During any pandemic situation, Education Institutes, and the students all over the world stand on the verge of an uncertain future. Schools get shut down thus the life of students and teachers hangs without a balance. Mostly the parents get deeply concerned about the future of their children.

In such a situation, if you belong to the school authority or its management team, you can understand this uncertainty. So how do you plan to get over this situation? Have you found any solution that can keep your school management process on track even in this condition? If not, then this article might be something that you are looking for as today we will discuss how to manage school and work in a pandemic or lockdown situation with WP ERP. Not just during these tough times, you can also use it even after getting passed it.

Right now we are going through the COVID 19 pandemic and so modernizing your school system now will not only decrease your workload but also enable you to manage all your essential tasks properly from home. And since most schools and universities are going online so why should you leave behind in these stressful times.

Why You Should Use an Online Tool like WP ERP for School Management

We are living in an era where technology is assisting everyone for a better life. WP ERP is one such innovative technology that can provide you the power of attorney to look after the whole school system underneath your fingertips at ease.

Let’s look up some key points to know why it is so effective to handle any teaching entity online.

No Way To Run Away From Current Situation

In this COVID19 situation, there is no way to handle the whole School management system physically. Online is the only way to continue your work processes like- taking classes, meetings, events, etc.

And in this regard, WP ERP can be your right hand by helping you to manage the system from home and give you the comfort of operating your tasks. From clerk to employee everyone will be under control. You can easily find out who is not working properly.

Easy, Time Saving, & Low Cost

When every sector of a country is using technology then why not the school admin system as well? Your hours of work can be done within a few minutes if you can utilize the features of WP ERP properly. 

You can use the rest of the time by developing the growth of the students. And, that is the main motto of a school. 

Apart from that, this software is easy to use. You don’t have to be a tech person to operate it. When you get stuck to manage any system, you need to just contact the Support team who are 24/7 ready at your service.

You can avail WP ERP free but if you need to customize your complete school management system in a single place then you might require to get the Premium version of the solution at a very affordable price.

Track Daily Tasks, Student’s progress, and Employees

It is hard to monitor the task of each teacher or clerk in a school. Not only that, but a huge number of students are also difficult to manage without implementing proper software management system.

In this situation, WP ERP can assist you by tracking your employee’s progression, each student’s recent report. Moreover, it will provide you the whole report of your school. Just stay at home and monitor every employee and student of your school with this simple yet effective tool.  

Proper Account Management

A school contains lots of events, parties, arrangements for the students. Besides that, there are a huge amount of employees. To run all of them you must spend money in each sector. 

Thus, you may need to keep lots of accounting history in your file. What about an assistant who can calculate all your accounting and store the data privately. Nobody but you can get access there. Wouldn’t that something you would like? 

Well, the Account management module of WP ERP can do all that and more. 

Hire Anyone with Ease

Hiring an employee for school is not a simple job. The selection can affect the different parts of the school. An unqualified teacher can ruin the school’s teaching standard, and a bad clerk can ruin the management process of the school.

So, once you utilize WP ERP you don’t need to worry about hiring anyone for the school. Not only it automates the selection process but it also ensures that the employee is suitable for the job. You have to just input your all requirements, facilities, and other crucial information. And based on that it can help you shortlist the deserving candidates.

No More Data Loss

Not only the school authority but also most of the company’s admin has had the nightmare of losing important data. Bad dreams can come true as there are unlimited data in a school. The data increases every year with the growth of student numbers and more school events taking place. 

To save you from this disaster there is an expert in form of data and file management, known as WP Project Manager. And, it is also a part of WP ERP. 

How to Manage School and Work with WP ERP System

So, till now we have tried to describe to you what makes WP ERP your best buddy not only in a situation while working from home. After availing this WordPress plugin, you don’t have to visit your school daily.

Input your essential data, assign a task to individual person, and simply enjoy the show by keeping your eyes on it. Isn’t it fascinating?

Let’s have a closer look at how WP ERP can manage your school below.

Installation & Customization of WP ERP For School Work Management

Firstly, you have to install WP ERP on your website. If you have used WordPress before then it will be easier for you. Don’t worry, if you are not familiar with WordPress. This platform is always beginner-friendly. 

Installing WP ERP is simple like every other WordPress plugin. In the next step, it needs to be customized for your work. 

Don’t get confused. This is only the installation process. We will show you each part individually for your better understand. 

HR Management of School

To create departments go to WP ERP-> HR-> Departments. Now click on the Add New button. Here, you can create as many as departments you have with all the details you need.

