The Best School ERP Software
School ERP software streamlines administrative tasks and enhances academic management. These solutions are customizable and scalable for all educational institutions, from small K-12 schools to multi-campus universities.
- Drag-and-drop tools to customize data visualization
- Exports data to Excel
- Simplified property and asset management through GIS integration
- Scalable and extensible for growing systems
- “Plan your course” feature streamlines student registration and scheduling
- Flexible deployment options
- Has customizable report templates
- Offers an employee self-service portal
- GAAP and USFR compliant
In this guide, we evaluated school ERP systems based on functionality like financial management and payroll and how well they support different institutions like higher education and K-12 districts. We used our advanced review methodology to evaluate and rank the top education ERP software in today’s market.
- Tyler Enterprise ERP: Best Overall
- Ellucian Banner: Best for Higher Education
- AptaFund: Best for K-12 Institutions
- PraxiSchool: Best Administrative Tools
- Skyward: Best Staff Management Tools
Tyler Enterprise ERP - Best Overall
Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise ERP is an apt choice if you need a true multi-fund accounting system. With its Enterprise Financial Management module, you can handle multiple revenue sources and complex budgets with ease.
One of the real standouts is its multi-fund accounting with general ledger control. This lets you manage different fund types, each with their own rules and reporting requirements, including:
- General
- Capital projects
- Special revenue
- Debt service
With a customizable chart of accounts and role-based permissions, you can ensure your funds are never misused.
Additionally, Tyler Enterprise ERP offers priority-based budgeting (PBB), powered by AI. Through its strategic alignment engine and scenario modeling, the PBB tool can help back strategic funding decisions. This is ideal for grant justifications or school board meetings.
Additionally, the financial module includes project and grant accounting for full lifecycle tracking. This allows you to ensure you’re spending funds according to stipulations like ESSER and Title I. It also helps automate reporting for federal and state grants, cutting your risk of non-compliance and making audits easier.
Ellucian Banner - Best for Higher Education
Ellucian Banner](/higher-education-erp/ellucian-banner/) helps foster collaboration across departments. It provides essential modules for student information management, human resources, finance, and financial aid, all tailored to address the unique challenges faced by higher education.
One feature of note is Banner’s “plan your course” function, which streamlines student registration and scheduling, enhancing the student and administrative experience. It also provides flexible deployment options, including SaaS, private cloud, and on-premise solutions. This adaptability ensures it can cater to educational organizations’ technological landscapes and strategic goals.
AptaFund - Best for K-12 Institutions
Developed by Harris School Solutions, AptaFund is adept at managing finances, notably fund accounting for schools that depend on grants. AptaFund’s features for tracking grants and projects are particularly tailored for this purpose.
Moreover, K-12 institutions must comply with numerous federal, state, and local regulations. AptaFund’s reporting capabilities are a key asset, enabling schools to efficiently generate necessary compliance reports for financial audits, state funding formulas, and federal education programs.
Finally, AptaFund’s HR tools address the specific types of staff contracts, schedules, and benefits packages common in the education sector, such as tracking tenure, managing teacher certifications, and handling substitute teacher pools.
PraxiSchool - Best Administrative Tools
PraxiSchool streamlines administrative tasks like monitoring attendance, grading, overseeing daycare operations, and handling lunch finances. A user-centric design makes everyday tasks more manageable, enabling easy communication with parents, monitoring staff hours, organizing email and SMS campaigns, and creating barcoded student IDs.
PraxiSchool also introduces an intuitive, drag-and-drop method for seating arrangement in classrooms. Additionally, it allows administrators to attach personal notes to student files, including important information such as allergies or disabilities.
For educators, it provides tools to efficiently organize grade books, lesson plans, assignments, and attendance, all in real time. Moreover, schools can establish and maintain their own library systems, oversee book and media loans, administer library fines, and send reminders to parents and students for overdue items.
Skyward - Best Staff Management Tools
Skyward ERP’s school payroll system helps streamline staff timekeeping and automate payroll. Teachers and staff can easily clock in and out online, using their badge or phone, allowing for accurate time clock entries. The integrated time tracking complies with the Fair Labor Standards Act and helps you adhere to the Affordable Care Act by clearly defining full and part-time staff. This helps administrations keep part-time tutors or student aids from exceeding their limit, which can happen due to the flexible nature of the positions.
Skyward’s payroll system also automates administrative workflows. Once timesheets are approved, payroll entries can be automatically generated, eliminating manual time entries for each employee. The system is also flexible, so you can ensure full-time, part-time, and substitute teachers are being paid accurately. It even allows administrators to manage different codes for overtime pay, extracurricular stipends, and bonuses.
