TACO = Tracking/Accounting/Credits/Obligations
iTaco evolved as an intranet/portal system for a co-op elementary school my son attended for six years. A co-op school has many bespoke requirements that don't apply to normal schools - complex business rules comprised of credits, charges and obligations for students, families, and staff, which are tallied monthly and become part of the overall billing system.
It also feeds complex mailing list requirements based on queries - if you're the parent of a currently enrolled 1st and 3rd grader, you'll be automatically subscribed to those mailing lists (overridable).
iTaco also handles applications to the school, batch entry of charges and obligations, personal profiles for everyone, support for non-traditional family structures, document management, web-based and printable rosters of families, staff, family jobs, and students broken down by class. Accountant summaries are auto-generated from internal business rules and the data collection done for each family.
Because iTaco was built to meet the needs of a single school, it is probably not generic enough to suit the needs of any arbitray school without extensive modification. At this point, I do not have immediate plans to make iTaco generic enough to work for any school, but feel free to use it as a starting point for your own school's needs. If you do, let me know - hopefully we can work together to make iTaco even better.
- Emergency forms
- Application submission, review, acceptance
- Rosters of: Parents, Families, Students, Board Members, Family Jobs, Faculty
- Summary view of charges, credits and obligations for each family, per month
- ...