The Maktab App

Features & what’s new

Everything it does. In one place.

36 features, and a working mini version of the app to try every one in: real taps, pretend data, no sign-up. 23 also have a filmed walkthrough.

Or read about one thing properly

All 36 features

  • The first screen a leader sees each morning. Today's attendance as it comes in, money received and money outstanding, level tests that have gone past their due date, and the families waiting to be enrolled. Each figure is a link into the thing it counts, so noticing a problem and acting on it are the same gesture rather than two. It is built for the question a head teacher actually asks — is anything wrong today — rather than as a wall of charts to be admired and then ignored.

  • Adding a family is one flow, not five. You enter the parent once, add each child, put them in classes, set the agreement that governs their fees, and send the invitation — and the parent gets a single login that covers every one of their children. Siblings are linked behind the scenes, so a change of address or phone number is made once. Applications that came in through your public form arrive here too, so accepting a family who applied online is a decision rather than a re-typing exercise.

  • An agreement is the contract behind a child's fees for the year: what is owed, over how many instalments, and when. Multi-child families roll into one balance so a parent gets one number rather than three. Part payments are recorded as they come, so an account is never a binary paid-or-not. Because the agreement is a record rather than a spreadsheet formula, a leader can look at any family at any point in the year and see exactly what was agreed, what has been paid and what is left.

  • Every payment is recorded against the family it came from, whether it arrived as cash at the door, a bank transfer, or a card payment through the app. Each one produces a receipt the parent can see. Nothing is edited quietly: corrections are recorded as corrections, and the audit trail keeps who did it and when. The result is that the question every treasurer dreads — where did this £40 go — has an answer that takes seconds.

  • Teachers clock in and out on their own phones. Those hours become timesheets, the timesheets add themselves into pay weeks, and pay weeks are what payroll runs from. Nobody chases a paper sheet at the end of the month and nobody reconstructs a rota from memory. Where a teacher's hours need adjusting, the adjustment is recorded next to the original rather than replacing it, so the arithmetic can always be explained back to the person being paid.

  • A programme is a course that runs for a defined stretch — a term, a year, a summer intensive. You set the days, the dates and the price on one form, and it can be priced per term, per month, or with a set amount on every term. Parents apply from their own portal, you see the queue, and enrolling is one click that puts the child in the right class with the right agreement. The waiting list is part of the same screen rather than a separate spreadsheet.

  • For things that are not your normal timetable: a summer school, an Eid programme, a fundraising evening. You fill in a form and it builds a public signup page as you go, with its own link to share. Crucially, registrations are kept apart from your student records, so running a community event does not enrol half the town into your Maktab. If somebody who signs up turns out to be a family you want, you move them across deliberately.

  • Families apply online, from a phone, in a few minutes. Each application lands in a queue with everything you need to decide: the child's details, the family, and what they told you. You accept, decline, or leave them waiting — and the family can see where they stand rather than ringing to ask. The reference code a parent gets when they apply stays with the record for its whole life, so a conversation in September about an application from June has something to quote.

  • When the report window opens, half of every report is already filled in. Attendance, sessions attended, current level and recent test results come straight from what teachers recorded during the term, so nobody is transcribing a register into a report. Teachers add the words, which is the part only a teacher can do. Reports print as a set, so a class of thirty is one job rather than thirty.

  • Qaida, Tajwid, Hifdh and Islamic Studies come built in, and you shape the levels inside them to match how your Maktab actually teaches — the names, the order, and what counts as passing. Hifdh is tracked by juz and by page rather than as a single number. Creating a system is a plain one-page form, and there is a bulk option for adding many items at once with the numbering handled for you. A child's history follows them through every level they have sat.

  • One square per student per day, across the whole Maktab. A child who has not been heard for a fortnight shows as a run of gaps rather than disappearing into an average that still looks acceptable. From a square you can open the sitting behind it. This is the view that answers the question a leader cannot otherwise answer honestly — not how is Hifdh going, but which specific children are quietly being missed.

  • Owner, head teacher, office, teacher and parent each see exactly what their job needs. A teacher sees their own classes. Office staff see the families and the money. Parents see their own children and nothing else. Permissions are set per area rather than as one blunt admin switch, so somebody can be trusted with attendance without being trusted with payroll. Changing what someone can see is a deliberate act that is recorded.

  • Every change worth recording is recorded: who did it, what it was before, what it became, and when. It is there for ordinary clarity — the fee that looks wrong, the register that changed after the fact — and it is there if safeguarding ever asks. The trail cannot be edited from inside the app, which is the point of having one.

  • Allergies, medical conditions, additional needs such as an EHCP, and emergency contacts, held once and surfaced where they matter. The allergy warning appears on the teacher's register, not in a folder in the office, because a warning nobody sees is not a warning. Consent for emergency treatment and for paracetamol is recorded explicitly rather than assumed. Who can see this is controlled by the Maktab's own roles.

  • A term's fee letters for every family, or a class's certificates, produced as one print job. They carry your Maktab's name and the family's actual figures rather than being a template somebody fills in by hand. It turns an afternoon of mail-merge into a few minutes.