Additionally, Skyward’s payroll module includes a self-serve portal for employees. This allows them to:
- View payment history: Staff can view past paystubs to ensure there were no errors in their paychecks. It shows deductions, benefits, rate, gross, and net pay.
- Substitute transactions: Teachers can clock in as a substitute if they need to cover for a coworker and keep their paycodes accurate.
- Print forms: Print W2 or ACA 1095 forms for tax filing.
- Time off requests: Easily request time off and view how many hours of PTO are available.
What is School ERP Software?
School ERP software is an enterprise resource planning system that manages the business processes (finance, human resources, and operations) of a school district or educational institution.
Key Features
- Admissions: Automates the registration process for new and existing students. Filter applications are more accessible and ensure borderline cases get examined promptly.
- Attendance Management: Tracks daily attendance of individual students and gives administrators insight into the percentage of students missing school to monitor trends.
- Calendar: Schedules classes for students online so they can know what classes will fit into their day. Manages the school’s schedules to ensure teachers are not overloaded or can meet other obligations; identifies ways to add an additional class for a subject if the demand is high enough.
- Gradebook: Allows users to input grades for homework, tests, quizzes, and other assignments. Makes report cards available online to students and parents via an online parent portal. Calculates GPA totals. Helps monitor teacher performance to see if students are hitting their marks.
- Staff Management: Includes human resource (HR) capabilities to monitor employee attendance, leave management, payroll assignment, and pay slips generation.
- Student Information: Stores all information about a student, such as grades, class schedule, a photo, attendance, behavioral issues, medications they’re on, and more.
- Parent Portal: Provides parents with unique login credentials that help enhance communication; allows progress monitoring of students via grade checking and deadline monitoring.
- Fee Management: Helps users monitor school finances and get insights on deductions, fees, fines, and scholarships awarded to students. Ensures payments are coming in on time before deadlines. Manages invoicing for tuition payments.
Primary Benefits
Advantages provided by using school ERP systems include:
Increased Productivity
School ERP software will manage and automate your daily tasks and help save time. School administrators can manage their daily tasks automatically compared to previous manual methods–allowing you to focus on valuable tasks.
Improved Communication
Education ERP offers a portal for all involved parties–including teachers, parents, students, and more. These parties have access to all the information offered by the school ERP system, including notifications, grades, bills, assignments, class schedules, exam notifications, and more.
Teachers can quickly check to see if students have finished assignments, give feedback or remarks on their school progress, and provide updates to the course syllabus.
Prompt Decision Making With Real-Time Data
School administrators must constantly make decisions impacting the school’s day-to-day operations. Many times, these decisions require a quick response. A school management ERP system can help generate reports for various administrative tasks, including billing, admissions, fee payments, student grades, employee records, and demographic details.
By having this data accessible at the touch of a button, analysis will take only a short amount of time, leading to quicker decision-making. For example, a school can track the real-time position of a bus and provide updates to parents about where their child is. A school may also be able to provide attendance updates to concerned parents. For teachers, knowing the expected number of students admitted to their class will allow them to better plan their upcoming lesson plans.
Streamlined Tasks
Without a school ERP system, a teacher may have to present physical copies of homework to students, mark attendance manually, and share events and notices that detail a student’s progress with parents.
A school ERP system can automate these processes and reduce administration workloads. Internal messaging features in school ERP systems can integrate with external communication tools such as email and text to parents. This can ensure that parents receive timely updates about their children that inform them of academic progress and disciplinary actions.
Pricing
The cost of school ERP software can vary significantly based on school size, complexity, and the number of modules needed:
$12,000 – $35,000 per year
Best for: Small private schools, trade programs, or community colleges with under 500 students
Features:
- Student records, scheduling, and basic finance management
- Cloud deployment with limited customization
- Lower setup costs and IT overhead
Example vendors: Populi, Classe365, OpenEduCat
$35,000 – $100,000 per year
Best for: K–12 districts or colleges with 500 to 5,000 students
Features:
- HR, procurement, and compliance reporting
- In-depth student lifecycle features
- Often includes integration with third-party apps
Example vendors: Jenzabar One, Anthology Student, Ellucian PowerCampus
$100,000 – $250,000 per year
Best for: Medium-sized universities or larger K–12 districts with 5,000–20,000 students
Features
- Multi-campus functionalities
- Custom dashboards and analytics
- Dedicated support for setup
Example vendors: Ellucian Colleague, Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, Workday Student
$250,000+ per year
Best for: Large universities and statewide systems with 20,000+ students
Features:
- Comprehensive enterprise-wide deployment
- Deep integrations across finance, HR, student success
- Full data governance, security, and reporting
Example vendors: Ellucian Banner, SAP S/4HANA for Higher Education, Oracle Cloud, Workday Enterprise
