Know where every rupee went today. Counted every evening, ready for your CA.
Money Book is the school's cash book and income and expense register for its Cash, Bank and UPI accounts. Fee, transport, store and hostel collections and disbursed salaries flow in by themselves, the office records every other rupee as a numbered voucher, and the cash box is counted note by note against the book every evening. At year-end your CA gets a clean Excel file, while Tally and the ledgers stay with the CA.
Month-end in the school office, before school accounts software
Ask a principal why she started looking at school accounts software and the story usually begins at month-end. The head clerk of a CBSE school in Kanpur has the fee report printed, a hardbound cash register open and the steel cash box on the table. Between them sit the things no software has seen: ₹3,400 of diesel for the generator, ₹1,150 of chalk and registers bought on a Sunday, a ₹12,000 bill from the electrician who rewired the science lab. Half the bills are in a drawer and two are photos on the clerk's phone. The CA is due on the 10th, and the principal has just asked a simple question: how much cash should be in the box right now?
The fee counter took cash all month, part went to the bank on Tuesday and part paid the tent vendor for sports day, and none of it sits in one place. The answer arrives three days later, roughly right, and roughly right is where the damage starts. A ₹2,000 gap turns into a quiet suspicion about whoever handles the cash. The management committee stops trusting the monthly figures. In March the whole year is rebuilt from bank statements and guesswork, under deadline, for the trust's audit.
If this sounds like your office, the problem is not honesty or effort. The school's money lives in four places that never talk to each other. Inkwelly Money Book puts it in one school cash book: fees and salaries flow in by themselves, the office records everything else as numbered vouchers, and the cash box is counted against the book every evening.
What Money Book is, and what it deliberately is not
Money Book is the school's income and expense book: a cash book and day book for its Cash, Bank and UPI accounts, run on the Indian financial year from 1 April to 31 March rather than on the academic session. Fee, transport, school store and hostel collections flow in by themselves, disbursed salaries flow out, and the office records everything else, from the electricity bill to a donation, as a numbered voucher against the account the money actually moved through.
What it deliberately is not is double-entry accounting. There are no ledgers to post, no trial balance or balance sheet, no depreciation, no GST return or TDS working, and no sync with Tally. Those stay with your CA, who already handles them for the trust or society, along with the audit and the ITR-7 return. Money Book hands that CA a complete, checked record of every day in the school, the part most schools have never had.
What the school office stops doing
- Copying the day's fee total from the fee report into a cash register by hand
- Keeping bills in a drawer, a file and three phones, then hunting for them at audit time
- Guessing at closing time how much cash should be in the box, and arguing about the gap
- Overwriting, tearing out or whitening a wrong entry so nobody can tell what changed
- Writing a bank deposit as an expense because the register has only one column for money out
- Sending the CA photos of register pages on WhatsApp and answering the same questions every month
- Adding up the annual function's spend from six different heads, by hand, after it is over
- Rebuilding the whole year from bank statements in March for the trust's audit
The school cash book screens your team will use
This is not an expense form bolted onto a fee module. It is the book the whole office works from: the clerk at the counter, the accountant who checks vouchers, the principal who wants the day's position and the trustee who asks where the month's money went. Every screen below exists in Inkwelly today, on the web in English and Hindi, and shows each person only what their role allows. Most of them also work on the Inkwelly staff app, so a voucher can be recorded, a bill photographed or the cash box counted from a phone.
Everything the Money Book does
Money Book dashboard
Today's money in and out, this month's surplus or deficit and every account's balance with the total, on one screen, along with today's day-close status, the closing streak, the biggest expense heads and the ten latest vouchers.
Thirty-second entry
Income, expense or transfer: type the amount, tap one of the eight most-used heads, pick the account and the party. Today and yesterday are one tap each, and Save & new keeps the head and account for the next bill.
Snap the bill
Photograph a shop bill and AI fills in the grand total, vendor, bill date, a likely head and a short note. Doubtful fields are flagged, the photo stays attached, and nothing is saved until a person checks it.
