Getting started, and getting help afterwards
Software for a school office is judged in the fortnight around admissions and the week results come out. That is when we are most attentive, because that is when it matters.
From decision to first register marked
Typically two to four weeks, most of which is you deciding how your school wants things named rather than us installing anything.
Install
On your hosting, on your domain. A guided page asks for the database details and the school's name, then a health check confirms the server is set up correctly.
Shape the year
Academic year, classes, sections, subjects, the school calendar and the bell times. This is the part that needs your head teacher, not your IT person.
Load the people
Staff, students, guardians and opening fee balances, from whatever you have now — spreadsheets, an export from your old system, or paper we type up.
Open it up
Staff are invited first and use it for a week. Parents and students are invited once the staff are comfortable, never on the same day.
What support actually means here
A person, not a ticket queue
Write to us and a person who knows the software answers. We would rather fix the cause than teach you a workaround.
Guides written for the office
Short, task-shaped notes — how to promote a class, how to reverse a receipt, what to do when a mark sheet was approved too early. Not a manual nobody reads.
Updates you choose to take
New versions go to our own demo first and to your installation when you say so, never in the middle of your admissions week.
Backups you can prove
Backups run on your server. We will do a restore drill with you before go-live, so the first time you restore is not the day you need to.
A health report in the admin area
Permissions, keys, configuration, the email queue, the receipt run. If something is drifting, it says so before a parent notices.
Changes built to order
Your report card layout, a certificate wording, a report your board asks for. Scoped and quoted, and the result belongs in your installation.
Questions we are asked most
What do we need on the server?
PHP 8.2 or newer with the usual extensions, MySQL or MariaDB, and HTTPS. Ordinary shared hosting is enough for most schools. We check the server before we start and tell you plainly if it will not do.
Can you bring our existing data across?
Yes. Students, guardians, staff, classes and opening fee balances are the usual set. Give us whatever you have and we will tell you what is usable before anyone commits.
How do parents get their sign-in?
The office invites them by email; the invitation is single-use and expires. Parents who have no email are handled by the office, which can also print what they need.
What if we find a bug during results week?
Tell us immediately and say it is results week. Anything that blocks publishing marks or issuing a certificate goes to the front of everything else.
Do you train our staff?
Yes, in sessions by role — office, class teachers, subject teachers — because each group only needs its own part, and a single long session teaches nobody anything.
What happens at the end of the school year?
Results are published, report cards issued, the year closed and classes promoted into the next year. It is a handful of deliberate steps, and we walk you through the first one.
Already using it and stuck?
Write to hello@startosoft.com with your school's name in the subject. Tell us what you were doing and what you expected instead.