Almost the same path for creating designation. Go to WP ERP-> HR-> Designations and click on Add New button.

If you are done with creating departments and designations. Now you need to add your current employees. Take a look at the GIF below- 

Did you forget to add any important documents to your Employee’s account? If yes then click on the Edit button of that employee’s profile. 

If you want to edit the Designation/Department of your employee, simply go to Job and Scroll down to find Update Job Information. Now a tiny layout will appear in front of you. Follow the Gif below to understand it better.

Recruitment: Hire Fresh Employees

In WP ERP, its HR manager module provides you a Recruitment extension that makes the hiring process much easier. This extension will add an extra flair to your HR management in the school system by providing this service.

It will help with job postings for hiring new employees. Besides that, it ensures that you are hiring the right applicants for your school. All you have to do is putting some information where needed. 

Payroll: Salary Calculations

Managing the salary of a school system is really a big deal for its administrative authority. So, in that case, the addon Payroll of WP ERP automates the salary management process without any hassle. From now on you don’t have to worry about payment confirmation of all your staff, teachers, and clerks. 

Benefits of Payroll Extensions

• Adds essential information on worker profiles (fixed deduction, fixed allowance, and tax info)
• Calculate the salary automatically
• Build bi-weekly, weekly, or monthly pay calendars
• Run your payment according to your regulations 
• Pay the salary on particular dates 
• Generate useful reports to make essential decisions regarding employee salary
• The report assists the HR department
• Print the salary invoice for every employee directly to keep records

Document Manager: Backup Every File

Each and every important file and data will be stored in the Document Manager of WP ERP. Crucial documents of students or any others shouldn’t be recorded in papers. Paper can easily get damaged and more seriously they are not even recoverable. So, you may realize the necessity of a backup solution by which you can–

• Upload files
• Capping file size
• Navigate through easily
• Get extra security
• Recover files

Training: Prepare the Employees

In an online school system, training is a big challenge for the school owner. But developing the skill of your teacher, staff or even student is now a matter of time. 

The Easy Training Process in WP ERP can

• Upload the training resources in a single place
• Set countless courses with the desired title, duration, skill, trainee, and description in a few moments
• Assign training to an individual person or make a group
• Let HR maintain the total training process seamlessly
• Enable Employees to view their current, completed, or upcoming training schedule

Asset Manager: Monitor School Assets 

Are you enjoying the features of WP ERP so far? If yes, then move on to the next essential extension for the school. 

A school may have lots of assets to keep safe with every single detail. And, truly the authority has to be very careful about this. In this situation, the Asset Manager extension can help you by letting you organize all assets in a single place. 

You can monitor your school asset from anywhere at any time. There is an option to categorize the products. Plus, a built-in filter feature will let you find out your desired items quickly.   

The most amazing part of this WordPress plugin is, if any employees or students decide to take any asset such as a book from the school library, you can assign them with returning date. If they forget to return it on time, you don’t need to remind them. The system will send an automated email to that person. 

Attendance: Track Your Each Employee

Checking the employee attendance with the manual register is long gone. To monitor the participation of each employee or student the Attendance extension can help you greatly. 

The Attendance tool can help you:

• Look after the daily activities of every co-worker
• Manage the working hour of your employees
• Track check-in and check-out time
• Measure punctuality and productivity
• Create unlimited shifts and assign to the employees 
• Drag and drop features to do all those settings
• Control & monitor the whole office systematically

Apart from that, you will get a built-in IP restriction feature. This feature whitelist IP addresses. So, your employees and students can only check-in and check-out from the specific IPs. 

WP ERP HR Frontend: Overview Your School

In WP ERP HR Frontend, the HR Manager/Admin will be able to control the employees, designations, and departments from the website frontend. 

Advantages of WP ERP HR Frontend include:

• Admin can watch the classified list of employees
• The list includes active, terminated, or resigned workers
• Quick filtering option to search easier

Besides that, the details of every employee will be under your palm. The details are – 

• Performance
• Leave Entitlements & History
• General Info
• Job Info
• Important Notes

Accounting of School

As a principal, you may face challenges in preparing & arranging your school’s account. Accounting is not only about summing, dividing, or multiplying the accounts. You may as well need –

• Daily transactions
• Employees expenditures
• Advanced reporting
• Data Analysis 
• Tax & income reporting 
• And many more

With WP ERP Accounting, managing your accounts is easier than before with almost zero effort.

