How to choose school software, without taking anyone's word for it
Most comparisons of school software in India are written by the people selling it. This one is too — so every question below is one you should ask us as well, and our own answer is printed underneath it, including the three we currently fail.
What should a school ask before buying school management software?
Ask who owns the data and how you export it, what the printed register and report card look like on A4, which language those printed documents come out in, whether the price is flat or per student, what happens to last year's results at year end, and what the vendor has not built yet.
Who owns the data, and how do we get it out?
This is the question that decides whether you can ever change your mind. A school that cannot export its own registers and results is not a customer, it is a hostage — and the cost of leaving shows up years later, as a quote you have to accept. Ask for the export format, in writing, before the pilot and not during it.
- Ask: can we export attendance, marks and fees ourselves, without asking you?
- Ask: in what format — Excel and PDF, or a screen we have to photograph?
- Ask: if we leave, what happens to the data, and how long do you keep it?
- Veda: registers, report cards and fee reports print to Excel or PDF from the office, any time
- Veda: the school controls its data; we process it only to run Veda, and delete it on request
Show me the printed register and the printed report card
Every product in this category demos well on a screen. The school office lives on paper: a register the class teacher signs, a report card a family takes home, a fee receipt that goes in a file. Ask to see the actual A4 output for a real class of forty before you see another dashboard.
- Ask: print me a monthly register for a class of forty, now, in this meeting
- Ask: how many students fit on one report card page, and does the rank print on it?
- Ask: is the receipt numbered, and can it be reprinted if the family loses it?
- Veda: the monthly register prints class by class as Excel or PDF
- Veda: one student per A4 report card, with totals, grade, rank and the attendance line
- Veda: receipts are numbered at the counter and reprintable
Which language does the printed document come out in?
A Gujarati-medium school is usually shown a Gujarati interface and assumes the printed output follows. It very often does not, because rendering an Indic script into a PDF is a different problem from showing it on a screen, and a half-shaped report card is worse than an English one. This is our own weakest answer and we would rather you heard it here.
- Ask: is the printed report card in Gujarati, or only the screen?
- Ask: show me one, printed, not a screenshot
- Veda: the app and the office screens work in Gujarati
- Veda: the AI works in Gujarati — a Gujarati paper gets its answer key in Gujarati
- Veda, and this is a no: the printed report card PDF is English-script today
Is the price flat or per student — and what is the three-year figure?
Both structures are honest; they just suit different schools. A flat annual licence is one price whatever your roll, which is better for a large school. Per-student pricing is better for a small one and falls if your numbers fall. What matters is doing the multiplication for your own roll, over three years, including whatever is not in the headline number.
- Ask: flat or per student, and what is the figure for our actual roll?
- Ask: is there a setup or implementation fee, and is it one-time or annual?
- Ask: do we pay per teacher for the admin panel? Per SMS? For printing?
- Ask: what does this cost in year three, after the introductory price ends?
- Veda: ₹50 per student per year for the office, ₹120 with AI and verified practice
- Veda: no setup fee, no per-teacher licence, and pilot schools keep their price for the first paid year
What happens on the last day of the session?
Year end is where school software quietly fails. Every student moves up a class, divisions are reshuffled, and last year's registers and results have to still be there afterwards — for a transfer certificate, for a board query, for a family who asks in August about a mark from February. Ask how promotion works before you ask about anything on the dashboard.
- Ask: how do we promote the whole school to the next class — one pass, or student by student?
- Ask: after promotion, can we still open last year's register and last year's result?
- Ask: what happens to a student who repeats, or who leaves mid-session?
- Veda: year-end promotion moves every student in one pass
- Veda: the year you just finished is untouched — its registers and results stay as they are
Who in the office can see the fees?
Fees are the one module where "everyone has a login" is a problem rather than a feature. A clerk who can see every family's dues, a class teacher who can see a concession, a receipt nobody can trace back to who wrote it — these are the things that turn into a difficult conversation in a small town. Ask for the permission model, not a reassurance.
