The Only School Mobile App Your Campus Will Need

Yes — both apps are 100% free. The school pays one flat ₹4,999 / year for the Apna School subscription. There is no per-parent app charge, no per-student app charge, no per-staff seat charge, and no “app activation fee”. Most competitor school management software companies bill the parent app separately at ₹100–₹300 per student per year — which for a 500-student school adds ₹50,000–₹1,50,000 of hidden cost on top of the base ERP. Apna School deliberately bundles both apps into the base subscription because a school mobile app is only useful when every parent and every staff member is on it — charging extra defeats the purpose. Read about the deliberate bundling in our parent-teacher communication app guide.

Almost every operational task. From the Apna School admin app, the principal, vice-principal, class teacher, fee clerk and office staff can: mark daily class attendance, collect fees with Cash / Cheque / DD / UPI, print receipts on a Bluetooth thermal printer (58 mm or 80 mm), enter exam marks for the three-tier exam system (Exam, Class Test, Unit Test), view today’s collection on the principal dashboard, broadcast WhatsApp / SMS notices to selected classes, approve discounts, cancel-with-reason fee receipts, view per-student fee statements, mark staff attendance, generate monthly payslips, view the cash book, run the route-wise transport revenue report, and add or edit student records. The same per-employee role permissions that govern the desktop panel apply on the app — a class teacher who can only mark attendance from desktop also can only mark attendance from the app. The two-app model is one product, two surfaces.

The Apna School parent app and the school’s admin panel use the same cloud database. There is no batch upload, no daily export, no overnight sync — the moment the class teacher marks the child Present / Absent on the attendance page (desktop or admin app), the parent app reflects it. Same for fee receipts: when the school accountant records a fee receipt against the student, the parent app updates the “paid” / “pending” status instantly and the receipt is downloadable. Same for exam results: the moment the subject teacher saves the marks entry, the parent can see subject-wise marks, grade and division, and download the printable marksheet. Absent-day push notification fires within a minute of the teacher marking the absence. The single-source-of-truth design is what makes “real time” honest — not a marketing word.

Yes — sibling-aware login is built in. Apna School maintains a separate guardian directory on the back end, and a single guardian record can be linked to multiple students (siblings) in the same school. When a parent logs in to the parent app with their guardian mobile number + OTP, the home screen shows a switcher for every linked child — one tap moves between children. Fee statements, absence alerts and notices are also delivered guardian-wise, not student-wise, so a family with three kids in the same school doesn’t get three identical “school holiday tomorrow” messages. This is one of the highest-value features for Indian schools, where joint families with multiple children in the same campus are extremely common.

Yes — “manage school from mobile for principal” is a primary design goal. The Apna School admin app gives the principal: today’s collection (live tile on the home screen), today’s attendance percentage (per class), defaulter list (students with pending fees), absent students today, WhatsApp / SMS wallet balance, recent receipts, cash book balance, and route-wise transport revenue. The principal can broadcast a notice (e.g. “Tomorrow holiday on account of Janmashtami”) to selected classes in two taps. They can approve fee discounts, cancel a receipt with a written reason, generate a study certificate for a student requesting it, add a holiday to the school calendar — from anywhere. For working principals who run two campuses, this single-handed control is the single biggest reason they switch to Apna School.

The current Apna School parent app and admin app are Android-first (Play Store), because the overwhelming majority of Indian school parents and school staff use Android. iPhone users can use the mobile-friendly web parent panel — the same data, the same real-time updates, accessed through Safari or Chrome on iOS. A native iOS app is on our roadmap and, when it ships, will be released as a free upgrade to all existing schools and parents — just like the Android app, no extra charge. iOS is one of the engineering items on our pipeline; existing-school-free is the standing commitment for everything Apna School builds.

Parents use their guardian mobile number + OTP — no separate username, no password to remember, no “forgot password” flow. When the school bulk-imports students from Excel, the guardian mobile numbers come in along with each student. The parent downloads the Apna School parent app from the Play Store, types their mobile number, receives a 6-digit OTP, types it in — and the app shows every child of that guardian with full attendance, fees, exam-result and notice access. If a guardian changes their mobile number, the school office updates the guardian record once and the new number works on next OTP login. Mobile-OTP login also doubles as a security layer — only verified mobile numbers can see student data, which is essential for compliance with parent-data-privacy expectations.

Zero additional cost. The school pays the flat ₹4,999 / year Apna School subscription — that’s the entire bill. Whether 50, 500 or 5,000 parents install the parent app, there is no per-parent licensing fee. The only running cost beyond the subscription is the school’s WhatsApp / SMS wallet, which is fully usage-based — you pay only when you broadcast messages, and a free starter bundle is included on every plan. We’ve seen schools go from 30% parent-app installation to 95% within a month of bundling the app link with the fee receipt; once the absent alerts and live fee-status are visible, parents adopt it on their own. For a deep-dive on rollout strategy, see our blog on parent-teacher communication apps.