Troubleshooting
The checks worth running first, and where to find the fix for your area.
Most FEMS problems fall into a small number of patterns. This page covers the checks that solve a problem regardless of which module you were in, then points you at the page for your area.
Start with these four checks
Run these before you raise a ticket. They resolve a large share of "it isn't working" reports on their own.
1. Are you looking at the right academic session or date range? Most FEMS screens filter by academic session, month, or date range, and they remember what you last chose. A list that looks empty is very often a list filtered to a period with nothing in it. Reset the filters at the top of the page and look again.
2. Are you looking at the right campus? If your school runs more than one campus, records belong to a campus. Data entered for one campus does not appear while you have another selected.
3. Do you have permission for this screen? If a menu item or a button is missing, that is usually your role, not a fault. FEMS hides what your role cannot use. Ask your Super Admin to check your role and any per-user overrides. See Understanding roles and permissions for how access is worked out, including the parts of FEMS where the hidden button is a display choice rather than a hard block.
4. Did the save actually go through? FEMS confirms a successful save with a short message at the corner of the screen. Some screens also hold your edits until you click a save action, so moving to another page first loses them. If you did not see a confirmation, reload the page and check that the value you expect is there before assuming it saved.
Troubleshooting by area
- Admission. Application, admit-card, scoring, and payment blockers.
- Students. Student records, attendance, face recognition, and sibling verification.
- HR and payroll. Employee records, staff attendance, leave, and payslips that come out wrong or missing.
- Exam. Exam setup, marks, calculations, reports, and publication problems.
- Library. Catalogue, circulation, patron, fine, and report problems.
Admission
The admission pipeline runs in a fixed order, and most errors are a step being attempted before the one it depends on. If you're stuck, check the five-step progress strip on the applicant's page first.
Setting up fees
A fee configuration says it saved, but the row isn't in the list. Trust the list, not the message. The configuration screens report success even when the save failed. Refresh, and if the row is missing, check whether a configuration already exists for that class, session, and campus, and edit that one instead.
I added a second fee configuration for a class that already had one. The two Configuration tabs differ. On Admission Fee a duplicate is rejected. On Admission Form Sell it is not: FEMS overwrites the existing amount with the one you typed and reports success. If you didn't mean to change the fee, filter for that class, session, and campus and check the amount now.
Logging applications
"The selected academic year has no active current session configured. Please configure a current session for this academic year before creating or updating applications." The academic year you picked has no session marked current or upcoming. An admin needs to set one up before you can save the applicant. This is the usual blocker when a new academic year opens.
"Form Serial already exists" That serial number is already used on another application anywhere in your institution. Use the next unused number from your serial book.
"Invalid amount or Payment not configured" Either the class has no Admission Form Sell fee configured for that session and campus, or the amount doesn't match the configured fee exactly. If the amount shows as 0, it's the missing configuration. Partial and over-payments are both rejected.
"Already Paid" The form fee for this applicant was already collected. Open the applicant to see the existing payment.
"Payment(s) not found" when collecting a batch of form fees. Some selected rows are outside the campuses and classes your account can see, so they drop out and report as not found. Ask an admin to widen your data scope, or collect those rows from an account that can see them.
"Amount mismatch: selected payments total X but Y was submitted." The total changed between selecting the rows and confirming. Close the dialog, reselect, and try again.
XLSX export fails but CSV works.
Use CSV instead. Ask your admin to enable the ZIP extension (ext-zip) on the FEMS server.
A bulk outcome update reports that some rows failed. Partial success is normal. The usual reasons are that the applicant is already enrolled, or the class has no admission fee configured. Read the counts rather than assuming everything worked.
I applied the Admitted outcome in bulk and now I can't collect the admission fee. Applying Admitted marks the applicant enrolled without creating the student record, the guardians, or the invoice. Because they now count as enrolled, the payment panel disappears and collecting reports "Applicant already enrolled". Ask an admin: this cannot be undone from the applicant's own page. Use Admitted only to record an outcome, never to enroll someone.
I need to delete an applicant and there's no delete button. There isn't one. Applications are financial records, so FEMS has no applicant delete. Mark the outcome as Failed instead.
Admit cards and scoring
"Payment not collected" when generating an admit card. The admission form fee hasn't been collected yet. Collect it first.
"Admission fee configuration not found." when saving a score. The applicant's class has no Admission Fee configured for their session and campus. The mark and result still save, and only the invoice is missing, so the applicant looks scored but has nothing to pay against. Add the configuration, then score the applicant again to raise the invoice.
An applicant shows Absent even though they sat the test. They have not been scored yet. Attendance is set when you save a score, so score them and the row switches to present.
Question paper uploads for one class keep failing with "Error creating question paper." That class already has a Set-Z for the academic year and cannot take another paper. The message does not say so. Deleting papers does not help, because the next letter comes from the highest set name the class has, not from a count.
"Already Admission Discount Given!" A discount is already recorded and can't be changed from this screen. It arrives as a green success message rather than an error, so check the invoice to see the discount actually recorded. Ask an admin if it needs changing.
"Discount cannot be greater than admission fee" Enter a discount at or below the admission fee.
Collecting the admission fee
"Admission charge fee record is missing or ambiguous. Please complete the admission scoring step before collecting payment." The applicant hasn't been scored eligible, so there's no fee to pay. Score them first. If they have been scored, contact support: the underlying fee record is duplicated or missing.
"Payment amount is 5000" (the figure shown is the amount actually owed) The amount doesn't match what's owed. Use the figure in the Amount field, which is the admission fee minus any discount. There is no partial payment.
"Applicant already enrolled" or "Student already registered." Already converted to a student. Search the student records instead of collecting again.
