Hostel software is bought on room allocation. It is judged, eventually, on whether you can answer one question: who was sleeping in which room on a particular night three months ago?
That question arrives after an incident, an insurance claim or an inspection, and most systems answer it badly because they store the present rather than the history.
Competitor columns below come from each vendor's own published pages. The ScolaOS column was checked against source code, including a gap that matters more in this category than in any other. A blank against a competitor means their site did not state it on the date checked, not that they lack it.
Competitor pages verified 20 July 2026. ScolaOS column verified against source on the same date.
The comparison
| Capability | Fedena | Entab | Campus 365 | Vidyalaya | Classe365 | ScolaOS (code) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Room management and allocation | STATED | STATED | Partial | STATED | Partial | Yes, blocks and rooms with dated allocations |
| Per-bed occupancy | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | No. A bed count and a free-text label, not a bed map |
| Transfers between rooms | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | Yes, as a dated event |
| Occupancy history for a past date | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | NPS | Yes, reconstructable from dated allocations |
| Hostel fees reach the fee record | STATED | STATED | NPS | Partial | NPS | Yes, auto-appended to the next invoice |
| Hostel attendance or roll call | NPS | Partial, attendance but not roll call | NPS | STATED, via biometric or RFID | NPS | No. Zero implementation |
| Visitor and gate logging | STATED | STATED | NPS | STATED | NPS | No |
A fairness note. Depth of publication varies sharply. Campus 365's support documentation was unreachable, so its blanks are the least reliable. Classe365's hostel material appears on marketing and blog pages rather than in its help centre, so treat it as marketing-level rather than documented. Several rows are blank across the board because vendors rarely publish this level of detail, not because nobody does it.
The question a boarding school gets asked
Nightly roll call is not a feature in a boarding context. It is duty of care, and in many jurisdictions it is the record an inspector asks for first.
ScolaOS does not have it. There is no hostel attendance and no roll call in the product, at all. Occupancy is reconstructable from the allocation record, which tells you who was assigned to a room, but assignment is not presence. If a student was allocated to room 14 and spent the night elsewhere, the system does not know.
Of the five compared, only Vidyalaya clearly states roll call, delivered through biometric or RFID capture. Entab states hostel attendance without describing it as roll call. The others do not state it.
If you run a boarding house, treat this row as decisive rather than as one line in a table, and ask each vendor to demonstrate an actual evening roll call rather than describe one.
Allocation, and the part that is usually thin
Most products handle "assign student to room" adequately. Three things separate them afterwards.
Is the allocation dated? A current-state record tells you where a student is now and quietly forgets where they were. In ScolaOS allocations carry dates and vacating a room is an explicit action rather than an overwrite, which is what makes historic occupancy answerable. No competitor states this either way, so ask them directly: show me who was in room 14 on 3 February.
Are transfers events or edits? A mid-term room change should be a recorded event with a date, not a field being changed. If it is an edit, the previous arrangement disappears and the history question above becomes unanswerable.
How granular is a room? ScolaOS holds a bed count and a free-text bed label, which is not a per-bed occupancy map. If you need to know that a specific student is in a specific bed, rather than in a room of six, that is a level of detail we do not model. No vendor in this table states per-bed allocation either, so it may be a category-wide gap, but verify it if it matters.
Money, which is where hostels leak
Hostel charges are often the least controlled money in a school, because the hostel keeps its own register and the fee office reconciles it monthly.
In ScolaOS, hostel charges become a pending student expense and append automatically to the next fee invoice. The same mechanism carries transport charges, library fines and canteen charges. That is the architectural point worth stating: hostel, transport, library and canteen charges all land on one student fee record rather than in four separate books.
Fedena and Entab state that hostel fees reach the fee module. Vidyalaya states it partially. Campus 365 and Classe365 do not state it.
Ask any vendor to show you a hostel charge appearing on an invoice, and then ask what happens when a student vacates mid-month.
What ScolaOS does and does not do
Does. Hostel blocks and rooms. Dated allocations with explicit vacating, so occupancy for any past date can be reconstructed. Transfers as recorded events. Hostel charges reaching the student's fee record automatically. Over 120 permission codes and per-module audit logs governing who may change an allocation.
Does not. Hostel attendance or roll call. Per-bed occupancy mapping. Visitor and gate logging. Mess or dining management as a distinct capability; there is canteen stock and procurement, which manages raw materials and suppliers rather than student meal attendance. Any AI in hostel operations.
For a boarding school, the first of those is the one to weigh, and we would rather you weighed it now.
Frequently asked questions
What should hostel management software do?
Four things: model blocks, rooms and occupancy; record allocations and transfers with dates so history survives; get hostel charges onto the student's fee record without a monthly reconciliation; and support whatever attendance or roll call your duty of care requires. Most products do the first and third. The second and fourth separate them.
Does ScolaOS have hostel roll call?
No. There is no hostel attendance or roll call in the product. Occupancy can be reconstructed from dated allocation records, but an allocation shows who was assigned to a room, not who was present. Vidyalaya states roll call through biometric or RFID capture; Entab states hostel attendance without calling it roll call.
Can we see who occupied a room on a past date?
In ScolaOS, yes, because allocations are dated and vacating is an explicit action rather than an overwrite. None of the five vendors states this capability either way, so ask each of them the same question with a specific date and a specific room.
Do hostel fees connect to the main fee system?
In ScolaOS they do, appending automatically to the next invoice through the same mechanism as transport, library and canteen charges. Fedena and Entab state the connection; Vidyalaya states it partially. Where the hostel keeps a separate register, expect a monthly reconciliation to become somebody's permanent job.
Does ScolaOS track individual beds?
No. It holds a bed count and a free-text bed label rather than a per-bed occupancy map, so it can tell you a student is in a room but not which bed. No vendor in this comparison states per-bed allocation either, so verify it directly if you need that level.
What about visitor logging at the hostel gate?
ScolaOS has no visitor or gate management at all. Fedena, Entab and Vidyalaya state it; Campus 365 and Classe365 do not. For a boarding house, gate logging often sits alongside roll call as part of the same duty-of-care requirement, so consider them together.
Is a general school platform enough for a boarding school?
It depends almost entirely on the roll call question. If your obligations require a nightly presence record, choose on that first and treat everything else as secondary. If your hostel need is allocation and billing, a connected platform removes more work than a specialist tool sitting beside your fee system.
In summary
Hostel software is easy to evaluate badly, because allocation demos well and history does not.
Ask two questions of everyone, including us: show me who was in this room on a date last term, and show me tonight's roll call. Our answers are yes to the first and no to the second, and for a boarding school the second may be the one that decides it.
ScolaOS is a product of Terra System Labs Pvt Ltd, which is ISO 9001:2015 compliant and ISO 27001:2022 compliant.
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