Cash, bank and UPI accounts
Every real place the school's money sits, each with an opening balance and date. Balances are worked out from that figure and every movement since, never typed in, and unused accounts are switched off, never deleted.
Automatic collections
Student fee, transport, school store and hostel collections flow in net of refunds, and disbursed salaries flow out, each landing in the account mapped to its payment mode. Money from an unmapped mode waits in an Unassigned figure instead of being guessed.
Voucher register
Every voucher with its number, date, head, account, party and status. Search by voucher number, party or note, filter by type, account, head, project or dates, and open the queues of vouchers waiting for a check.
Day close (cash milaan)
Count the ₹500 to ₹10 notes and the coins against what the book expects in each cash box. A short or excess day closes only with a written reason, and the count is frozen as that day's record.
Day book (roznamcha)
Pick any date to see each account's opening balance, the day's automatic collections with their receipt counts, every voucher in and out, and the closing balance. Collections with no mapped account are listed on their own, never guessed into an account.
Money Flow
One statement of every rupee, newest first: your vouchers, each fee receipt with the student's name and photo, transport, store and hostel payments, refunds and salary runs, and a passbook view with a running balance for any single account.
Reports and CA export
Twelve months of income and expense from April to March, totals by head for any dates, project reports, and a year-end Excel workbook or CSV of every active voucher for your CA.
Voucher checking
Off, one level or two levels, with the second sign-off only above an amount you set. Nobody verifies or approves their own voucher, a rejected voucher is voided with the reason, and a day can stay open until its vouchers are verified.
Projects
Tag vouchers to the new science block, the annual day or a bus purchase across any heads, and see what each project has spent and received so far, broken down by head.
School expense management without double entry
Most of the money a school spends never touches the fee software: diesel for the generator, the plumber, printing for the exam papers, the tent vendor, the photographer at the annual function. Some money arrives the same way, such as a donation from an old student, bank interest, prospectus and form sales or the canteen's monthly rent. Money Book is an income and expense register for schools that captures all of it as vouchers: an income, an expense or a transfer between two accounts, each with a date, an amount, a head, the account the money moved through, the party and a note.
A voucher in thirty seconds
The new-entry screen is built around a thirty-second habit. Pick income, expense or transfer, type the amount and tap the head from the eight used most on that computer, or search the full list. The last account used there is already selected, today and yesterday are one tap each, and the party field suggests the school's ten most frequent vendors and donors with the last amount paid. A project, a note and up to ten bill photos sit one tap further down. Save & new, or Ctrl+Enter, keeps the head, account and date for the next bill, so a pile of receipts is cleared in one sitting. A transfer needs two different accounts and never takes a head, because moving money is not spending it.
Snap the bill, check it, save it
For a shop bill there is a quicker way. Photograph it, or pick it from the phone's gallery, and AI reads the grand total after taxes, the vendor's name, the bill date and a short note on what was bought, and suggests the closest head from your own list. Each filled field is marked as an AI suggestion, and anything it was unsure about carries a double-check label. It never picks a future date or a locked automatic head, and never saves anything by itself: the form waits for a person to check it and press save. If the bill can't be read, the clerk types the details as usual, and the photo stays attached either way. JPG, PNG and WebP photos up to 5 MB can be scanned.
Voucher numbers that follow the financial year
Every voucher is numbered the moment it is saved, in a series that belongs to its financial year: EXP-2627-0041 is the forty-first expense voucher of 2026-27, and income and transfers keep their own series. The school can change the three prefixes, and every series restarts on 1 April. A voucher dated back into last year takes last year's next number, so the sequence always matches the year the money moved. Numbers are never reused, even after a voucher is voided, which is exactly what a CA looks for: an unbroken run where every number is either live or voided with its reason. Two clerks saving at the same moment never get the same number.
