Black Mountain School Accounting vs KEV School Finance Platform

Black Mountain School Accounting is a web-based school finance solution within Black Mountain Software’s government accounting and ERP offerings. School tools cover payroll and teacher benefits, annual reporting, student accounts, and reconciliation with a County Treasurer’s office. Fund Accounting handles accounting, budgeting, and procurement, including general ledger, accounts receivable, and cash receipting. Student Accounts manages activity funds and supports accounts payable, receipt printing, purchase orders, and purchase processing. The school tools were originally designed for Montana and Alaska; schools elsewhere can discuss their needs with the company. Deployment uses BMS Cloud, which the company says is available anywhere with an internet connection and includes nightly backups and disaster recovery. Hosted applications are described as SOC 2 Type 1 certified, with encrypted connections, verified access, monitoring, and scheduled backups. Implementations receive a dedicated team, configured plan, and timeline, with data conversion from text, Excel, CSV, and Word files. Training is included at no extra cost, and support is unlimited by phone, email, and online. Pricing is customized by population and applications needed; no price is listed.

KEV School Finance Platform brings school payments, accounting, and reporting together through SchoolCash for K–12 districts. Schools can manage fees, fines, and fundraising across locations, while finance teams use standardized charts of accounts, district-managed vendor lists, disbursement controls, purchase order tracking, and guided reconciliation. The platform handles cash, checks, cards, and digital payments, tying transactions to students and general ledger codes. Collections, handoffs, deposit preparation, and reconciliation are time-stamped. SIS connections sync enrollment and roster information for fee assignment and balance updates; listed ERP integrations include PowerSchool, Munis, Oracle, Skyward, and Sparkrock. KEV says it provides more than 50 prebuilt reports, including tools for state reporting such as GASB and 1099s. Parents can manage fees for multiple students, receive reminders, and complete payments, signatures, and forms in one checkout. The service is cloud-deployed and web-based. KEV lists PCI DSS Level 1 certification, SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, FERPA and COPPA compliance, and FINTRAC registration. Implementation includes configuration, workflow and permission setup, integration, and role-based training. Pricing is available on request; prospective customers can request a personalized demo.