So, do you want to work through this module? Well, you will have to activate it if you have installed WP ERP.

If you want to access the Accounting dashboard then have a look at the left sidebar. You will see Accounting under HR. Just click on it and instantly you will get welcomed to the Account management world of WP ERP.

How to Manage Users

If you have added employees in HR then they will be here automatically. As an account manager, you have to handle it accurately. WP ERP will help you to manage all your users from a single place. 

Create or manage users by navigating to WP Admin Dashboard → WP ERP → Accounting → Users

Adding Users

Here you will find 3 options to add users- Customers, Vendors, and Employees. But for a school management process, you may add them as teachers, students, clerks etc. Let’s check out how to add them all effortlessly. 

Adding Customers as Student’s Parents

Click on Customers. You will appear on the customer page. Now click on Add New Customer. 

As a school management system, the parents will be your customer because they need to pay the fees and other expenses of the students to the school. 

Now, fill up the pop up to include the customer details.

Adding Vendors as Suppliers of School

To add Vendors, follow the way of adding customers. As the school management system, your Vendor will be like a food supplier, event manager, builders, or more. 

Now, click on Add new Vendor and put the data of your desired suppliers of school from there.

Finally, click on “Add New” when you’re done. 

Adding Employees as Teachers & Clerks

To add employees read the documentation. 

Invoice & Receive Payments

To run a school there are lots of expenses that need to be handled with care and attention. And so sometimes the payments couldn’t be on time or the authorities may face trouble in handling it properly. 

In WP ERP, you can create invoices that will adjust its Accounting with the customer accounts. After connecting with your desired accounts you can send or receive the money within a few minutes. You simply have to put the customer and account information.

Sales Tax

To be a good citizen, everyone should pay the tax timely and accurately. Do you feel trouble to estimate the tax on your income? Well, the WP ERP Accounting module can calculate your tax automatically. 

Tax Rates: With this module, you can include unlimited new tax rates for diverse regions.

Tax Zone Name: You may have different branches of your school in several states. Create your desired tax zones and tax rates with WP ERP Accounting.

Tax Category: Create categories for your taxes according to the country’s rules.

Tax Payments & Agency: Well, till now we have shown you the calculation of tax. But, if you have to take different ways to pay the tax, that doesn’t give you pleasure. So, pay taxes with WP ERP and you can create multiple tax companies at your order. 

Payment Gateway

This extension allows you to take payments instantly. Payment Gateway is united with PayPal and Stripe. When the student’s parents want a trusted solution for payment, you can set PayPal as a default payment method. Plus, you can use the reliable Stripe payment gateway with WP ERP.

You can send invoices after successfully setting up the payment gateway. That will instantly let the parents pay from the invoices. Even the invoice receiver can pay from the frontend of your website.

Payroll

The Payroll extension handles your employee’s salary from the WordPress dashboard. Besides that, you can view the Payroll history with smart insights, total pay calendar, the latest list of pay run records, times pay calendar approved, total expenses spent on the previous month, and many more.

Workflow

Use Workflow to automate your student contact, vacancy creation, email, and other relevant methods. It contains trigger modules that create actions and set conditions.

What’s more? Well, you can also:

• Add events like including or excluding students, estimating purchase or sales 
• Create actions basis on your required conditions 
• Schedule email, meeting, and other essential actions 
• Save your time and manage everything from a single page. 

Tips: Automate any inbound email by using the IMAP module.

Reimbursement 

Maintaining school expenses can be a time-killing task for school representatives. But Reimbursement extension can help you in that case. The parents can request refund payments of any mistakenly or overcharged tuition fees by creating reimbursements with the necessary information. 

You don’t have to inform the details of the reimbursement to the school authority manually. They can get it from the HR frontend and the admin can see the information in the backend dashboard. 

We hope you can relate to each of these fascinating modules of Accounting with your institution management needs.

CRM for School

You may have different customers regarding school management. As we have mentioned before, as a school principal, student parents are one kind of customer to you. Because you are providing education service to their children and they are giving fees for that purpose. 

Well, managing parent’s meetings, keeping a record of their contacts, sending them emails in different school-related events, are done in a school. And all these things are very complicated to be done manually. 

WP ERP CRM module assists to build your school management processes more systematic and seamless. Moreover, in case you want to run an eCommerce business, this technology can help you manage all your essential tasks at once.  