Heads that read like a school
Money Book starts with heads an Indian school actually uses, each with its Hindi name: Electricity & Water, Diesel & Fuel, Repairs & Maintenance, Stationery & Printing, Exam Expenses, Cleaning & Housekeeping, Refreshments & Hospitality, Internet & Telephone, Rent & Lease, Donations, Bank Interest and Prospectus & Form Fees, plus a miscellaneous head on each side. Rename them, add your own or switch off the ones you don't need. The heads for fees, transport, store, hostel and salaries belong to the automatic collections and are locked, so nobody can type a fee collection in by hand and count it twice.
Fee collections and salaries that post themselves
The biggest money in a school moves through other modules: fees at the counter and online, bus fees, the uniform and book counter, hostel and mess fees, and the monthly salary run. Copying those totals by hand is where most school books start to disagree with the fee software, so Money Book never asks anyone to. It reads each of those modules live, every time a screen opens, with no overnight sync to fall behind, and shows the money as clearly marked automatic lines beside your own vouchers, in the account where each payment mode lands.
Five collections, counted the way their own modules count
Fee payments from Student Fee arrive net of completed refunds, counted by the same rules as the fee dashboard, so the two screens never argue. Transport payments arrive the same way, with adjustments against future dues left out because no cash moved. School store sales arrive net of cash refunds, with store credit left out for the same reason. Hostel and mess fees arrive net of refunds, and a caution deposit the school kept is not counted as money going out. Every salary run marked disbursed in Employee Payroll appears as an expense on its disbursal date, for its net pay, from your payroll account. In the day book, each automatic line shows its number of receipts and opens into the split by payment mode.
Library fines, counted once
Library fines are paid through the student's fee invoice, so they already sit inside the fee collection. Money Book deliberately has no separate library feed that would count them twice; the category report and Money Flow instead show how much of the fee money was library fines, marked as already included. The automatic heads follow the same discipline: they are locked against manual entries, so nobody can re-enter yesterday's fee cash by hand. And a collection whose payment mode isn't mapped to an account is never guessed into one. It waits in an Unassigned figure on the dashboard and in the day book, with a note to map it in settings.
Cash, bank and UPI accounts
An account in Money Book is a real place where money sits: the cash box in the office, the school's current account, the building fund's savings account, the UPI collection account. Each has a type, an opening balance and the date the book starts from, with optional details such as the bank name, the branch, the last four digits of the account number or the UPI ID. Accounts are never deleted: an account you stop using is switched off instead, and an account still linked to a collection can't be switched off until its mapping moves elsewhere.
Balances that are worked out, never typed
No balance in Money Book is typed in or stored. Each one is worked out fresh from the account's opening balance, every active voucher since and the automatic collections mapped to it, so nobody can nudge a balance to make a month look better, and a voided voucher drops out the moment it is voided. Moving money between your own accounts is a transfer: depositing the counter's cash in the bank, drawing petty cash or moving UPI collections to the current account takes money out of one account and puts it into another, and never counts as income or expense in any total. The day book shows any account's opening and closing figure for any date.
Cash register, Excel and WhatsApp photos vs Inkwelly Money Book
The daily cash close: cash milaan, every evening
The habit that changes a school's books most is closing the cash box every evening, and the Day Close screen makes it a short ritual. For each cash account it shows what the book expects to be in the box tonight: the opening balance, the collections mapped to that box, cash paid out, transfers in and out, and the expected closing figure. The person closing the day counts the notes against it and sees at once whether the box is exact, short or in excess, to the rupee. Each cash account is closed on its own, never for a future date and never before the account's start date.
Count the notes, not just the total
The counter asks for the number of ₹500, ₹200, ₹100, ₹50, ₹20 and ₹10 notes, plus coins and small change as one amount, and adds them up itself. The total is worked out again on Inkwelly's side, so a slip on a calculator can't become the record. When the count matches, the screen says Milaan Perfect; when it doesn't, it says short by or excess of the exact amount. The count, the expected figure, the difference and every part of the calculation are then frozen as that day's official record, stamped with the time of closing. A streak counter keeps score of consecutive closed days, a small nudge that keeps the habit alive.
