Set up your academic session and terms

In the sidebar, open Academics, then click Sessions & terms. The page opens on the School Year & Terms tab, which holds the two cards this guide is about: School Year and, just below it, Terms. They are not the same thing: a school year is the whole session (e.g. 2026/2027), and terms are the three parts it is split into. Class names, classroom sections and subjects live on the Classes & Subjects tab. You can come back to those later.

In the School Year card, click New Session. Fill in:

• Name: the way you'd write it on a letter, e.g. 2026/2027 Academic Year.
• Code: a short version for dropdowns, e.g. 2026/27.
• Start date: the first day of the new school year (usually the Monday students return).
• End date: the last day of the year, after exams and the long break.

Click Create. The new session will appear in the list marked Planned.

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Find the session you just created and click Set Current. This tells edunile that this is the current school year. From now on, every new student you add, every bill you raise, and every attendance record is automatically linked to this session. Only one session can be active at a time.

When you activate next year's session later on, edunile asks you to confirm first, because it also ends the old session:

• The old session is marked Completed and moves into your history.
• Last year's classes that are now empty (because you promoted all their students) are archived, so they stop cluttering your class lists. Nothing inside them is deleted.
• Last year's classes that still have students stay open. edunile lists them by name, with how many students each one still has, so you can promote or move those students and then archive the class yourself.

That's why it pays to run promotions before you activate the new session.

Scroll down to the Terms card. If your school has no terms yet, click Set up First, Second and Third Term. edunile names the three from your current school year and shows you exactly what it is about to create before it saves anything, for example First Term 2026/2027, Second Term 2026/2027, Third Term 2026/2027. If you have no current term yet it also tells you which one it will mark as current; if you already have one, that stays as it is. Click Create 3 terms to confirm. That is all most schools need.

You can run it again later without any harm: terms you already have are listed as Already set up (kept as they are) and only the missing ones are added. Once you have some terms the same button is called Set up standard terms, next to Add another term.

If your school uses different names, or you want to add a fourth, click Add another term, type the name, set its Start date and End date, then click Add Term.

The dates are worth filling in for each term afterwards. They are what edunile counts down from when it shows you how many days are left in the term, and a term without an end date is listed as No end date and shows no countdown at all.

Terms are how edunile knows which weeks of the year to count attendance for, which billing cycle a fee belongs to, and which period a report card covers. Without terms, the report card module has nothing to work with.

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Find the term the school is currently running and click Set Current. Only one term can be current at a time, and choosing a new one switches the old one off for you.

This step is easy to skip and matters more than it looks. Fees, attendance and report cards are all filed against the current term, and until you set one your dashboard says No active term instead of counting down.

Go to Schedule → Calendar. You should see your session shown at the top of the page, and your terms shown along the calendar.

Then open your Dashboard. The bar above the cards should now name your current term and session (for example First Term, 2026/2027 session), with the days left in the term on the right. If it still says No active term, go back and set one. Once it reads correctly you can start adding classes, students, and fees with confidence.