  • Attendance for every class across the whole year, and — more usefully — who is drifting. A child moving from occasional absence towards habitual absence is visible as a pattern long before it becomes a conversation nobody wants to have. You can look at one class, one child, or the whole Maktab, and the underlying registers are one click away.

  • Where your families actually travel from, plotted from their postcodes. It answers practical questions: whether a second site would help, where a pickup route makes sense, which streets are already well served. Only postcodes are used to place the pins, and the map is available to leaders rather than to staff generally.

  • Email the right set of parents without exporting a spreadsheet first — a class, a year group, everyone with an outstanding balance. The list is built from the live data, so it cannot go stale between building it and sending, which is how the wrong family usually gets the wrong letter.

  • Everything waiting on the office in one queue instead of three places. Absence notices a parent has reported, messages from families, and staff-room threads that tagged an office name all land here, oldest first, with Approve and Decline on the row itself. Reading something never clears it — only acting on it does, which is the difference between a queue and a notification bell that empties when you glance at it. Done keeps what was settled and who settled it.

  • A staff room inside the app. One feed the whole team can see, announcements that reach everyone, and threads for the things that would otherwise be six separate WhatsApp groups. Each person controls which notifications they get. Tagging an office name with @ puts that thread into the office inbox, so a question asked in the staff room does not fall through the gap between 'someone will see it' and nobody does.

  • Two taps per child: present, absent, or late with the minutes. A full class is marked in under a minute, in the phone browser, with nothing to install and no separate teacher app to remember the password for. Last week's register is already saved when you arrive this week. Allergy and medical flags sit on the register itself, so the information is in front of the person who needs it at the moment they need it.

  • Mark the last piece of homework, set the next, and send it home — from one screen. You can attach a Quran passage or a playlist to what you set, and record a voice note so a parent hears the pronunciation rather than guessing at it. There is a whole-class marking grid for getting through thirty children quickly, and a per-child thread for the conversations that need more than a mark.

  • Tap a name, award the merit, carry on teaching. Daily and weekly caps stop a generous evening from devaluing every star awarded since September, so a merit still means something in June. Milestones give a child something to aim at, and leaders are notified as they are reached. The whole thing is designed to be usable while standing in front of a class rather than afterwards at a desk.

  • Pass, merit or distinction, recorded against the level system the child is working through, with the full history kept per pupil. A failed test resets cleanly and the retake is recorded as a retake rather than overwriting what happened. Because the history survives, a conversation about whether a child is ready to move up has evidence behind it instead of an impression.

  • Sabaq, sabaq para and dhor recorded in a single sitting, against a real mushaf on the screen. When a child slips, you tap the word — so the record is the actual word, not a page number and a memory. The portion is tinted on the page, with a flag for a sabaq that stops mid-ayah. Three Quran prints are supported, including 13-line IndoPak, and the reader chooses which one they see, so switching never breaks an existing record.

  • When reports open, attendance, sessions and level are already filled in from what you recorded through the term. What is left is the part that needs a teacher: the words about this particular child. It turns report writing from an evening of copying numbers into an evening of actually writing.

  • Clock in when you arrive and out when you leave, from your own phone. Your hours become your timesheet and your timesheet becomes your pay week, so nobody has to reconstruct a month from memory or chase anybody for a signature.

  • The allergy warning is on your register, next to the child's name, at the moment you take it. Additional needs and conditions the Maktab has recorded are visible for the children in your own classes and no others. It is deliberately not something you have to remember to go and look up.

  • Send back a written note, a photograph of the page, or a recording of your child reading it — from your phone, with nothing to install. The teacher sees it against that homework, marks it, and sets the next from the same place. It means the diary is a conversation rather than a noticeboard, and a parent who cannot get to the Maktab door at pickup is not cut out of it.

  • One screen, one login, every child. Attendance, what was set for homework and whether it has been marked, merits earned, what they read in Hifdh today, and what is owed. Families with several children see them together rather than logging in three times. It is built to answer the question a parent asks in the ten seconds they have — is everything all right — before offering the detail underneath.

  • The teacher's own record of what your child read today: the passage heard, how it went, and exactly what to practise tonight. The Quran map shows what has been memorised and what is being worked on. It replaces the guesswork of asking a tired child what they did and being told 'stuff'.

  • One balance for the whole family, what each item is for, and a receipt for every payment. If several children are enrolled, it is one number rather than three separate demands. Where the Maktab has turned card payments on, you can pay from the same screen.

  • Pick a programme, pick which child, and you are in the queue. Nothing is typed twice — the Maktab already has your details — and you can see where the application stands rather than ringing to ask.

  • A quiet push when the diary is posted, when a place is offered, or when the office replies. You choose which ones you want, per kind, and you can turn the lot off. Nothing is sent for the sake of engagement.

  • Tell the Maktab your child will be away without ringing round: which child, away or arriving late, which day or run of days. Two taps for the usual case. It goes to the office first, and only once they approve does the register show it — a parent never marks a register themselves. The reason you give stays with the office unless the Maktab chooses to show it to teachers.

  • Apply from a phone in a few minutes, with no paper form and no trip to the Maktab to collect one. You get a reference straight away and can watch the application move rather than waiting to hear.