A difference needs a reason
A day with a difference can still be closed, because real cash boxes are sometimes a torn note or a forgotten ₹50 out, but never silently. Money Book won't close a short or excess day without a written note explaining it, and that note stays on the record beside the numbers. The principal can open the close history and see every closed day's expected and counted cash, the difference and the reason, account by account. If your school uses voucher checking, you can also refuse to close a day while any of its vouchers are still waiting to be verified, so the count only becomes the record after a second person has seen the day's entries.
The bank deposit, from the same screen
Most evenings some of the counted cash goes to the bank next morning. On the Day Close screen that is one more step: choose the bank account and the amount, no more than the cash just counted, and Money Book records the deposit as a transfer voucher from the cash box to the bank as part of the same close. It then gives you a printable cash deposit slip with the school's name, the date, the transfer voucher number, both accounts, the amount in words and space for the depositor's signature and the bank's seal. If a deposit was entered wrongly, reopen the day, void its transfer and close again.
- Count notes and coins against each cash box's expected figure
- Close a short or excess day only with a written reason
- Send counted cash to the bank as a transfer in the same step
- Print the deposit slip with the amount in words
- See every closed day's count, difference and reason in the close history
When something changes after the day is closed
Closing a day freezes that evening's count. Once a cash account's day is closed, new vouchers, voids and changes to the amount, date or account that touch that box on that date are refused with a message saying the day is closed. Correcting a party's name, the head or a note is still allowed, because it moves no money.
Some things do change after a close, and the book is open about them. A fee payment entered next morning with yesterday's date, or a voucher your settings allow into a closed day, changes the live expected figure for a day already counted. Money Book never rewrites the frozen count; the closed day shows a changed-after-close note with the frozen record, the live figure and the gap. For a real correction, someone with permission reopens the day with a written reason, the entries are fixed and the day is closed again. Every reopen records who did it and why, and the day shows how many times it has been closed.
Void, never delete
Nothing in Money Book can be deleted. A wrong voucher is voided with a written reason, such as a wrong amount, a duplicate entry or a returned bill. It stays in the register with its number, marked void with the date and the reason, stops counting in every balance and report, and is left out of the CA export, while its number is never handed out again. The same rule runs through the whole book: accounts and heads are switched off rather than removed, and projects are closed rather than erased. Voiding is its own permission, so the clerk who records vouchers need not be the one who cancels them, and a voided voucher can't be edited back to life.
Edits keep their history
A voucher can be corrected, but every correction leaves a trail: each edit adds a numbered entry to its change history with who changed it, when, and the values before and after. Changing the party, head, project, note or photos needs only the permission to record vouchers. Changing the amount, the date or the account is a money edit: it needs a separate permission and a written reason stored with the change, and it can't move a voucher into another financial year, because the number belongs to its year. A voucher's type never changes; an expense recorded as income is voided and entered again. With voucher checking on, a money edit sends the voucher back to be verified.
Maker-checker, when your school wants it
Many trusts want two people on every rupee: one who records and one who checks. Voucher checking has three settings. Off is the default. One level means a second person verifies each voucher. Two levels adds an approval after verification, and you can set an amount, say ₹10,000, from which that second sign-off is needed, so a ₹200 stationery bill isn't waiting for the owner. That decision is fixed when a voucher is recorded, so changing the amount later doesn't reclassify old vouchers. The register has queues for vouchers awaiting verification and approval. Checking is a review, not a gate: the money has already moved, so a voucher counts in balances from the moment it is recorded, and a rejected one is voided and drops out.
Nobody checks their own voucher
The rules that make checking meaningful are enforced by Inkwelly, not left to trust. The person who recorded a voucher can't verify or reject it, and neither the recorder nor the verifier can approve it. Rejecting at either level needs a reason and voids the voucher, with the reason kept on it. Verifying and approving are separate permissions from recording, so a school can give its clerk the pen, its accountant the first check and its principal or a trustee the final sign-off. Each voucher then shows who verified and approved it and when, so the signatures sit on the record instead of in a register's margin.