Benefits of Using a WordPress CRM Plugin

• Timely response to your students
• Keep records of your current students
• Categorize and organize student needs
• Record history and current status of students
• Receive important insights to take conclusive decisions
• Connect your social media and employees with your clients from a single place
• Build a school culture and internal communication mechanism
• Send emails easily through the built-in mail system
• Schedule meetings or calls with parents and students
• Assign tasks to employees
• Build company profiles
• Group your students based on their interests

How to Create a Contact?

Go to WP Admin Dashboard → CRM → Contacts. Now, select the Add New button.

After that, you will get the following pop up form to create contact.

Have you filled the required fields? If yes, then hit the Add New button. Now, you can watch the newly created contact. 

You can also create a company instead of a customer. The whole process is similar. Check the Customers and Contact Groups.

If you want to schedule a meeting, then have a look at this documentation. It will only take just a few minutes

Now let’s briefly look at the available CRM extensions.

Zendesk

This ticket support system will bring the student’s parents automatically to your CRM module. It can improve students, CRM lead, and contacts, plus, give a quicker reply to them. 

Zendesk not only attaches contacts but also carries all tickets of each contact into CRM. 

The ticketing system is the documents of student requests and interactions. You will know what your students want from you and reply to them on the basis of that. 

However, in the WP ERP CRM system, you are allowed to view:

• Ticket title
• Ticket number
• Status of the ticket (pending, solved, or open yet)

Help Scout Integration

Sometimes, it seems difficult to verify the tickets while operating CRM. Thus you need Help Scout Contact Integration which can connect the CRM with the support desk when new tickets arrived. 

Plus, you can check whether the ticket is pending/open/solved and look for the subject of the ticket. So, it will be easy to find a solution for the student if they have any. 

Awesome Support Sync

For full administration features with your student/parents, use Awesome Support. Through this extension, it will be easy to import support contacts to the CRM. And, automatically it will work when any parent creates a ticket in the help desk. 

What’s more, can you do with it?

• Increase marketing by scheduling events, sending emails & announcements
• Categorize all submitted tickets into different options like- leads, parents, subscribers, and opportunities
• Show the status of the ticket (open/pending/solved)
• Help to provide a faster and better service

Custom Field Builder

If you want to add additional fields in contact or employee profile, there is a solution for you. With Custom Field Builder you can add a field like- 

• Checkbox
• Add fields like a calendar date
• Radio button
• Number
• Email
• Password
• Dropdown
• URL

These additional fields can assist you to manage each of the sections so evenly. 

Salesforce Contacts Sync

It is a cloud-based CRM system that can make a bridge with the customer. You can use Salesforce Contact Sync side by side of your CRM module. 

It can sync all contacts from the SalesForce account to CRM. Therefore, it is possible to sync all available contacts from CRM to SalesForce account. Their connection will be done with just a click.

SMS Notification

When you need something more efficient than regular emails and messages you should use the SMS Notification. This tool is a complete package of 7 supported gateways. 

It will automatically integrate with HRM and CRM which ensures a seamless experience. You will get the option to send notifications to all your school employees. Even, sending SMS to specific employees is possible. 

There are more extensions in CRM system of WP ERP that will relate to your school management process.

Project Manager for School

In every big institute, managing projects is an important matter. So, as a school authority, you may also feel the same. What if you can get a Project Management software that will help you to create projects, manage it by assigning tasks to the employee, generate reports, check the ups and downs of the projects, and many more.

The WP Project Manager is an individual WordPress plugin. Before, the WP ERP users had to install it from wordpress.org. But right now, the Project Manager will be automatically installed along with WP ERP which is time-saving and helpful for everyone.

How to Create a Project?

Here, at first, take a look at the dashboard of WP Project Manager. If you click on a Project from the wp-admin → Project Manager → Projects menu, you will land on the overview tab by default.

Here we have created a project Content Writing. But normally, it will be empty at first.

Maybe you are thinking the first task should be creating a new project. You are almost right. But if you don’t create the category, you will not be able to create any project. Here, is an image of category creation.

Take a look at the gif to understand how to create a category simply.

Well after that you can start creating a project by clicking on the New Project.

You will get a popup form for creating the project. Fill it with the necessary information.

If you want to set the capability of managing this software to different employees you have to select their designation from the setting option.

Select the group of people just like below. And don’t forget to click the Save Changes button.

Why You Need WP Project Manager for Your School?

• Assure the best use of your resources and planning 
• Can track and organize all tasks and projects properly 
• Meet your deadline more efficiently
• Efficient time tracker
• Make effective team collaboration better than ever
• Provide advanced reports of an individual employee based on the whole project

Sub Task

To manage the entire school you and the employee have to do lots of small tasks under a parent task. Most of the time it gets harder to manage all these tiny responsibilities. In that case, Sub Task can help you effectively. 

