Case study · Small Wonders Preschool
Bringing structure to admissions, fees and parent payments
Small Wonders is an early child development centre operating three centres across Kolkata: Salt Lake, Hungerford Street and New Alipore. As the school grew, the way it collected fees had not kept pace. Ascent worked with the leadership team to re-engineer the process from the ground up and deliver Classly, a single platform where parents pay admission fees, quarterly fees and uniform orders online, and where the school’s teams see every payment in one place.
The challenge A process extended, not designed.
Over several years, Small Wonders’ fee process had grown organically. In its earliest form, the fee spreadsheet uploaded each quarter was effectively the school’s only record of its students: every file carried each child’s and parent’s details again, and small differences crept in from one quarter to the next.
A proper student register was added later, but the system underneath had been extended rather than designed. The result was a set of familiar pressures.
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01
Reconciliation took time
Admission payments made before a child was formally enrolled sat apart from the child’s later fee history, so building a complete picture of what a family had paid meant piecing records together by hand.
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02
Parent communication was stretched
Parents had no single place to see what was due, what they had paid, or to download a receipt, which meant more calls and emails to each centre.
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03
Branch teams lacked a clear view
Centre staff needed to see their own students’ payments, but not the whole school’s, and not with the ability to change records.
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04
Offline payments and late fees were manual
Cash and cheque payments, and late fees after due dates, depended on someone remembering to update records.
Our approach Understand, analyse, re-engineer and build, embed.
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01
Understand
We began with how fees actually moved through the school, not how they were documented. Working with leadership and centre teams, we mapped the three distinct ways a family pays: a one-time admission payment before a child is enrolled, quarterly academic fees against a statement issued each term, and uniform orders.
We also reviewed several years of historical records to understand how the data had evolved.
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02
Analyse
That review surfaced the root cause behind most of the friction: the same information was being captured in several places, with no single source of truth for a student or a payment.
It also showed that a meaningful share of older fee records belonged to a period before a student register existed, so they needed to be preserved as history rather than “corrected”.
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03
Re-engineer and build
We redesigned the process around one principle: record each child and parent once, and link every payment back to them. Classly was then built around that design.
For parents
A mobile-first portal that works like an app
- Sign in with a mobile number and a one-time code by SMS, with no password to remember
- See the fees due for each child, pay securely online, and download receipts
- Order uniforms by size, with a size chart and live totals, and pay in the same flow
- A complete payment history for every child in one place
- A simple link for admission payments, so families can pay before enrolment is complete
For the school’s leadership
A single operational view
- Every admission, academic fee and uniform payment, searchable and filterable
- Quarterly fee statements uploaded from a simple template, with the period and last date of payment set at upload
- Late fees applied automatically when a due date passes, so no family is charged incorrectly and none is missed
- Offline cash and cheque payments recorded in seconds, with a full note of who recorded them and when
- Admission payments linked to a student once enrolled, so each family’s history is complete
- Uniform deliveries recorded, with the parent notified automatically and the centre copied
- A full log of every email and SMS the system sends, including whether it was delivered
For branch teams
Focused, view-only access
- Each centre sees its own academic and uniform payments
- Exactly what the team needs, and nothing it should not change
Throughout, we migrated several years of historical data, covering students, fee statements and payments from both the earlier payment gateway and the current one, without losing a single record.
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04
Embed
We rolled Classly out alongside the school’s teams, refining screens and workflows through regular feedback sessions: from how a period filter should behave for a branch manager, to how a receipt should look on a parent’s phone.
The platform continues to evolve with the school.
The impact What changed for the school.
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One source of truth
Every child, parent and payment is recorded once and connected, replacing a patchwork of files.
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Less administrative effort
Late fees, receipts, delivery notifications and reconciliation now happen automatically or in a few clicks.
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A better experience for parents
Families can check dues, pay, order uniforms and retrieve receipts from their phone, at any time.
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Clearer oversight
Leadership sees the whole school in real time; each centre sees its own students, with the right level of access.
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History preserved, not rewritten
Years of records, including those from before the student register existed, remain intact and usable.
Ascent has been instrumental in transforming the way we manage our operations, developing a bespoke technology platform that is closely aligned with the nuances of our business. From streamlining admissions to simplifying fee collection, the platform has delivered meaningful operational efficiencies while enabling our team to focus more of its time and attention on what matters most: our children and parents.
What particularly distinguishes Ascent is the depth of engagement they bring to the process. They take the time to understand the underlying business context before proposing a solution, resulting in technology that is thoughtful, practical and built to scale as the organisation evolves.
Gaurav PoddarSmall Wonders Preschool
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