See one day of your school's money on screen
Bring last month's cash register and a handful of bills. In a live demo we'll record the vouchers, scan a bill, map your fee counter's payment modes and close a day's cash box against the book, in front of you.
A school day book, and a money trail anyone can follow
The day book, the roznamcha every Indian shop and school office knows, is the page that answers what happened today. Money Book keeps one for every date, and beside it a statement that follows every rupee across the whole year. Both are built from the same vouchers and automatic collections as every other screen, so they never disagree with the dashboard. Between them, where the money went no longer depends on who happens to be at the counter.
The day book, account by account
Open the Day Book for any date and every account appears with its opening balance, then that day's automatic lines, from fee collections and refunds to transport and store takings, hostel fees and salaries, each with its number of receipts. Every voucher follows with its number, head, party and whether the money came in or went out, and the closing balance sits at the bottom. A transfer names the other account, so a deposit reads as cash out of the box and money into the bank on the same page. Collections with no mapped account are listed separately. Previous-day and next-day buttons walk back through a week when the CA asks about one particular Tuesday.
Money Flow: one statement for everything
Money Flow is the school's own bank statement: one running list of every movement, newest first and grouped by day. Your vouchers sit alongside each fee receipt with the student's name, class and photo, each transport, store and hostel payment, each refund and each salary run. Filter by dates, with this month, last month, this quarter or the whole financial year one tap away, by source, money in or out, payment mode or amount, or search a receipt, voucher, party or student's name. Tap a segment of the source bar to see only that source. Pick one account with no other filters and the statement becomes a passbook with an opening balance and a running balance, for up to 2,000 lines.
Reports, and the Excel file your CA actually wants
Every month the management committee wants a summary and the CA wants the detail. Money Book produces both from the same book, for any financial year, without anyone building a spreadsheet. The monthly report, the head-wise report and the project report are on screen for the people allowed to see them, and every figure in them includes the automatic collections and salary runs, kept separate from the manual vouchers so it is always clear which money the office typed and which arrived by itself. One button then produces the year's file for the CA.
Monthly and head-wise reports
The monthly report is twelve rows from April to March, with income, expense and net for each month, each split into automatic collections and manual vouchers, and the year's totals at the bottom. Tap a figure and Money Flow opens with the lines behind it. The category report shows where the money went for any date range: income heads, expense heads, and the fee, transport, store, hostel and salary collections as their own rows, with the number of vouchers behind each head and the library-fine line marked as already included. It can be narrowed to income or expense only, or to a single project.
The CA export
Pick the financial year and Money Book prepares an Excel workbook with three sheets. Vouchers lists every active voucher of the year with its date, voucher number, type, head, party, account, debit or credit and note. Monthly Summary gives each month's income, expense and net, split into automatic and manual money, with a total row, and Category Summary gives every head's total. Voided vouchers stay out of the file. There is also a plain CSV of the same vouchers, written as payment, receipt and contra entries with ledger, party, debit, credit and narration columns, for your CA to work from in their own software. Each export is saved in the school's media library, in a finance exports folder for that year.
Projects: what has the new building cost so far?
Some spending doesn't fit one head. A new science block touches cement, labour, electrical work and the architect's fee; the annual day touches the tent, sound, costumes, printing and refreshments. In Money Book a project is a tag that sits across heads. Tag each voucher as it is recorded, and the project report shows the total spent, anything received, the net, a breakdown by head and the latest vouchers. A project is closed when the work is done, never deleted, so its history stays.
Inkwelly Money Book vs a separate accounting tool in the school office
Ask ChatGPT or Claude about the school's money
Schools on the Premium plan get AI Connect, so the principal, the accountant or a trustee can ask ChatGPT or Claude about the school in plain language. For the Money Book that means questions such as how much came in and went out today, how much cash should be in the box, whether yesterday was closed and what the difference was, how much went on diesel this year, what a particular vendor has been paid, or when a particular student's fee came in.
