Guides · 6 min read
Every school management demo looks good on a prepared dataset. The product fails or succeeds on the days nobody rehearsed — a bulk fee run on the 1st, a sudden timetable change, a TC request with dues pending. Evaluate the product on those days, not the demo.
The questions that matter
Ask for a live tenant, not a video. Put in your own student list and try the messy cases: a sibling discount, a mid-session fee change, a student with dues who needs a certificate. Watch how the system handles them — and how it fails.
Ask about data export. A trustworthy system lets you take your data out. If the vendor hesitates when you ask for a full export, that hesitation tells you more than any feature list.
The migration red flag
If the vendor says "we'll handle migration later" without scoping it, they probably haven't done many. Ask what the import process looks like, who validates the data, and what happens when your legacy records are messy — because they always are.