I understand that student should not ideally be considered as a customer. But there are reasons why student mapping to customer is required as part of ERPNext Education Module.
The education institutes have changed over time and their functions are no more limited to only education through classes. The institutes have decided to go for providing customized education material like stationary, text books etc. They are also providing other materials like uniforms & accessories(belt, tie etc).
As such, they will need functions to manage such supplies and bill students. In the present ERPNext implementation, it is not possible to bill students for these inventories and keep the stock updated in real time. The fee management functions allow only non-stock items to be billed via fee category & fee structure.
I strongly feel we will need something like in healthcare module, where a patient is mapped to a customer. The fee category should be composed of something like healthcare service unit type which is mapped to item.
I do this by adding before_insert() to the apply form to also create customer when the form saved.
Then we can invoice the customer (with the same name as the studentâŚor the parents) for any purchase.
I know we can create a customer for every student via customization. But I am talking of changing it in the core. A design change which will integrate stock items with non-stock items in a single invoice/fee receipt.
Yes, better if in the core. And not only for Students.
I think any âpersonâ should be able to be treated as Customer and/or Supplier as well (student, member, farmer, patient, etc). So maybe a checkbox in the doctype (is Customer / is Supplier) will duplicate/link (with validation) that person to Customer/Supplier doctype too.
Better yet, consolidate all person in one doctype (âAccountâ or use existing âContactâ) with an option to select an account as customer/supplier.
Then the Student (or similar âpersonâ doctype) can get/post the person from/to this Account doctype.
Yes, good for any service-based organization (including non-profit).
But canât it be done now (as long as the non-stock is an Item) ?
Yes it can be done. I mentioned it in the context of Student Fee where fee category is not an item at all. If fee category is mapped to an item then we can have both stock & non-stock item.
OK. I once interested in Edu domain because there was a prospect asking about system for school. And I saw (version 10) that the Eduâs doctypes are quite detached from existing ERPNext doctypes. Maybe this is causing the issue.