It can also record a new expense or income voucher, if your school allows that connection to take actions. It first shows a preview with the head, account, amount, date and the voucher number it expects to use, and warns if that day's cash is already closed. Nothing is written until the person says yes, and the voucher records where it came from. Voiding, editing and closing or reopening a day are deliberately not available through AI, and bill photos are never handed to the AI app. A person with permission issues the connection in the school dashboard, and the staff member adds it to ChatGPT or Claude with a key shown once.
Built for everyone who handles school money
Money passes through more hands in a school than most people realise: the clerk at the counter, the accountant who reconciles it, the principal who signs off, the owner or trustee who answers to the society, and the CA who files for it. In most schools each of them keeps a separate version of the truth. In Inkwelly they all work from the same book, each person sees only what their role allows, and nobody has to ask the office for the day's figures.
For the principal and the owner
Your day can end on one screen: what came in and went out today, this month's surplus or deficit, the balance in every account, whether tonight's cash box has been closed and how long the closing streak is. You no longer wait for the CA to learn where the month's money went; the head-wise report shows it, and the project report answers what the annual day or the new building has cost so far. When the cash was short, the close history shows by how much and the reason written that evening. With checking on, large payments wait for your approval while small ones move at the office's pace.
For the accountant
The accountant's month stops being a reconstruction. Fee, transport, store, hostel and salary money is already in the book, counted the way those modules count it, so the only vouchers left to check are the ones the office typed. The verification queue lists what is waiting, each voucher with its bill photos and history. The day book and Money Flow answer the CA's questions line by line, the voucher number ties every query to one record, and the year-end export is one click. The setup sits with the accountant too: accounts and opening balances, heads, payment-mode mapping, the payroll account, voucher prefixes and the checking policy.
For the clerk at the counter
The clerk's work gets shorter, not longer. Bills go in the day they arrive, with the most-used heads one tap away and regular vendors suggested before anything is typed, and a photo replaces the drawer of paper. Fee money never has to be copied into the cash book, because it is already there. In the evening the clerk counts the notes into the Day Close screen and sees at once whether the box matches, instead of finding out at month-end. With checking switched on, a second person verifies the day's vouchers, which protects the clerk as much as the school: when the box is short, the book shows exactly what was recorded and who checked it.
On the Inkwelly staff app
Money Book is on the Inkwelly staff app for anyone whose role allows it. The home screen shows cash in hand across accounts, today's money in, out and net, and quick buttons for a new entry, a camera bill scan, the day close and the day book. A clerk can record vouchers with bill photos, count the cash box, make the bank deposit at the close and see the close history. A checker can verify, approve or reject vouchers and void them with a reason, with the photos and edit history on each voucher. Money Flow, the reports, the CA export and the setup of accounts, heads, projects and settings are there too. Editing a saved voucher, printing vouchers and deposit slips, and mapping hostel collections stay on the web, and the app's Money Book screens are in English.
Who can see and do what
Money is sensitive inside a school too, so Money Book splits access into fourteen separate permissions, handed out through Identity & Access Management: seeing the book, recording vouchers, changing the money on a voucher, voiding, verifying, approving, closing the day, reopening a closed day, viewing reports and Money Flow, downloading the CA export, and managing accounts, heads, projects and settings, each on its own. Inkwelly's ready-made roles give the principal and the accountant all of them, let the vice principal see the book, verify vouchers, read reports and download the export, and let a clerk record vouchers and close the day without voiding, changing money on a voucher or touching the setup. You can change any of it, person by person.
Bill photos open only for signed-in staff who can see the book, through links that expire after fifteen minutes. Every voucher shows when it was recorded, who verified and approved it, each edit with who made it and why, and when and why it was voided.
Switching from a cash register, Excel or your current software
Most schools reading this, from a CBSE school in Pune to a UP Board school in Gorakhpur, already keep accounts somehow: a hardbound cash register, an Excel sheet the accountant guards, the expense screen of another ERP, or only the CA's Tally. Money Book doesn't ask you to bring years of old vouchers across. Each account starts from an opening balance on the date you choose, the cash in the box and each bank balance that morning, and earlier years stay in the books your CA already holds. Starting mid-year is fine: the automatic fee, transport, store, hostel and salary figures for earlier months still show in the year's reports, because they come straight from those modules.
