Cron Job Setup

The Laravel scheduler runs recurring background tasks — attendance reminders, report generation, clearing expired sessions, and more. It requires a single cron entry to work.

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How It Works

Laravel uses one cron entry that runs every minute. Laravel itself then decides which scheduled tasks are due and runs them. You do not need a separate cron entry for each task.

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Setting Up on cPanel (Shared Hosting)

1. Log into cPanel.

2. Go to Cron Jobs (under Advanced).

3. Under Add New Cron Job, set the timing to Every Minute:

   Field	Value
   Minute	*
   Hour	*
   Day	*
   Month	*
   Weekday	*

4. In the Command field, enter:

/usr/local/bin/php /home/yourusername/genius-sms/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Replace yourusername with your actual cPanel username and genius-sms with the folder name where you installed the app.

5. Click Add New Cron Job.

Finding the correct PHP path: In cPanel Terminal, run which php or which php8.3 to find the exact PHP binary path. Common paths are /usr/local/bin/php or /usr/bin/php8.3.

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Setting Up on VPS (Ubuntu with Supervisor)

On a VPS, add the cron entry for the www-data user:

sudo crontab -e -u www-data

Add this line:

* * * * * php /var/www/genius-sms/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Save and exit.

Verify the cron is registered:

sudo crontab -l -u www-data

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What the Scheduler Does

Once the cron is running, these tasks are automated:

Task	Frequency	Description
Fee reminders	Daily	Sends SMS/email to parents with outstanding balances
Session cleanup	Daily	Clears expired user sessions from the database
Attendance summary	Weekly	Generates weekly attendance digest for admins
Log pruning	Daily	Removes old log entries to save disk space
Subscription checks	Daily	Checks and updates subscription/package status

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Testing the Scheduler

To manually trigger the scheduler and confirm it works, run this in your SSH terminal:

cd ~/genius-sms
php artisan schedule:run

You should see output listing which tasks ran (or "No scheduled commands are ready to run" if nothing is due right now — that is normal).

To see all scheduled tasks defined in the application:

php artisan schedule:list

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Queue Worker Cron (Database Driver)

If you are on shared hosting and using QUEUE_CONNECTION=database (no Redis/Horizon), background jobs like PDF generation and email blasts are processed via a queue worker. Add a second cron entry to process the queue:

In cPanel Cron Jobs, add another entry (every minute):

/usr/local/bin/php /home/yourusername/genius-sms/artisan queue:work --stop-when-empty >> /dev/null 2>&1

--stop-when-empty makes the worker exit after processing all pending jobs, which is safe for shared hosting where long-running processes may be killed.

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Queue Worker on VPS (Laravel Horizon)

On a VPS, Laravel Horizon manages the queue worker as a persistent process via Supervisor — you do not need a cron entry for the queue. See the VPS Installation Guide for setup details.

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Verifying Cron Is Running

After adding the cron, wait a few minutes and check the Laravel log for scheduler activity:

tail -f ~/genius-sms/storage/logs/laravel.log

You can also check cPanel → Cron Jobs to confirm the entry is saved.