For Donors and Trustees Abroad: What Reporting a Madrasa Can Actually Show You
If you support a madrasa in Bangladesh from abroad, the reporting you can reasonably ask for is: a numbered receipt for every amount, a statement of which fund it entered, the heads it was spent on, how many students benefited, and the closing balance. A madrasa running Sabaq can produce all of that from its own records. Ask for the format before you send money, not after.
| What it is | What a madrasa in Bangladesh can realistically report to a donor or trustee overseas, and what to ask for. |
|---|---|
| Who it is for | Individual donors, sponsors, mosque committees and small charities funding a madrasa from abroad, and the madrasas that report to them. |
| Languages | The interface runs in Bangla, English and Arabic. Support is given in Bangla. |
| Where it runs | Runs in a web browser on any device. The companion app is Android only, through the Play Store. |
| Price | 500 BDT per month, 5,000 BDT per year or 20,000 BDT one time, per madrasa. Installation is 2,000 BDT under 200 students and 5,000 BDT above that. |
| In use by | 658 institutions in 62 districts of Bangladesh. |
Prices and figures on this page were checked on 10 September 2026.
Why is reporting so often thin?
Rarely because anyone is hiding something. The usual reason is that the institution’s records cannot produce a donor statement without someone spending two days assembling one by hand. When the request arrives at the busiest time of year, what comes back is a short message and a photograph, and the donor is left uneasy about something that was only ever a bookkeeping problem.
The fix is unglamorous. If money is recorded against a named fund at the moment it arrives, the statement is a report rather than a research project.
What should you ask for, and what is unreasonable?
Asking for the right things gets you a better answer than asking for everything.
| Reasonable to ask | Not reasonable, or unwise |
|---|---|
| A numbered receipt for each amount received | Bank statements for the whole institution |
| Which fund the money entered | Naming which individual child your money fed |
| Heads of expenditure, such as food, books, medical care | Every underlying invoice, unprompted |
| How many students benefited | Photographs of identifiable children for publicity |
| The closing balance of the fund | Real time access to the institution’s system |
| A statement once or twice a year | Monthly audited accounts from a small madrasa |
The second column is worth taking seriously. A madrasa that refuses to send photographs of orphan children, or declines to attach a specific child to a specific donation, is usually protecting the child’s dignity rather than being evasive. Good institutions treat that as a duty, and a donor asking for less on that front will get more of everything else.
What does a good one page statement contain?
Five lines answer nearly every question a donor has.
- Date received and receipt number for each amount
- The fund it entered, named plainly, such as the lillah fund or a construction fund
- Heads of expenditure, broken out rather than given as one total
- Number of students who benefited, as a count
- Closing balance, so unspent money is visible rather than assumed
If a statement shows an unspent balance, that is a sign of good records, not of idleness. Money arriving in Ramadan is often spent across the following months, and a report that pretends otherwise is the one to worry about.
How does a madrasa keep your money separate?
By fund, from the moment it arrives. Most madrasas in Bangladesh keep a general fund for ordinary income and running costs, and a lillah fund for the food and accommodation of poor and orphan students. Zakat, sadaqah and similar giving normally enter the lillah fund.
What makes the separation real is the receipt book rather than the ledger: a separate receipt series per fund, with the fund name printed on the receipt, so the destination is fixed at the counter and not decided afterwards. The method is set out on the lillah and general fund page. Whether a particular kind of giving may be spent on a particular cost is a question for the institution’s own scholar, not for the software.
What can a madrasa on Sabaq produce?
Everything in the list above, from records it already keeps rather than from a special exercise.
- A numbered receipt at the moment money is taken, including for donations and chanda
- Each fund with its own opening balance, running balance and closing balance
- Income and expenditure by head, for any chosen period
- A general ledger, day book and cash book behind those totals
- A trial balance and balance sheet if a trustee wants to see that the books agree
- Student counts by class and department, so a beneficiary count is a real figure
The accounting detail behind that is on the madrasa accounting page.
How should you send money, and what should you insist on?
Two habits protect both sides. Send to an account in the institution’s name rather than to an individual, and ask for the receipt to be issued in the name you want it recorded under, stating the fund, at the time you send it. Telling a madrasa afterwards what a donation was for creates exactly the ambiguity that makes later reporting weak.
If the madrasa collects fees online, a guardian or donor abroad can also pay through the institution’s own gateway account, and that payment produces the same numbered receipt as one taken at the counter. What that requires is on the online fee collection page.
What should a trustee check once a year?
Four things, and none of them require an accountant.
- Receipt numbers run in sequence with none missing, and cancelled receipts are still in the book
- Large collections reached the bank rather than staying as cash
- Every significant payment has a voucher with a signature against it
- Big decisions were minuted before the money moved, not after
If those four hold, the arithmetic almost always holds too. No software makes an institution audit ready by itself, and any vendor who claims otherwise should be treated with caution.
What if the madrasa you support has no system at all?
Then the most useful thing a donor can do is fund the discipline rather than only the meals. A separate receipt book per fund costs very little and fixes the largest single weakness. Software follows once several people are collecting money, arrears carry from month to month, or more than one fund is in use.
Some donors and trustees pay for an institution’s licence directly. If that is something you are considering, the price is published rather than quoted privately: 500 BDT per month, 5,000 BDT per year or 20,000 BDT one time per madrasa, with a one off installation fee. It is on the pricing page.
Supporting a madrasa and want better reporting?
We can show you, in a demo, exactly what a madrasa running Sabaq can put in front of a donor.