Migration, training and setup cost ₹0, and extracting your data from your current system, or from Excel if the vendor won't cooperate, is on us. Go-live can be the next working day, with older records moving across on their own track. You can start with a 90-day paid pilot on your real data: if it isn't working at day 90, you get a pro-rata refund and your data back in standard formats. The simplest test is to book a demo with one month of your cash register.
“A cash box that is counted every evening never needs an argument in March.”
What's included with Money Book
- Cash, bank, UPI and other accounts with opening balances and balances worked out live
- Income, expense and transfer vouchers numbered per financial year, with up to ten bill photos each
- AI bill scan that fills the amount, vendor, date, head and a note for a person to check
- Ready-made Indian school heads with Hindi names, plus your own heads and projects
- Automatic student fee, transport, store and hostel collections, and disbursed salaries
- A voucher register with search, filters and queues for vouchers awaiting checks
- Void with a reason, a full edit history, and money edits that need a reason and permission
- Optional one-level or two-level checking, with a second sign-off from an amount you set
- A daily cash close with a note-by-note count, difference notes, a bank deposit and a deposit slip
- A day book for any date, and Money Flow with a passbook view for any account
- Monthly, head-wise and project reports, and a year-end Excel or CSV export for your CA
- Fourteen separate permissions, the staff app, and AI Connect questions and voucher recording
Close tonight's cash box against the book
Bring a month of your cash register, your fee counter's payment modes and your CA's last list of questions. In a live demo we'll set up your accounts, record the month's bills and show the day book, Money Flow and the export your CA would receive.
Frequently asked
14 questionsWhich Inkwelly plan includes Money Book, and what does it cost?
Money Book is part of the Premium plan at ₹199 per student per year. It isn't part of Lite or Standard. Inkwelly's plans run from ₹49 to ₹199 per student per year, flat at any school size, with no enrolment slabs and no per-module upsell, and each plan includes everything in the plan below it. The AI bill scan and AI Connect come with Premium's AI features, so a Money Book school has them too.
Does Money Book replace Tally or our CA?
No, and that is deliberate. Money Book is the school's income and expense book: every rupee in and out, against the right account, counted every evening. It is not double-entry accounting, so there are no ledgers, trial balance or balance sheet, no GST or TDS work and no Tally sync. Your CA keeps those books for the trust or society and receives a year-end Excel workbook of numbered vouchers with monthly and head-wise summaries, or a plain CSV of the same vouchers, instead of photos of a register.
We keep a cash register or Excel, or use another ERP. How hard is it to switch?
Not hard. Each account starts from an opening balance on the date you choose, so you don't have to bring years of old vouchers across; earlier years stay in the books your CA already holds. Fee, transport, store, hostel and salary money flows in from Inkwelly's own modules from day one. Migration, training and setup cost ₹0, and extracting your data from your current system, or from Excel if the vendor won't cooperate, is on us. Go-live can be the next working day, and older records move across on their own track afterwards. You can also start with a 90-day paid pilot on your real data; if it isn't working at day 90, you get a pro-rata refund and your data back in standard formats.
Which money comes in automatically, and what does the office still type?
Student fee payments net of refunds, transport fees, school store sales, hostel and mess fees, and every disbursed salary run arrive by themselves, in the account mapped to each payment mode. Library fines are already inside the student fee money and are shown as a labelled part of it, never added twice. The office types everything else: expenses such as electricity, diesel, repairs and printing, and other income such as donations, bank interest, prospectus and form sales or rent. Registration fees taken through the admission module's payment link are not one of the automatic collections today, so the office records them as income.
Who in the school can see or do what?
