Collecting fees in installments

A ₹20,000 fee loses students who could comfortably pay ₹7,000 a month. Installments let them enrol on the first payment, and give you a due date and a reminder for the rest.

How it works

You offer a few payment options on a batch — pay in full, or split across 2, 3 or 5 payments. The student picks one when enrolling and pays the first installment there and then. That payment enrols them; the rest are tracked with due dates.

Step 1 — Set the plans up

1
Open the batch settings for the group and switch on installments.
2
Enter a totalfor each option you want to offer. The full-payment total is required; the others are optional — leave one blank and it is not offered.
3
Set days between payments for each split option. 30 is the usual choice, giving roughly monthly payments.

Pedagio divides each total by the number of installments and shows the per-payment figure as you type, so you can see what the student will actually pay.

Option	Total	Per payment	Schedule
Full payment	₹10,000	₹10,000	Once, at enrolment
2 installments	₹11,000	₹5,500	At enrolment, then 30 days
3 installments	₹12,000	₹4,000	At enrolment, then every 30 days

Price the split above the full payment

Waiting for money and following up on it has a real cost, and some of it never arrives. Setting the split totals higher rewards paying in full, covers the chasing, and is normal practice that parents recognise. The gap should be visible enough to matter — around 10% per extra installment is a reasonable starting point.

Step 2 — What the student sees

At enrolment they choose between the options you offered, with each one showing the total and the per-payment amount. Once enrolled, the next installment and its due date appear on their batch page, with a button to pay it.

A promo code applies to the payment being made at enrolment — the first installment — not to the plan total. A “₹500 off” code takes ₹500 off what they pay today; the later installments are unchanged. Worth knowing before you advertise a discount against a total fee.

Step 3 — Getting paid the rest

Three things happen without you doing anything:

A reminder email goes out three days before each installment falls due.
The email changes tone once a payment is late— it says overdue rather than upcoming.
Outstanding installments appear under Dues in your admin sidebar, so you have one list of who owes what rather than a notebook.

Cash and UPI payments count too

If a parent hands you cash or pays by UPI directly, record it against their plan from the Dues page. The installment is marked paid, the balance updates, and the reminders stop. Without recording it, Pedagio keeps chasing someone who has already paid you.

Choosing how many installments

Split	Suits	Watch out for
Full payment only	Short courses, small fees	Loses students who cannot pay upfront
2 payments	Most batches	Little downside — a good default to add first
3 payments	Term-length batches	More follow-up; keep the due dates monthly
5 payments	Year-long courses, large fees	Highest drop-off risk late in the plan

Offering every option is not automatically better. Three choices is easy to decide between; five invites hesitation. Most academies do well with full payment and one split.

Two limitations worth knowing

Installments do not work with sliding-scale pricing. If a batch prices by how many students join, the total is not fixed, so it cannot be divided into a schedule. Pick one or the other for a given batch.
The schedule is fixed at enrolment. Changing the plan settings later affects new students, not ones already on a plan.

Using installments well

Pair them with a demo.The demo answers “is this teaching any good?” and installments answer “can I afford it?” — see Offering demo classes.
Keep due dates monthly. Parents budget monthly; a 45-day interval lands at an awkward point and gets missed.
Act on the Dues list weekly. The reminder email does the routine work, but a payment two weeks late usually needs a conversation, not another email.

Running a batch→