"There were 11 absences that needed to be explained for my eldest son in 2013, and we had legitimate excuses," he said.

"I thought there's got to be a better way."

Less than three years later, his solution, the Appsence app, is in eight ACT public schools.

The software allows teachers to mark the roll with a mobile or tablet device in the classroom, triggering automatic alerts to be sent to absent students and their parents in real-time. Permission notes for a range of events can also be processed more quickly without a hard copy.

But Mr McMillan said the continued use of the app in ACT public schools was in doubt as the government was preparing to decide on a tender for a new digital school administration system.

"There is no other app that does what we do," he said.

"Other apps [now in some ACT public schools] are good for communication, but it's not individualised, you can't target an individual parent or a student, or classes."

Education Minister Shane Rattenbury recently announced the government would spend up to $10 million in this week's budget to deliver the faster administration system, including better online enrolment, extra online consents and payments, digital academic records and quicker absence notifications.

But a tender process has been running for more than a year, with a consortium bid which included Appsence unsuccessful in February last year, Mr McMillan said.

Mr Morrison said his company, which employed seven people including a development team in Indonesia, was not capable of offering the full services required by the tender, but would approach the successful bidder.

While it was hoped to reduce truancy, Mr McMillan said the greatest savings from the app were in time for teachers and school administration officials, who could avoid an estimated 30 minutes a week entering roll calls into the existing MAZE digital system. This could deliver cost savings of $50,000 a year for an average school, he said.

The pricings of the active tenders are not known.

The Education and Training Directorate refused a Fairfax Media request to speak to a principal of a school using Appsence, with a spokeswoman saying it was not appropriate for the Directorate to comment due to the ongoing tender process.

A spokeswoman for the British-based Civica, who provide the MAZE software, said it was company policy not to discuss tenders but "Civica's solutions are comprehensive and we work with a large number of schools across Australia".

Mr Rattenbury said last month the new system's development was anticipated to commence from early 2017 and be implemented across schools over three years.