What the administration portal is for
One sign-on for the head of school, the secretary, the bursar and the teacher.
The administration portal is the working side of Ekati: the screen the head of school opens on Monday morning, the counter the secretary sits at, the figures the bursar closes the month with, and the lessons the teacher teaches from. Everything a school does between the first bell and the last one happens inside this portal.
It is one menu, arranged in the order a school actually works in. Dashboards tell you where you stand. Assessment holds the marks. Scheduling holds the week. Admissions brings learners in. Academic defines the year, the classes and the courses. Messaging reaches families. Finance counts the money. Everything else — subscriptions, notifications, your own courses — hangs off the same sidebar.
Nobody sees all of it. The sidebar is trimmed to the job: a bursar opens Finance and never touches Academics, a teacher opens My Courses and Grade Entry and little else, and a super administrator sees the whole platform. If a menu is missing from your sidebar, that is a role decision rather than a broken installation.
The nine parts of the administration portal
Each one answers a different question about the running of the school.
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Start here
Dashboards
Read enrolment, marks, cash and store figures for any period before you decide what the day needs.
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Marks
Assessment
Enter exam and continuous assessment marks, review submitted work and publish the class board.
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The week
Scheduling
Build the weekly timetable, name the rooms and attach every course to a time period and a teacher.
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New learners
Admissions
Publish an application form, review the files that arrive and enrol the ones you accept.
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The year
Academics
Define the academic year and its terms, open the classes, add the courses and publish the booklists.
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Families
Messaging
Write one message, target a role, a class or the whole school, and read the delivery results.
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Money
Finance
Price the year, take the fees at the counter, check the mobile money and pay the staff.
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Printing
Report cards and slips
Design the result slip your school hands out, then print one per learner for any class and term.
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Your plan
Subscriptions and packages
See what the school is subscribed to, which modules are switched on and when the plan expires.
A school week inside the portal
The menus make more sense once you can see where each one is used.
Monday morning: the office
The secretary opens Admissions > Enrollments and takes the walk-ins of the day. The bursar opens Finance > Payments to see yesterday’s takings and to print a receipt for the family at the counter. The head of school opens Dashboard > Overview and reads the four cards at the top: the student body, the teachers and classes, the financial snapshot and the rhythm of admissions.
Tuesday to Thursday: teaching
This is where Assessment earns its place. A teacher types the continuous assessment marks in Assessment > Grade Entry; another clears the pile in Assessment > Submissions. The academic head checks in Assessment > Class Broadsheet whether every subject for the term has actually submitted marks. Messages to parents go out from Messaging > Broadcasts rather than from a personal phone.
Friday: closing the week
Teachers record the hours they actually taught in the execution logbooks, so the monthly payroll has verified hours behind it. The secretary prints the class list for the next week from Scheduling > Timetables in PDF and hangs it up. Anyone still carrying an unpaid instalment shows up in the Finance dashboard as arrears.
End of month and end of term
End of month, the bursar runs the payroll, marks the lines paid and reviews the expenditures. End of term, the secretary publishes the class board, and the results are printed from Slips & Certificates Design — one page per learner, in the school’s own colours.
Who each menu belongs to
The sidebar is not decoration: it is trimmed to the job.
The head of school
Reads Dashboards first, then Assessment > Class Broadsheet to sign off results, then Admissions > Applications for the files that need a decision. Does not normally touch Payments or Payroll directly.
The secretary
Lives in Admissions, Messaging and Slips & Certificates Design. This is the account that takes the walk-in registrations, answers the parents who walk in, prints the booklists and prints the term results.
The bursar
Lives in Finance, Configurations (for the receipt header and logo) and My Subscriptions for the renewal date. Takes payments in Enrollments as well, and is one of the roles that can open the Finance dashboard.
The teacher
Opens My Courses, Assignments, Submissions, Grade Entry, Timetables and the execution logbooks. A pure teacher sees a single dashboard tab called My Teaching instead of the overview.
Only a super administrator
Dashboard > Platform & System, Institutions, Applications, Roles, Permissions, Access Modules and Packages are visible to a super administrator alone. They are the screens that decide what the whole platform, and therefore every other school on it, is allowed to do.
The three screens you will open every day
Small menus, big effect on a busy morning.
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Stay informed
Notifications
The bell in the header lists what just happened: results published, an application approved, a payout confirmed.
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Teachers
My courses
A teacher’s own list of classes, with the button that opens the mark sheet for each of them.
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The counter
Enrollments
Where a learner is registered, the expected fee is copied in from the fee structure, and a receipt is printed on the spot.
Administration questions
Asked by school owners and office staff in their first weeks.
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What is the difference between the administration portal and the learner app?
The administration portal is for staff. It is where marks are typed, fees are taken, timetables are built and files are approved. The learner app is what a learner or a parent opens on a phone: lessons, assignments, results, booklist and library. A parent who has an administration account uses the portal; the same person who follows a child’s marks uses the learner app.
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Why can my colleague see a menu that I cannot?
Each account carries a role, and the sidebar is built from that role. A bursar sees Finance; a teacher does not. If a role’s abilities also differ between schools, only a super administrator can switch them on or off, on the Roles and Permissions screens. Ask your head of school to raise it if you genuinely need a screen you cannot open.
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I am setting up a brand-new school. What should I do first?
Follow the Onboarding checklist, which walks you through the order that matters: the academic year and its terms, the classes, the courses, then your branding under Configurations. Everything else — fees, timetables, forms — depends on those. The checklist is optional and can be paused, but a school that skips the academic year will find every other screen asking it for something that does not exist yet.
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Where do I change the school’s logo and the message printed at the bottom of receipts?
Open Configurations. The logo, the watermark, the footer message and an optional payment template are set there once, and every receipt generated afterwards — including the ones already printed for you — carries them. Change them there rather than editing individual receipts.