"Unsupported payment method: Cash. Expected POS or bkash." The admission fee accepts POS and Bkash only. Cash works for the admission form fee, not the admission fee. Picking Online Payment and clicking Collect Admission Payment fails the same way: that option is for sending a payment link, not for recording a payment.
"No guardian mobile number is available to send the SMS. Set a valid mobile number on at least one guardian." No guardian on the application has a mobile number. Edit the applicant, add one, then resend.
The payment failed and I don't know whether the student was created. Search the student records for the applicant before retrying. A failed payment rolls back, but checking first avoids a duplicate.
Students
Finding students
A student you know exists is not in the Student List. Almost always a filter. FEMS remembers your session, campus, and class as you move between screens, so the list may be scoped tighter than you expect. Press Reset, then pick the Session again, because Reset empties the filter panel without reloading the list.
The student list did not change after you pressed Reset. Expected. Reset clears the filter boxes but leaves the previous results on screen. Pick a Session to reload.
You only have the student's old identifier from their previous school. Search by it. The Student List search box accepts name, Student ID, and Old ID.
A newly admitted student is not in the list. Check the filters first. If they are genuinely missing, the admission may have failed while reporting success. Re-check before admitting them a second time, so you do not create a duplicate. See Admitting a student and managing their record.
Admitting and editing students
The academic year, class, or section dropdowns are empty on the admission form. Your institution has no current academic year set, or that class has no sections. An admin has to configure the academic structure before anyone can be admitted.
"The selected branch, class, section, and shift are not configured together." That combination does not exist in your academic setup. The individual values may all be real, but they do not belong together. Check the section and shift really belong to that class on that campus.
"You can't update previous session." You are trying to change a student's placement for an academic year that has ended. Only the current year can be edited.
"You can not delete Mother." The mother's guardian record is protected and cannot be removed. Other guardians can.
"This attendance device UID is already assigned to another person." That card or device ID is already bound to another student or an employee. Clear the old assignment first.
A student's photo is rejected. Photos have to be under 2 MB. Resize and try again.
A document upload said it worked but the file is not there. Document uploads can report success on a failure. Re-open the Document tab and confirm the file is listed. Upload it again if it is missing, and raise a ticket if it keeps happening.
Two students have the same roll number. The roll number list is a suggestion of free numbers, not a rule, so duplicates are possible. Correct one of them from the student's Academic tab.
You cannot re-save an admission. Once a fee invoice exists for that student and academic year, the admission form is locked. Edit the individual sections from the student's record instead.
Exam marks disappeared after you moved a student to another class. Expected. Marks recorded against the old class and section are switched off when a student moves, along with subject choices that do not exist in the new class. Check the student's results and fees after any mid-year move.
You need to remove a student who has left. There is no delete. Set them to Deactive on their record, with a comment. Deleting would break their fee, attendance, and exam history.
Attendance
A whole class shows absent for a day. Nobody saved that register. FEMS has no "not recorded" state, so an unmarked day counts as absent for every student. Load the date and mark it properly.
A student's attendance percentage looks too low. Same cause from the student's side. Check the Month view for their class and look for whole columns of A, which are unmarked days rather than real absences.
"You are not assigned to this class and section." You are marking a class you do not teach. Ask an admin, or get the class assignment corrected.
A teacher sees a time restriction message but an admin can save. A school-hours rule runs from the class's scheduled start time until 5 pm and does not apply to admins. The Attendance Entry page does not enforce it, so a teacher hitting this is marking attendance from somewhere else.
"Class time table not found in class routine." The class has no scheduled period, so FEMS cannot work out when its attendance window opens. It needs adding to the timetable. Same source as the time restriction above.
The register loads empty with "No Attendance Found". No students are placed in that class and section for the selected academic year. Check the section, and check the student placements.
You cannot record that a student was late, or on approved leave. Student attendance holds present or absent only. There is no Late, Leave, or Half-day. An approved leave application does not change the register.
Parents were not told their child was absent. There is no working absence alert in FEMS today. Nothing sends one and there is no setting to switch it on. Send absence messages through the SMS module.
Face recognition
A student was recognized on camera but shows absent on the register. Working as intended, and the most common misunderstanding about this feature. A recognition is a log entry, not a mark on the class register. Somebody still marks the register. See Face recognition attendance.
"Could not access the selected camera" The browser could not open the camera. Check camera permission, that no other application is using it, and that you are on a secure connection.
"Recognition failed. Check the camera and face-service connection." The recognition service did not answer. This is an installation problem rather than anything about the student.
An enrolled student is never recognized. Re-enroll them with better lighting and more varied angles, following the on-screen guidelines. Enrollment quality decides recognition quality.
One student appears in the log more than once in a few minutes. The same student and the same status is recorded once every five minutes. A student on the confidence boundary can still produce a Matched row and a Low confidence row close together, because those count as different statuses. Re-enroll them.
"Face attendance exports are limited to 31 days." Export in chunks of a month or less.
Siblings and concessions
A sibling claim was accepted for two students with no guardian in common. Expected. FEMS does not test for a shared guardian when a claim is raised, which is why the verification queue exists. Check both students' Parents tabs before approving.
The same sibling pair was claimed twice and no error appeared. Expected. A repeat claim succeeds quietly without creating a second one.
A sibling link was approved but the fee did not change. Sibling concessions only apply if your school runs them and they are configured for the current academic year. Check the student's Accounts tab, and check with whoever owns your chart of accounts.
A sibling pair was approved wrongly. Raise a removal, which comes back through the same verification queue, then check the family's concession afterwards.
When to raise a ticket instead
Raise a support ticket when the problem involves money, grades, or personal records and you cannot explain the difference, or when you see data from another school. Do not keep retrying the action. See Getting help when you're stuck for how to raise a ticket and what to include.
Anything that looks like one school seeing another school's data should be reported straight away rather than worked around.