
Payment links, receipts and QR checks
Families 300 km away rarely come to the fee counter. From any hostel invoice, the office creates a payment link through the school's Razorpay account, for all payment methods or UPI only, and sends it on WhatsApp or SMS. The family pays by UPI, card or net banking, and the invoice updates itself when the money lands.
At the counter, collect cash, UPI, cheque, bank transfer, card or demand draft, with part payments allowed or refused by your settings. Receipts print on 80mm or 58mm thermal printers, or as an A4 PDF with a QR code anyone can scan to confirm it is genuine without seeing the family's fee details. A lost receipt can be sent again with a PDF link that works for 30 days.
Late fees and the defaulter list
Late fees ship switched off. When you turn them on, set a grace period and bands, for example ₹50 a day for the first fortnight and then a one-off percentage with a cap, and choose whether a percentage applies to the full bill or only the unpaid balance. A fine is never charged on a fine. Each morning, bills past their due date are marked overdue and fees are worked out afresh, and a family is told once, when a bill first goes overdue. Waiving a fine needs a written reason.
The defaulter list ages every bill against its own due date, from not yet due through 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days, sorts the worst first and shows when each family last paid.
See a night roll call and a gate release on your own hostel
Bring your block names, your counts and a few boarders. On a demo we walk through a count closed with a child unplaced, an outpass approved and released at the gate, and the message a parent would receive at each step.
Caution deposits and leavers: the money you owe back
A caution deposit is money a school holds on a family's behalf. Booked as income, it inflates collections and hides the day families start asking for it back. Inkwelly records every deposit against the boarder as money held, shows the school-wide total still owed on its own screen, and keeps it out of income in the month-end reconciliation, where deposits held sit on a separate labelled line. Deposits you already hold from earlier years can be imported on day one.
A school decides once whether a deposit is taken for the whole stay or every academic year, and that choice cannot change while any deposit is still open, so no child ends up with two.
Settling a leaver in one sitting
A boarder leaving mid-year is the most common money event in a hostel. From the boarder's record, Vacate opens a settlement with everything together: unpaid bills, extra charges never billed, the caution deposit held and any bill running past the leaving date. Add adjustments, such as a credit for unused days or a charge for an unreturned key, and Inkwelly shows one net figure: the family owes the school, or the school owes the family.
Settle and close the bed in one step. If someone takes a payment at the counter while the settlement is open, Inkwelly refuses to save a figure that is no longer true. Approving the settlement, which freezes its figures, is a separate authority from recording the exit.
Refund or keep, with a reason
Settling a deposit offers two choices: give it back by cash, bank transfer, cheque or UPI, in full or in part, or keep it against damage or unpaid dues. Keeping a parent's money needs a written reason and a different permission from recording deposits, because taking money in and deciding to retain it are different decisions.
A deposit refund never reopens a paid invoice, and money kept is recorded as income retained, not as a refund. In the default roles the principal and the accountant approve refunds and forfeitures, while the warden can see what a boarder owes but cannot collect or refund it.
Built for everyone responsible for a boarder
A hostel is run by people who rarely sit in the same room. The warden and house-parents are in the corridors at night. The principal answers to parents, the management committee and inspectors. The accountant reconciles the contractor and the deposits. Parents are hundreds of kilometres away. Inkwelly gives each of them what their job needs and keeps back what belongs to someone else: a warden sees what a boarder owes so they can remind the family, but cannot take or refund money, and an accountant bills every bed but cannot move a child between rooms.
For the warden and house-parents
The Inkwelly app on the warden's phone opens on one question: is tonight's count done? Resume an open count with one tap, or start one for a block. The gate shows passes ready to go and children out now, with the code to ask for. An overdue strip appears when a boarder is late back, and tonight's duty list has a button to call whoever is on.
On the web, the warden works from the boarders list, filtered by block, class, diet or boarders with no local guardian on file. Each boarder's page carries the bed, diet, food allergy, roll call history, leave, incidents and bed history, with a printable emergency card and the bed allotment letter a click away.
For the principal
The hostel dashboard opens on what a principal is asked about: beds filled against capacity, tonight's counts and how many children are unplaced, who is off campus and who is overdue, and open incidents. Money figures appear only for people allowed to see amounts.
Two decisions are reserved for the principal's role by default: placing a child in a block that does not match the child's recorded gender, and adding an extra cot to a full room. Both need a written reason that stays on the record, and neither can be done in bulk. The principal and vice-principal roles approve outpasses while wardens release children at the gate, so nobody both authorises and carries out a handover.
