Fee waivers and discounts

Request a concession, get it approved by someone else, and see exactly how the approved amount changes the payable figure on a fee instance.

Fees & finance guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Waivers exist so a school can charge a family less without editing the fee structure or deleting the line. Every waiver names a student, an amount that may be absolute or a percentage, a category, a written reason, and an academic year. Approving a waiver linked to a fee instance recalculates that instance: the waiver is added to the waived total, payable is reduced to the remainder, and if payable reaches zero the instance flips to WAIVED.

The calculation basis is the total amount minus any existing discount, not the current payable figure. That matters when two waivers land on the same line: each percentage is applied against the same basis, so two twenty per cent waivers reduce the line by forty per cent rather than compounding to thirty-six.

The approval path

A fee operations user raises the waiver at /fees/waivers against a student and, ideally, a specific fee instance
The record is written PENDING and inactive, with the requester recorded
A different user with approval rights approves or rejects it
On approval the instance is recalculated in the same transaction and the decision is written to the activity log
Pending waivers can still be edited or deleted; approved and rejected ones cannot

Roles

Action	Roles
Raise, view, edit a pending waiver	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, Support Staff - Finance, Admin
Approve or reject an ordinary waiver	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal
Approve or reject a high-value waiver	Principal or Vice Principal only

Handoff

An approved waiver changes the number every other fee screen reads. Collections quotes the reduced payable at the counter, the receipt prints gross, waived, and net for that line, outstanding and defaulter reports drop the waived portion, and the dunning ladder stops chasing a line whose payable has fallen to zero. Approve before you chase, or a family will receive a reminder for money the school has already agreed to forgo.

Limits

There is no scholarship engine and no automatic recurring concession across future installments
The bulk action creates one pending waiver per open instance for a student; each still needs approving
Waivers reduce what is payable. Refunding money already collected is a separate refund workflow

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

I created a waiver but the student balance did not change.+

Every waiver is created as PENDING and inactive. Nothing is applied until someone with approval rights decides it. Approve it at /fees/waivers and the payable amount on the linked fee instance drops.

Why can I not approve the waiver I raised?+

Approval is maker-checker. The request is rejected with 403 when the approver is the same person who requested it, so a second pair of eyes is always required.

What makes a waiver high-value?+

An absolute amount at or above the high-value limit, which defaults to ten thousand rupees and can be changed with FEE_HIGH_VALUE_ADJUSTMENT_INR, or a reduction of twenty-five per cent or more of the fee line. High-value adjustments require Principal or Vice Principal; ordinary ones also accept Platform Admin.

I attached a waiver to a fee type rather than to one instance. What happens?+

The record is stored and can be approved, but only waivers linked to a specific fee instance change a payable amount. A fee-type waiver is documentation, not an automatic rule.