- Ask: can a class teacher see fee dues? Can they see a concession or an RTE record?
- Ask: does every receipt record which clerk wrote it?
- Ask: can two clerks collect at the same counter without overwriting each other?
- Veda: separate logins for the accountant and clerks, with fees visible only where you allow
- Veda: every receipt records who wrote it, and RTE and concessions sit against the student
What have you not built yet?
This is the question nobody asks and everybody should. Every product in this category has a roadmap being presented as a feature list, and the gap only appears in week three of the term. A vendor who cannot name three things they have not finished is either not listening or not telling you. Here are ours, written down so you can hold us to them.
- Ask: name three things on your demo that are not in production today
- Ask: get that answer in an email, not in a meeting
- Veda, not ready: online fee payment is built but has never run against a live payment gateway
- Veda, not ready: the printed report card PDF is English-script, not Gujarati
- Veda, not ready: the verified library is Classes 5 to 9 — Class 10 is written but not published
- Veda, arriving in your pilot term: setting a chapter for a class, and the principal's weekly page
The checklist, in one screen
Data
Can we export registers, marks and fees ourselves, as Excel or PDF, without asking you?
Paper
Print a monthly register for forty students and one report card, now, in this meeting.
Language
Is the printed report card in our medium, or only the screen? Show me a printed one.
Price
Flat or per student? Setup fee? Per-teacher licence? What is the year-three figure?
Year end
How does promotion work, and can we still open last year's register afterwards?
Permissions
Who can see fees? Does every receipt record which clerk wrote it?
Honesty
Name three things on the demo that are not in production. In writing.
Support
Who do we call in the first week of term, and do they speak our language?
The pilot
Can we run a real term with our own students before we pay anything?
What schools ask us about choosing
What should a school ask before buying school management software?
Ask who owns the data and how you export it, what the printed register and report card look like on A4, which language the printed documents come out in, whether pricing is flat or per student, what happens to last year's results at year end, who in the office can see fees, and what the vendor has not built yet. Get that last answer in writing.
Is flat pricing or per-student pricing better?
It depends on your roll. A flat annual licence is one price whatever your size, which suits a large school. Per-student pricing is cheaper for a small school and falls if your numbers fall. Under about 500 students per-student is usually the cheaper structure; above it, a flat licence usually is. Do the multiplication for your own roll over three years.
How long should a trial be?
A school term. A fourteen-day trial with sample data tells you nothing about year-end promotion, about a report card for a real class of forty, or about what happens when a teacher forgets to mark the register for a week. Ask for a term with your own students in it.
What usually goes wrong in the first month?
Three things, in our experience: the student list imported with the roll numbers mangled, teachers who were trained on a PDF instead of in a room, and a printed document that looked right on screen and wrong on paper. All three are findable before you sign, which is what the questions above are for.
Should we keep the paper register during the first term?
Yes, for the first month at least. Many schools run both and compare the printed register against the paper one before retiring it. If a vendor discourages that, treat it as an answer to question one.
Does Veda work for Gujarati-medium schools?
The app, the office screens and the AI tools all work in Gujarati — a Gujarati-medium paper gets its answer key in Gujarati. The printed report card PDF is English-script today, because our PDF engine cannot shape Gujarati correctly, and the verified chapter practice is English-medium for now. Those are two of the three things we tell schools we have not finished.
Why would we choose Veda over a cheaper flat licence?
For a large school, not on price — a flat licence is cheaper above about 500 students, and we say so on our pricing page. The reason is the part a licence does not include at any price: chapter practice written against the NCERT books and checked question by question, set for a class, with the result on the principal's desk.
Also: Veda for Schools · Pricing, worked out · Report cards · Fees & receipts · The NCERT library · How we handle your data
Ask us all seven. Then run a term for free.
We will answer every question on this page about Veda, in writing, before you commit to anything — including the three we fail.