Access follows fourteen separate permissions, from seeing the book and recording vouchers to changing the money on a voucher, voiding, verifying, approving, closing and reopening a day, viewing reports, downloading the CA export and managing accounts, heads, projects and settings. Inkwelly's ready-made roles give the principal and the accountant everything, let the vice principal view, verify, read reports and export, and let a clerk record vouchers and close the day without voiding or touching the setup. You can change any role or person's access.
Can we use Money Book on the mobile app?
Yes, on the Inkwelly staff app, for anyone whose role allows it. From the app you can record vouchers with bill photos, scan a bill with the camera, close the day with a note-by-note count and a bank deposit, verify, approve, reject or void vouchers, and see the day book, Money Flow, the reports and the CA export, as well as set up accounts, heads, projects and settings. Editing a voucher after it is saved, printing vouchers and deposit slips, and mapping hostel collections are done on the web. The app's Money Book screens are in English.
Is Money Book available in Hindi?
On the web, yes. Every Money Book screen, from the new-entry form to the day close, the reports and the setup, works in English and Hindi, and the ready-made heads and the default Cash Box come with Hindi names. Printed vouchers and deposit slips follow the screen's language, while the amount in words is printed in English, as is common on Indian vouchers and cheques. The staff app's Money Book screens are in English for now.
What happens when the cash count doesn't match the book?
The Day Close screen shows the shortage or excess to the rupee, and the day can only be closed with a written note explaining it. The note, the count and the expected figure are frozen together as that day's record, and the close history lists every day's difference and reason. If a mistake is found later, someone with permission reopens the day with a reason, fixes the entries and closes it again. If a backdated payment changes the expected figure after the close, the day shows the change beside the frozen count instead of rewriting it.
Can someone delete an entry or change it quietly?
No. Nothing in Money Book can be deleted. A wrong voucher is voided with a reason and stays in the register marked void, with its number never reused. Every edit is written into the voucher's change history with who, when and the before and after values. Changing the amount, date or account needs a separate permission and a written reason, and once a cash day is closed, money changes on that day are refused until the day is reopened with a reason, unless your school has chosen to allow entries on closed days.
Is the AI bill scan safe? Will it save wrong numbers?
It never saves anything by itself. The AI reads the photo and fills in the grand total, the vendor, the bill date, a likely head from your own list and a short note, marks each field as a suggestion and flags anything it was unsure about. A person checks the form and presses save. It never picks a future date or a locked automatic head, and if the bill can't be read the photo stays attached and the details are typed as usual. It is part of the Premium plan's AI features.
Can ChatGPT or Claude record our expenses?
Yes, through AI Connect, if your school allows that connection to take actions. The assistant can record one expense or income voucher at a time, and it always shows a preview first with the head, account, amount, date and expected voucher number, plus a warning if that day's cash is already closed. Nothing is recorded until the person says yes. Voiding, editing and closing a day are not available through AI, and bill photos are never shared with the AI app. Questions about balances, the day book, vouchers, reports and Money Flow work too.
Does Money Book handle GST, TDS or the balance sheet?
No. Money Book is a cash book and income-and-expense register, not double-entry accounting. It doesn't calculate GST, deduct or file TDS, or produce ledgers, a trial balance or a balance sheet. Those stay with your CA, who can work from Money Book's year-end export instead of a register. What Money Book adds is the part a CA can't do from outside the school: a daily, counted, numbered record of every rupee.
Will the bank balance in Money Book match our bank statement?
Not line by line, and it isn't meant to. Money Book counts an online fee payment on the day the parent pays, in the account you map it to, while your payment gateway settles to the bank later and after its own charge. Money Book doesn't import bank statements, and bank reconciliation stays with your CA. What it does guarantee is that every balance is worked out from the opening figure and every recorded movement, and that the cash box is checked against real notes every day.
We run several schools under one trust. Does each school get its own book?
Yes. Each school keeps its own Money Book, with its own accounts, heads, projects, settings, voucher series and day closes, on the April to March financial year whatever its academic session. There is no combined book across schools today, so a trust reviews each school's book and reports separately.
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