This is for a parent with a child at a school on Clarvyn. It describes what the app does today, and no more.
What the Fees tab shows
Open your child in the parent app and choose the Fees tab. Each invoice is a card. The balance leads, because that is the number you opened the tab for; the total and what has been paid sit underneath it. Settled invoices stay on the list, so last term's record is still there when you need to prove it was paid.
Under an invoice, every payment the school has recorded against it is its own line: how it was paid (cash, MoMo or bank), the date, and the reference when there is one. A total cannot be checked against anything. A dated line with a reference can be matched against your own MoMo confirmation or bank slip, which is the whole reason the payments are listed one by one.
Paying in the app
An invoice with something left to pay has a button: Pay, followed by the outstanding amount. Press it and the app opens the school's payment page in your browser. That page belongs to the payment provider, not to the school and not to Clarvyn. You pay there, and come back to the app.
The app then asks the server whether the money arrived. It does not take your word for it and it does not take the browser's word for it; the server asks the provider. While that is pending the invoice stays as it was. Once it settles, the invoice updates and a payment line appears with the provider's reference.
Underneath the button is Pay a different amount. Most families settle a term in instalments, so you can pay part of the balance. The app will not let you pay more than is outstanding.
Not every school can take payments in the app. A school has to connect an account first. If yours has not, the button tells you plainly: this school cannot take payments in the app yet, please pay at the school office. That message means the school is not set up, not that something went wrong.
Paying the school directly
Many schools publish the accounts they take money into, and most Ghanaian schools are paid by mobile money. When a school has published them, they appear under the invoices as PAY THE SCHOOL DIRECTLY: one card per account, with the school's own label for it (such as "School fees" or "Feeding account"), the bank or mobile money provider, and the number. Tap the number to copy it into your banking or mobile money app.
Look at the name on the card before you send. Where the provider can confirm the account holder's name, the card shows it with a tick. Where it cannot, and for most mobile money accounts it cannot, the card says so and asks you to confirm that the recipient name your own wallet shows you is your school. On mobile money the name is the only thing that separates a school from somebody who published a similar number.
A payment made this way is recorded by the school office, not by the app. The office enters it and keeps your slip or confirmation as the proof, and it then appears on the invoice like any other payment. Until the office records it, the invoice still shows the money as owed. That is not the app losing your payment; it is the app waiting for the school to say it arrived.
The receipt
When a payment settles, whether you paid in the app or the office recorded it, Clarvyn sends a receipt. It goes by text message to the child's primary guardian and to the parent who paid, and by email where the school holds an email address. The text carries the essentials; the email is the document to keep. Each receipt carries a number you can quote back to the school, and the school can send it again if you lose it.
What the app does not do
It does not let you upload a slip yourself. Proof of a bank or mobile money payment is something the office attaches when it records the payment. It does not show you a school's fee structure or negotiate anything; it shows what your school has invoiced you. And it does not hold your card or wallet details. The provider's page does that, and you leave the app to use it.