Terms of service

Last updated 22 September 2026

These are the terms on which ZARODA Solutions provides the Zaroda School Management System. Using it means accepting them.

1. What Zaroda SMS is

Software for running a Kenyan school under the competency-based curriculum: registration, streams and timetabling, attendance, assessment and report cards, Grade 10 pathway selection, fees and payroll, communication with parents, and the professional records a teacher must keep.

It is a tool, not a substitute for your own judgement or your own duties. It does not certify a report card, does not file anything with KNEC, the Ministry, the TSC or the Kenya Revenue Authority on your behalf, and does not relieve the school of any statutory obligation. What it produces is derived from what you enter: entered wrongly, it will be wrong, and responsibility for what is entered and for what is submitted to anybody remains the school’s.

Statutory payroll rates (PAYE, NSSF, SHA, the Housing Levy) are set to the guidance current when the software was built. They change by government notice. Check them against the latest official rates before relying on a payslip for compliance.

2. A school’s records belong to the school

Everything a school enters — learners, marks, attendance, fees, staff records — is the school’s property, not ours. We hold it on the school’s instruction as its data processor. We do not sell it, mine it, advertise against it, or use it to train any model. See the privacy policy for what this means in practice.

You can export your data at any time while the account is live. If you leave, ask and we will provide it.

3. Accounts and access

Keep your password to yourself and do not let others use your login. This system holds children’s personal data, and a shared login makes the access log meaningless — which is the record the school relies on if it is ever asked who saw what.

A school is responsible for the staff accounts it creates and for the role it gives each one. When somebody leaves, deactivate them.

Tell us promptly if you believe an account has been misused.

4. Subscriptions and payment

Zaroda SMS is free for the whole of 2026, with every module unlocked. Nothing is payable until 15 January 2027. Module access is not restricted during this period — it begins to follow your plan once you subscribe, which is what the next two paragraphs describe.

Essential is the base subscription and is charged per stream, per year:

• Primary and Junior School (Grade 1–9) — KES 2,400 per stream, per year
• Senior School (Grade 10–12) — KES 3,360 per stream, per year

It covers fee structures, invoicing and M-Pesa collection; academic marks, report cards and mark lists; school-wide analytics; and the Communication, Library, Sports and Discipline modules.

Pro is an addition to Essential, not a replacement for it. It costs a flat KES 4,500 per school, per year on top of the per-stream Essential fee, and unlocks three further modules:

• Payroll — PAYE, NSSF, SHA, Housing Levy and payslips
• HR — staff records, appraisals and recruitment
• Student Transport — routes, vehicles and transport fee billing

A school on Essential keeps everything listed above it; only those three modules are closed. Nothing entered in them during the free period is deleted — it becomes reachable again if you later add Pro.

Payment is by M-Pesa. Prices may change, but not during a period you have already paid for, and we will give notice before a change takes effect.

Professional Records generation is billed separately from a teacher’s own wallet, per item generated, at the price shown before each generation.

5. If a subscription lapses

Your records are not deleted because a subscription has lapsed. A school’s books and a learner’s academic history are records it may need years later, and destroying them over a missed payment would do real harm. Access may be restricted until the subscription is settled; the data stays, and stays exportable on request.

6. Acceptable use

Do not:

• enter personal data about anybody the school has no lawful reason to hold
• use another person’s login, or share your own
• attempt to reach another school’s data, or to defeat the role restrictions
• use the communication tools to send anything unlawful, or to send marketing to parents
• copy, resell or sublicense the software itself

7. Availability

We work to keep the service running and to keep your data safe, but we do not promise it will be available without interruption. Maintenance, a supplier’s outage or a fault can take it offline. Where we plan an interruption we will give notice.

Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. The export exists for that reason.

8. Liability

We provide the software as it is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from decisions taken on figures the software produced, from data entered incorrectly, from a lapse in your own record-keeping, or from an interruption to the service. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Where we are at fault, our liability is limited to the subscription fees the school paid in the twelve months before the claim.

9. Ending the arrangement

A school may stop using Zaroda at any time. We may suspend or end an account that breaches these terms, that is used to reach data it has no right to, or that puts other schools’ data at risk — and where we do, we will say why and give you your data.

10. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms we will change the date at the top and tell schools by email where the change matters. Continuing to use the system after that means accepting the change.

11. Law

These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, and the courts of Kenya have jurisdiction.

Contact

ZARODA Solutions
support@zarodasolutions.app
+254 781 230 805