Payment receipts and records

Understand receipt numbering, when several fee lines share one receipt document, who may open it, and how to email a copy again.

Fees & finance guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

A receipt in Schoolyi is a view over one or more payment rows, not a stored PDF. Each payment records the amount, method, date, collector, and any cheque or transaction reference, and carries its own receipt number. When a family settles several fee lines in one transaction, the system groups those payments into a single receipt document with line items, so the family gets one piece of paper and finance keeps one row per fee line.

Because the PDF is rendered on demand, it always reflects the school branding, address, and contact details currently held on the school record. The document also carries the balance still outstanding on the lines it covers, and a year-to-date summary when that context is available, which saves the counter from answering the same question twice.

Receipt kinds

Kind	When it is used	What the header shows
Individual	One payment row	The fee type name
Monthly	Several monthly fee lines all due in the same month	Monthly fees with the month label
Consolidated	Any other multi-line batch	The number of fee lines covered

Who can open a receipt

The student the payment belongs to
A guardian with an active link to that student
Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, Support Staff - Finance, and Admin
Nobody else, even with a valid receipt number, because access is checked per request rather than by obscurity

Handoff

Receipts are the evidence layer over the fee ledger, so they inherit whatever the ledger says. A payment updates the paid amount on its fee instance, which is what the outstanding list, the defaulter report, and the dunning ladder read next. Online payments arrive through the same path as counter payments, which is why a family paying by card and a family paying cash end up with receipts that look and behave identically.

Limits

The receipt layout is fixed. Tax documents are separate artefacts - GST and VAT invoices are generated from their own endpoints when configured
There is no receipt cancellation. A wrongly recorded payment is corrected through the refund workflow, or by marking a cheque bounced
Emailing depends on SMTP; without it the payment is still recorded and the PDF still downloads

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

How are receipt numbers formatted?+

RCP-YEAR-000001, with a six-digit sequence that continues from the highest existing number for the current calendar year. Numbers are generated by the system and cannot be supplied or edited.

A parent paid five installments at once and got one receipt. Is that right?+

Yes. Receipts are resolved as a document rather than one row per payment. A single line prints as an individual receipt, several same-month monthly lines print as a monthly receipt, and a mixed batch prints as a consolidated receipt listing every line.

Can a parent download the receipt for their child?+

Yes. Access is granted to the paying student, to a guardian with an active link to that student, and to fee operations roles. Anyone else gets 403 even with the receipt number.

The receipt email did not arrive. What do I check?+

Resending returns a specific error: either no email address was found on the student or guardian, or the send failed and you should check SMTP settings. Fix the address on the record, or test mail delivery at /settings/email-test, then resend.