For the accountant
The hostel finance dashboard shows collection against everything billed this session, today's takings by mode, and a needs-attention list: bills past due, boarders who owe money, exit settlements awaiting approval and reversed payments. Every payment shows who collected it.
Reversing a payment needs a reason and cancels its receipt, and a bill cannot be cancelled while money sits against it. Invoice, receipt and refund numbers follow your own prefixes, with the financial year in the number and a fresh series from 1 April. Hostel collections can be mapped to your school's accounts in Inkwelly's finance book, and the printed reconciliation runs from opening dues through billing, concessions, collections and refunds to closing dues.
For parents 300 km away
For a boarding parent, the hostel is the messages the school sends, so Inkwelly sends them at the moments that matter: a bed allotted or changed, with the block, room and warden's number; leave approved, with the gate code; the child leaving campus and who collected them; the child back; and urgently if the child is overdue or unplaced at a count.
Money arrives the same way: when a hostel invoice is raised, when a payment is received, once when a bill first goes overdue, and whenever the office shares a payment link. Messages come on the channels your school has connected, in English or Hindi, and every receipt PDF carries a QR code the family can scan to check it.
A day-school ERP's hostel tab vs Inkwelly Hostel
Connected to attendance, fees, promotion and transfer certificates
Hostel records are only useful if the rest of the school can see them. A boarder's hostel card sits on their full student profile, next to fees, attendance and everything else the office already uses. Hostel messages go out through the same WhatsApp, SMS and email accounts your school connects in Communications, under the same quiet hours and the same delivery log.
When a family asks for a transfer certificate, your TC settings can require hostel clearance: the bed vacated, hostel dues paid, and any caution deposit refunded or formally kept, checked alongside the fees, library and transport clearances. With that setting on, a TC is held back while the school still holds a family's deposit or is owed hostel fees, unless an authorised person overrides the check with a reason. Residential schools that run on a military pattern will find the rest of their checklist in our guide to ERP for Sainik and residential schools.
Class attendance knows about hostel leave
A boarder sent home on approved hostel leave is not absent from class, and a class teacher has no way of knowing that at 8 a.m. When a teacher marks such a child Absent, on the web register or the teacher app, Student Attendance saves it as Leave, with a remark naming the hostel leave. The register reads correctly for an inspection, the attendance percentage is worked out on the right basis, and a parent sitting next to their child at home is not sent an absence alert. A teacher who marks the child Present is left alone, because they have seen the child.
Promotion carries the bed forward
Beds belong to a session, so a new academic year needs a decision for every boarder. When you run Inkwelly's promotion for the new session, each boarder keeps the same room and bed in the new year. Unpaid hostel dues move across as a single opening-balance bill, so nothing is written off by accident at year-end.
Concessions such as staff ward, sibling or free seat follow the boarder when the new session has a concession with the same code. If it has not been set up yet, nothing is guessed, and the office grants it once it exists. Caution deposits are not copied into the new year, so the amount you owe back to families is never doubled.
Records that hold up when something goes wrong
In a boarding school the school is the guardian at night, and the questions after an incident are always the same. Who was in the room? When was the child last counted? Who signed them out, and to whom were they handed? Parents, the management committee, the police or an inquiry under the POCSO Act, 2012 may ask, sometimes months later. Inkwelly Hostel is designed so the answers already exist.
Bed allotments are never edited in place: a move closes one record and opens another, so a question like who slept in Room 204 on 12 August has an answer. A closed roll call cannot be changed. The name and phone of whoever collected a child are frozen at release. Software alone does not meet any legal duty for a school; it gives the school a record it can show.
The incident register
The hostel incident register is for boarding matters: a medical event at night, a theft, damage to property, or a boarder who absconds. Each entry records when it happened, a one-line summary, the full account, severity from low to critical, witnesses including people not on the system, what was done and whether parents have been told. The full account locks 24 hours after it is logged; later corrections are added as updates that cannot be edited or removed, and an update can move the case to under review, resolved or escalated. Serious incidents older than two hours with no record of parents being told are flagged at the top.
Ragging, discipline and complaints belong in Inkwelly's separate Grievances and Safeguarding register, and the form points staff there.
Who can see what
Access follows the job. The Hostel Warden role counts boarders, raises and releases leave, runs the mess and the duty roster, and keeps the local guardian and incident registers. It can see what a boarder owes but cannot collect, refund or change fee settings, and it cannot approve leave, which stays with the principal and vice-principal. Incident accounts sit behind their own view permission because they name children, and fee amounts sit behind theirs. Your school can adjust any role in Identity & Access Management, and every hostel screen shows each person only the actions their role allows them to take.
