Tuition, application fees and courses in the ledger

How the Education pack sets up tuition, application fees and short courses for VAT, posts them to their own accounts, and why you confirm the VAT yourself.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Education businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

Ask a college accountant what is wrong with the income statement and you will often hear the same complaint: everything is in one line. Tuition, application fees, a weekend coding course, a corporate training contract: all of it lands in a single "sales" or "fees" account, and splitting it out for the board pack means a spreadsheet and an afternoon.

VAT adds a second layer. A full-time diploma, a registration fee and an online short course may not carry the same VAT treatment, and an invoice that mixes them has to get each line right.

When an institution switches on the Education pack in Achekam's Industry CRM, both problems are addressed at the start: separate revenue accounts, and starter items with a VAT marking on each. This article explains what is added, what the VAT markings mean, and what you still have to decide yourself.

What switching on the pack adds to your books

Activating an industry pack adds that industry's revenue accounts to your chart of accounts and its starter items to your catalogue. For education, the accounts are:

If an account code the pack wants is already used in your chart for a different type of account, activation is refused and the clash is named, so nothing is silently overwritten. Your accountant can then decide how to resolve it before trying again.

Three starter items, each with a VAT marking

The pack's catalogue starts with three kinds of item:

• Tuition, marked VAT-exempt;
• Application fee, marked VAT-exempt; and
• Online or short course, marked standard-rated.

The markings are not a ruling on your institution, and the pack says so: it tells the institution to confirm its own VAT position. Read the markings as a sensible place to start the conversation with your adviser.

Confirming your own position, country by country

What "confirm" means depends on where you operate.

Nigeria. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 zero-rates tuition from nursery to tertiary level, and educational books and materials. Zero-rated and exempt are not the same thing, so a Nigerian institution should ask its adviser whether its tuition lines should be coded zero-rated rather than exempt. A Nigerian business chooses a tax code on each invoice line (standard, zero-rated, exempt, out of scope or reverse charge), and only standard lines carry VAT. The full picture is in VAT on tuition and school supplies in Nigeria.

Kenya. A Kenyan business uses the same per-line tax codes. Whether your tuition, application fees and courses are exempt, zero-rated or standard-rated is a question for your adviser and the rules KRA publishes, starting with its VAT page, which covers the VAT rates, exempt supplies and eTIMS tax invoices; do not rely on the starter marking alone.

South Africa. At the time of writing, a South African invoice line takes 15% or 0% VAT, and the invoice screen does not tell zero-rated and exempt apart. An exempt tuition line and a zero-rated line will both show as 0%. Agree with your adviser how exempt fees should be reported, and keep a note of which items are exempt so your VAT working papers are right.

Tuition and application fees on their own accounts

With the pack, an invoice line names both the revenue account and the product it sells. When the invoice posts, revenue goes to the account each line names, and where a line sells a product with a cost, the cost of sales is posted in the same journal.

For an institution, the practical result is a cleaner income statement. A worked example in words: a student's first invoice of the year carries an application fee line and a term's tuition line. When it is issued, the application fee posts to Application and registration fees and the tuition to Tuition fees, each with its own VAT treatment. At month end the board pack shows how much came from each, straight from the ledger, without anyone re-sorting a sales account.

Separate accounts also make better questions possible. If application fee income falls while enquiries hold steady, the admissions office has something specific to look into. If short-course income grows faster than tuition, the board can see it and decide whether to invest in it. Neither question can be asked of a single fees account.

The separation helps later, too. When a student leaves, a credit note for the tuition line alone leaves the application fee standing; see overpaid fees and students who leave mid-term.

Pricing the items yourself

None of the starter items carries a price. That is true of every industry pack: the business sets its own prices. Before the first invoice, set a price for each item you will use, and decide how you will bill anything the starter list does not cover, such as examination fees, residence or materials. For each of those, settle the revenue account and the VAT treatment with your adviser rather than copying the nearest starter item.

Before you activate the pack

1. Ask your accountant to check that the account codes 4330 and 4340 are free in your chart, or plan how to handle a clash.
2. Take the three starter markings to your tax adviser and get a written answer for each, in your country.
3. Price the starter items and list what else you bill.
4. If you bill in instalments, decide how the fee invoice is built before the year starts; fee instalments as part payments explains the choice.

Separate accounts and correct codes are not glamorous, but they are the difference between a board pack produced in minutes and one rebuilt by hand every month.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.