Quick start

Setting up a madrasa on Sijil is mostly deciding things rather than typing them — what your classes are called, when they meet, and who marks their registers. The typing itself takes an afternoon.

This page is the order to do it in, and it is also the order Sijil insists on: a class cannot be created before an academic year has been started, and a register cannot be marked before a class has its timings. Following it means never being sent back a step.

Before you begin

None of this takes long to find, but stopping halfway through the application form to look something up is a nuisance.

• A Google account. The Mohtamim signs in with Google and with nothing else — there is no admin password anywhere in Sijil. Use the account you intend to still have next year.
• A phone number that reaches you. A person reads your application, and that is the number they use.
• Your madrasa's name, city and address in Urdu. The English versions are optional. The Urdu is what appears on screens, on fee receipts and on your public page.
• Six digits for the Admin PIN. Not a birth year, not 123456. This PIN opens the management side of the dashboard.
• Your class list, with timings. The names of your classes and the hours each one actually meets. You can add more later.

The setup order

1. Step 1

   Apply

   Open sijil.pk/register and sign in with Google. That account becomes the madrasa's admin account.

   Then confirm your phone number — you type it twice on purpose — and fill in the three parts of the form: the institution, yourself as administrator, and security.

   Two answers there are worth a minute's thought:

   • The subdomain. A short form of your madrasa's name in Latin letters. It becomes your madrasa's own address on Sijil.
   • The Admin PIN. Six digits, asked for whenever you open the management side. You can change it later in Settings, but nobody at Sijil can read it back to you if you forget it.

   Urdu fields are required and their English counterparts are not. Leaving the English empty is fine — Sijil shows the Urdu everywhere instead.

2. Step 2

   Wait for the review

   Applications are read by a person rather than approved by a script, usually within a day. The decision arrives by email either way.

   An approval email carries two things you need: your madrasa's own address on Sijil, and a 5-digit Madrasa Code. Keep the code — every Ustaz needs it to sign in. It is an address rather than a secret: it identifies your madrasa and authorises nothing on its own.

3. Step 3

   Sign in

   Sign in at login.sijil.pk with the same Google account you applied with. Sijil matches the Google account itself and not merely the email address on it, so a different account will not reach your madrasa even if the address looks identical.

   The management side then asks for your six-digit Admin PIN. That is the second gate, and it is asked again later on the actions that deserve it.

4. Step 4

   Start the academic year

   Nothing else works until this is done. The academic year is the frame the registers and the fee ledger hang inside, and the classes screen says so if you skip it: Hazri shuru karne ke liye pehle taleemi saal shuru karein.

   Go to Settings → Taleemi saal and start one. Name it the way your madrasa names it; 2025-2026 is the usual form.

5. Step 5

   Create a class, with its timings

   A class is a group of students. A timing is when that group meets, on which days, and which Ustaz is responsible for it. They are two separate things, and attendance is taken against the timing.

   So a Hifz class that meets at Fajr and again after Asr is one class with two timings, and its register is marked twice a day. Set the class's monthly fee here as well, if it has one.

6. Step 6

   Add students

   Add a few by hand from Students → New student to see the shape of a record: name, father's name, roll number, class, guardian's phone. A photograph is optional and can be added later.

   Fees are not set per student at this stage. The class's monthly fee applies to everyone in it, and individual concessions come afterwards on the student's own Fees tab.

7. Step 7

   Add your asatiza

   Each Ustaz gets a record under Teachers, and up to two credentials:

   • a 4-digit Hazri PIN, typed to clear a class register — the one that says these marks are mine;
   • a phone number and a 6-digit Login PIN, if that Ustaz will sign in on their own phone.

   An Ustaz who teaches while somebody else records the attendance needs neither.

8. Step 8

   Approve the first device

   The first time an Ustaz signs in on their phone, that phone is not trusted yet: it waits in Settings → Devices for your approval, and no register can be marked from it until you give one.

   That is deliberate. A Login PIN read off a piece of paper should not be enough to start marking attendance for a madrasa. Approve the phones you recognise, reject the ones you do not — Teacher devices has the detail.

You are set up

The madrasa now exists, the register can be marked, and the fee ledger has something to bill against. Everything after this is either optional or a monthly rhythm:

• Parents get access when you issue an invite code from a student's Parents tab — see Using the parent portal.
• Fees begin billing when you start a fee session for the students who pay monthly — see Fees and receipts.
• Your public page stays off until you fill it in and switch it on under Settings → Public website. Its address is your own subdomain — yourmadrasa.sijil.pk — the same address as your dashboard, minus the /dashboard on the end.
• The calendar and the weekly off decide which days a register is expected at all.

Screenshot to followThe admin dashboard on the first day, before any students have been added.