Sub Task is the second level of tasks within an existing task. You can create sub-tasks when the module is installed and enabled with your WP Project Manager. 

What’s more to do with it?

• You can create as much as sub-tasks you want
• Simple to add co-workers
• Specify the deadline
• Manage big or small assignments so easily
• You can see which sub-task is done 

Follow the documentation to know how to add subtasks inside each task or watch this small video to help yourself do it. 

Kanban Board

Kanban is a simple yet powerful tool that simplifies the task management of project managers. You can organize the task of your school more effectively with it. Besides that, it helps you to stay composed and connected. For more information read Kanban Board Beginner Guide. 

Through Kanban board, viewing all the tasks of a project and organizing them on board is so simple. The process is like more Trello.

What’s more to do with it?

• Visualize your workflow 
• Show the status of every individual task
• Manage tasks based on their status
• Four pre-installed default boards (Open, In Progress, Done, and Overdue)
• Create custom boards or eliminate existing ones
• Project tasks are shown as a card for better insight
• Easily move cards by dragging and dropping them from one board to another
• Assign employees and task deadlines directly

Recurring Task Management

As a school teacher, you may need to complete essential tasks daily. Some of them are so crucial that if you miss them you may get in trouble. To rescue you from that situation WP Project Manager has brought to you the Recurring Task Management option. It helps auto-generate unlimited tasks that you need to perform regularly. Once complete your task will mark itself complete automatically. 

Suppose, you need to send emails to parents every Saturday. Just set the recurring task and stay chill. 

Learn more about Recurring Task Management in WordPress here. 

What’s more to do with it?

• Avoid repetitive task creation 
• No need to re-assign your employees for repetitive tasks
• Save your time
• Make you more organized and focused
• Set your weekly, monthly, and yearly task at once
• Notify everyone whenever a new recurring task is created
• Improve team performance

Stripe

This extension facilitates your student parents to pay using the famous low-cost Stripe payment gateway hassle-free. Most importantly, everyone feels satisfied and secured while paying through a trusted banking system like this one. 

What’s more to do with it?

• Auto billing process according to your work background
• Provide more convenience to your clients
• Secure online payment
• Much affordable comparing to Paypal

Check out how to install stripe in your WordPress through this Documentation. 

Time Tracker

Can you track how much your teachers/ staff/ clerk is taking the time to complete your assigned task? We know the answer is no and truly it’s difficult to manage. For you, Time Tracker is an appropriate module to track the time taken for each employee to finish a task. You need to just check the tracker and you will be able to find out the complete details of their task time period within a few seconds. 

What’s more to do with it?

• Integrates with your every task
• Make your responsible and save time
• Allows to start, pause and stop each task
• Track time wherever you need it
• Edit estimated time if you forget to include it
• Set this work time tracker based on your task need

 Follow this Documentation to set up Time Tracker on WP Project Manager. 

Gantt Chart

Gantt style project management is the new way of controlling projects at this time. It helps visualize all the tasks on a single page. 

Gantt Chart is a module that actually works as bar charts that illustrate the schedule of a project. Plus, it provides a bird’s eye view of all the tasks within the project. Moreover, it describes the schedule and progress of the project with ease.

What’s more to do with it?

• Show a visual overview of all the current tasks
• Display how many tasks have been completed
• Move any task from one day to another
• Increase a project’s schedule
• Drag & drop feature
• Employees can update the Gantt Chart
• Add new tasks and task lists with users and deadlines
• Create tasks from one to other projects
• Easily link one task with another 

Check out the Documentation to know how you can set up a Gantt chart without any problem.

Final Words on How to Manage School and Work

Phew! Finally, the content is at the bottom line. Here, we have tried to cover every aspect that you may need to run and manage a full-fledged school management system successfully in a pandemic situation. WP ERP is manufactured for managing small to medium-sized organizations and school is like one of them.  

In order to manage a school efficiently, you need some professional help from a simple yet powerful tool like WP ERP. This WordPress plugin is super easy for any beginner. You don’t need any coding knowledge at all to operate it. So, now the question remains how would you want to manage your school and work? Would you consider WP ERP to do it? If yes, then

Most amazingly, the software has both free and pro versions to take your school management practice to the next level. If you have any further queries then you may contact its dedicated support team to ask it out.