Leaving software your centre already runs on can feel harder than leaving spreadsheets. Your records sit inside someone else’s system, and the term keeps running while you move.
This guide covers getting your records out, cleaning them, and picking the moment to switch.
Get your records out
Ask your current system what it exports, and in what shape. A spreadsheet file for each kind of record, such as a CSV, is a common answer.
Start with the records you use every week:
- Students and families, with contact details.
- Classes, and who is enrolled in each.
- Tutors, and the courses they teach.
- Invoices you still need to look up.
Export early, before you give notice, so you know what you have.
Clean before you move
An export carries the old system’s mess with it. Fix it once, in the file, rather than in two systems.
- Merge duplicate students and families.
- Remove students who left long ago, or mark them clearly.
- Check each family has an email someone reads.
- Write year levels the same way on each row.
Switch at a term break
Rolls, invoices and tutor pay all reset at a break, so nothing half-finished crosses over.
Count back from the break: export, clean, move, check. Leave a week spare for the records that need a second look.
Run both for one term
You do not have to stop the old system the day you start moving. Run this term from it while your records come across, then switch at the break.
Give each job one home. Once the roll moves, stop marking it in the old system the same day.
Tell families what changes
Families notice two things: where invoices come from, and where they look for their child’s classes.
Tell them before the first invoice arrives from the new system. Keep it short: what changes, when, and who to ask.
Common mistakes
- Leaving before the export. Get your records out while you still have access.
- Moving old history. Old rolls and past invoices can stay in a read-only copy.
- Two live systems. If staff can enter data in both, the two drift apart.
- Telling families late. A new invoice with no warning brings calls to the front desk.
Moving into Atrium
- Import your student list yourself from a CSV or XLSX file. Each student needs a first name, last name and email.
- Or tell us what you use now, and our migration service brings families, students, classes, terms, tutors and invoice history across, as the plan sets out.
- Run this term from your old system while your records come across.
- Family emails start off, and invoices stay drafts until you send them.
- Your centre owns its records once they move.