Switching to Inkwelly Hostel, even mid-session
Most boarding schools already run their hostel somewhere, whether in registers, in Excel or in another ERP's hostel tab, and none can pause the hostel for a week to change systems. Go-live can be the next working day. Migration, training and setup cost ₹0, and extracting your data from the current system, or from Excel if the vendor won't cooperate, is on us. Years of older records move across on their own track afterwards and never hold up the first night's count.
If you are still comparing options, our vendor-neutral checklist for choosing a school ERP for boarding and residential schools lists the tests to run on any demo, including ours, and the boarding schools page covers the rest of residential school life on Inkwelly.
Three files, in this order
Day one is three files, each with a downloadable template. First, boarders: who is in which block, room and bed. Second, outstanding hostel fees: what each boarder already owed on the day you moved, which becomes an opening bill you collect against in the normal way. Third, the caution deposits you are already holding, so the deposit register shows the money you owe back from the first morning instead of reading zero.
Every rejected row is named with its line number and the reason, so the office fixes line 31 instead of guessing. Uploading a corrected file again does not double anything already imported. The boys' and girls' block rule applies to imports too, with no way around it.
Rooms, counts and rates before the first night
While the files are prepared, the office sets up what only the school knows: blocks as boys' or girls' wings, room types with their beds per room, rooms added in ranges, the counts your wardens take and when, the kitchen and the blocks it feeds, and the wardens posted to each block with a number for the night. Then come the rate card, the billing calendar and whether deposits are taken per stay or per year.
We do a full day of on-site training at go-live and stay on WhatsApp through the first month, answered by a person who works on the product. If a member of staff is still struggling after that, we come back at no cost.
“An untouched roll call should never be able to pass for a full hostel.”
What's included with Inkwelly Hostel
- Boys' and girls' blocks, room types, rooms added in ranges, numbered beds and open dormitories
- Single and bulk bed allotment, room moves with full bed history, and a printable bed allotment letter
- Night roll call with your own named counts, a daily board, a month register and reports on missed counts
- An urgent parent message when a count closes with a child unplaced, even during quiet hours
- Out pass, home leave, medical, emergency and school trip leave, with separate approval and gate release
- Gate codes, a local guardian register checked at every release, and an overdue check every 15 minutes
- Kitchens shared across blocks, a weekly menu, headcount by diet and a monthly contractor statement
- A night-duty roster, so safety messages name the warden on duty and give their number
- An incident register whose full account locks after 24 hours, with an update trail nobody can edit
- Hostel rate cards, dated price changes, automatic invoicing, concessions, extra charges and late fees
- Payment links, thermal and A4 receipts with a QR check, and a defaulter list aged by days overdue
- Caution deposits, leaver settlements, hostel clearance for TCs and a three-file import from your current system
Run tonight's roll call on Inkwelly
Hostel is part of the Premium plan at ₹199 per student per year. Book a demo and we will walk through your blocks, your counts, your gate and your hostel fees, end to end.
Frequently asked
14 questionsWhich Inkwelly plan includes Hostel, and what does it cost?
Hostel is part of the Premium plan, at ₹199 per student per year. Plans are cumulative, so Premium includes everything in Standard and Lite. Inkwelly costs ₹49–₹199 per student per year, flat at any school size, with no enrolment slabs and no per-module upsell. The only external costs are WhatsApp message fees and your payment gateway's transaction charge, both billed at cost.
We have a 40-bed girls' hostel attached to a day school. Is this too much for us?
No. The same screens work for one block and a handful of rooms as they do for a large campus. Set up one girls' block, add the rooms, and keep a single lights-out count if that is your policy; the list of counts is yours to rename, add to or switch off. You still get the missing-child message, the outpass and gate record, the local guardian register and separate hostel fees, which matter as much for 40 boarders as for 400.
Does the warden need a computer to take the night roll call?
No. The Inkwelly app on the warden's phone starts or resumes a count for a block, marks each boarder and closes the count. If the phone loses signal in the corridor, opening the same count again brings back the marks already saved. The same app shows the gate, with passes ready to go and children out now, an overdue strip when someone is late back, and tonight's duty list with a button to call the warden on duty.
What exactly happens when a child is missing at roll call?
