Five steps.
None of them spreadsheets.
From your first student to your first state disbursement, in a flow that does not assume you have a CFO.
- 01
Create your school and pick your state
Sign up, name your school, and choose the state you operate in. That is the only setup you do by hand. CohortLedger immediately loads your state's ESA program, its payment platform, the vendor-registration steps, and the compliance checklist with real due dates.
ESA programs configured today: Texas TEFA (Odyssey, $10,474), Arizona ESA, Florida FES-EO, Utah Fits All, Louisiana GATOR, plus Iowa, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, and tracking for Wyoming, Indiana, and Tennessee EFS. Tell us your state and we confirm where it sits.
- 02
Add a family, then enroll the student
Add the family (parent contact, email, phone). Then enroll each student and pick the ESA program they are on, with their annual award and tuition. The moment a student is enrolled, that family's quarterly invoice is created for you, no batch to run, no spreadsheet. If you already have a roster, you enter it once, by hand: a school of thirty is about an hour, and after that enrolment is one family at a time.
Adding a family also opens a dated message thread for them automatically. Adding a student builds the current quarter's invoice: the ESA portion is the quarter's share of the award, capped at what the family actually owes, and anything the award does not cover becomes the out-of-pocket line. In Texas that cap matters, because a $10,474 TEFA award is larger than a quarter of most tuitions. Add a sibling and the same invoice updates in place.
- 03
Track the ESA money as it lands
Open Billing and you see every family's invoice with its status: pending, partial, or received. When the state platform disburses, click Mark ESA received. The figure turns green, your dashboard totals update, and a matching bank deposit is recorded so your reconciliation stays clean.
Each invoice carries the ESA portion, the out-of-pocket portion, received and expected dates, the quarter, and the platform. The Reconcile screen auto-matches deposits to invoices and flags any short payment (an Odyssey fee, a partial release) so you can chase it.
- 04
Stay ahead of every state deadline
Compliance shows a per-state checklist with live countdowns. Enrollment confirmations, vendor renewals, background-check expirations, each one surfaced before it is due. Tick an item off and the next quarter's instance is created automatically.
Items under 14 days flag amber, overdue items flag red. If an overdue task is tied to an ESA program, Billing warns you that the state may hold the next disbursement until you clear it. Money and compliance are linked: an overdue task can hold your next disbursement.
- 05
Hand the quarter to a state reviewer in one click
At quarter end, open the Audit packet. It is a dated, state-reviewer-ready summary: every student, their ESA and out-of-pocket figures, attendance counts, and the full compliance log. Print it or download the CSV and you are done.
A row reads like this: Mateo Garcia, Garcia family, Grade K, TX Education Freedom Account on Odyssey, ESA $2,400.00 received Oct 16, out of pocket $0.00 paid, 8 present of 8 school days. Under it sit the quarter totals and the compliance log, with the date the packet was generated. It is built from the records you already entered, so there is no re-keying and no end-of-quarter scramble. This is the piece most tools skip.