If your school runs the IB programme, chances are you already use ManageBac. It is, genuinely, one of the best tools out there for curriculum planning, unit management, and IB coordination. Most IB schools would not want to give it up, and honestly, they should not have to.
But here is the thing we kept hearing from schools: ManageBac is excellent at the teaching and curriculum side, but it was never designed to run the rest of the school. Fees, admissions, transport, HR, and parent requests still live in spreadsheets, or in a second system, or sometimes just in someone's inbox.
That is where ToGather LMS fits in. Not as a replacement for ManageBac, but as the other half of the picture.
What ManageBac does really well
We want to be upfront about this. ManageBac is a strong product for what it was built to do. It handles IB Diploma, MYP, PYP, and career-related programmes with depth that very few platforms can match. Unit planners, ATL skills tracking, learner profiles, CAS management, and internal assessments. It covers the IB framework properly, not as an afterthought.
Teachers who use it generally do not want to switch, and that makes sense. It fits their workflow. It talks to IBIS for exam registration and e-coursework. The gradebook is built around IB criteria. If you are an IB school, this is not something you casually replace.
We are not trying to replicate any of that. We are trying to solve the problems ManageBac was never designed to solve.
The gap nobody talks about
Ask any IB school administrator what happens outside the classroom and you will hear the same story. Fee collection runs on Tally or a spreadsheet. Admissions tracking is a shared Google Sheet. Transport coordination happens over WhatsApp. Staff leave requests come in via email. Parent complaints float around with no clear owner.
None of this is ManageBac's fault. It was built for curriculum delivery, and it does that job well. But a school is not just a curriculum. It is an operation. And operations need their own system.
We have spoken with schools that use ManageBac alongside four or five other tools, each handling one piece of the puzzle, none of them talking to each other. That is the gap.
How the two systems work together
The idea is simple. ManageBac stays your curriculum and teaching platform. ToGather LMS handles everything else: the operational and administrative layer that keeps the school running day to day.
Student records stay in sync
When a student is enrolled in ToGather, their core profile data (name, grade, section, parent contacts) can be shared with ManageBac. No duplicate data entry. When a student moves sections or graduates, it is reflected in both systems.
Admissions flow into enrollment
ToGather manages the full admissions pipeline: enquiry, campus visit, entrance test, offer letter, fee payment, enrollment. Once confirmed, the student is ready in ToGather and can be pushed to ManageBac as an active student. The admissions team does not have to re-enter anything.
Fees and finance, handled properly
ManageBac does not do fee collection. ToGather does. Term fees, activity fees, transport fees, concessions, reminders, receipts, and reports. When a parent opens the ToGather app, they see their fee status alongside their child's academic summary. One place for the full picture.
Transport and logistics
Routes, vehicles, drivers, and student assignments. Parents see their child's bus details in the app. The transport coordinator manages everything from a dashboard. This is a layer that ManageBac simply does not offer, and schools should not have to manage on paper.
Parent app that covers everything
The ToGather parent app gives families a view into attendance, fees, announcements, and school requests. Pair that with ManageBac's parent portal for academic progress, and parents have two focused tools instead of a dozen scattered touchpoints.
Tickets, requests, and support
When a parent has a concern, whether it is a transport issue, a fee query, or a maintenance request, they raise it through ToGather. It gets assigned, tracked, and resolved. No more back-and-forth on WhatsApp where things get lost.
What this looks like in practice
A school we spoke with recently described their setup before: ManageBac for teaching, Tally for accounting, a Google Sheet for admissions, WhatsApp for transport coordination, and email for everything else. Five tools. Five logins. Five places where data could be wrong.
With ToGather alongside ManageBac, that becomes two systems that each do their job well. The curriculum and teaching side lives in ManageBac. The operational side (fees, admissions, staff, transport, requests, and daily AI briefings for the principal) lives in ToGather.
The principal opens ToGather in the evening and gets a summary of the day. Attendance, overdue fees, open parent tickets, admission pipeline status. The academic progress and curriculum data, that is still in ManageBac where the teachers work. Two systems, zero overlap, no data gaps.
Why not just pick one platform?
We get asked this. The honest answer is that IB curriculum management is a deep, specialised domain. ManageBac has spent close to two decades building that expertise. We are not going to pretend we can match that depth on the IB side, and we do not need to.
What we do well is school operations. Fee management that actually works for international school fee structures. An admissions pipeline that tracks every lead. Transport logistics. Staff management. A parent app that families actually open.
The schools that get the most out of both platforms are the ones that stop trying to force one tool to do everything and instead let each tool do what it does best.
Getting started
If you are already using ManageBac and you are tired of patching the gaps with spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups, we would be happy to show you how ToGather fits alongside it. The setup is straightforward and we can walk you through exactly how the two systems connect.
No pressure to replace anything. Just a conversation about what a complete school platform actually looks like when the curriculum tool and the operations tool work together.
Already on ManageBac?
Let us show you how ToGather fills the gaps: fees, admissions, transport, and more, without replacing what already works.
Book a Walkthrough