When the warden finishes a count with any child still not counted, Inkwelly lists those children and asks the warden to keep looking or to close and alert parents. Closing sends each child's parents an urgent message on the channels your school has connected, whether WhatsApp, SMS, email or app notification, with the block, the room, which count it was, the time, and the on-duty warden's name and number. It goes out immediately, even during quiet hours. A child the warden marks Absent, meaning the warden knows where the child is, does not trigger the message.
Can the same person approve an outpass and hand the child over at the gate?
Not with the default roles. Approving leave and releasing a child at the gate are separate permissions. The Hostel Warden role can raise leave and release children at the gate, but cannot approve leave; approval sits with the principal and vice-principal roles. Every step, from request and approval to release and return, is recorded with who did it and when. If your school organises this differently, roles can be changed in Identity & Access Management.
How are local guardians checked when they come to collect a child?
Each boarder can have local guardians on file with name, relation, phone, city, the ID they will show and its last four digits; the full ID number is never stored. When the gate releases a child to a local guardian, Inkwelly checks at that moment that the person is still authorised and within any end date. If the parents have withdrawn the authorisation, the release is refused with a message telling the gate not to hand the child over. The name and phone of whoever collected the child stay on the leave record permanently.
How do parents who live far away stay informed?
Parents receive messages at the moments that matter: a bed allotted or changed, with the block, room and warden's number; leave approved, with the gate code; their child leaving campus and who collected them; their child back; and urgent messages if the child is overdue or unplaced at a roll call. Hostel invoices, payments received, a bill going overdue for the first time and payment links arrive the same way, on WhatsApp, SMS, email or app notification, in English or Hindi.
How is the mess charge worked out when a boarder goes home on leave?
You mark one charge on the rate card as the mess charge and set how many days of approved leave in a billing period earn a deduction. When a boarder's approved leave reaches that number, the mess line on their invoice is reduced pro-rata and shows how many days came off. Room rent is never reduced, because the bed was held. The contractor statement is separate and takes off every day away, since the caterer is paid for meals actually served.
Can hostel fees be billed separately from tuition fees?
Yes. Hostel has its own invoices, receipts and numbering, next to the Student Fee module rather than inside it, so tuition billing stays exactly as it is. Hostel invoices can be raised automatically from a billing calendar or in a batch after a preview, collected at the counter or through a payment link, and sent to families as PDFs. Room changes are billed for each room occupied, and one-time charges such as admission and the caution deposit are billed only once.
What happens to beds and hostel dues when we promote students to the next session?
When you run promotion for the new session, each boarder keeps the same room and bed. Unpaid hostel dues move across as one opening-balance bill, so nothing is lost at year-end. Concessions follow the boarder when the new session has a concession with the same code. Caution deposits are not copied, so the amount the school owes back is never doubled. Rate cards can be copied into the new session with every date shifted in one step.
How do caution deposits and refunds work when a boarder leaves?
Deposits are recorded as money the school is holding, not as income. When a boarder leaves, the settlement screen brings together unpaid bills, charges never billed and the deposit held, lets you add adjustments and shows whether the family owes the school or the school owes the family. The deposit can be refunded by cash, bank transfer, cheque or UPI, or kept with a written reason. If your TC settings require hostel clearance, the transfer certificate waits until the bed is vacated, dues are paid and the deposit is settled.
We are switching from registers or another ERP in the middle of the year. How long does it take?
Go-live can be the next working day. Hostel onboarding is three files, namely boarders with their rooms and beds, outstanding hostel fees, and the caution deposits you already hold, each with a template, and every rejected row is reported with its line number and reason. Migration, training and setup cost ₹0, and extracting your data from the current system, or from Excel, is on us. Older records move across on their own track afterwards.
Where is hostel data stored, and who can see it?
Inkwelly is hosted on AWS Mumbai, with daily encrypted backups, role-based access and a full export in standard formats whenever you ask, including on the way out. Inside the hostel, incident accounts and fee amounts each sit behind their own permission, so they are visible only to the roles your school chooses, and every screen shows a person only the actions their role allows. For local guardians, only the ID type and its last four digits are kept.
Will our wardens and house-parents actually use it?
The warden's phone app does three things, the roll call, the gate and tonight's duty list, and each is built for a corridor at night rather than an office desk. We do a full day of on-site training at go-live and stay on WhatsApp through the first month, answered by a person who works on the product. If a member of staff is still struggling after that, we come back at no cost.
You might also like
6 readsSee Inkwelly on your school
30-minute demo. We open your current ERP with you and load your data into Inkwelly on the call. Dated go-live plan by the end of it.