Your first week

A brand-new school starts with its classes and subjects already set up from the school types you chose at signup, and nothing else. Seven steps get it ready for daily use, and they work best roughly in this order — classes should be right before students are put in them, and staff must exist before they can be given logins.

The Dashboard shows this as a Get started card: the seven steps in three groups, how many are done, and the next one highlighted. Each step ticks itself once the work is really there. The card disappears on its own when all seven are done; Hide for everyone removes it early for every administrator, on every device.

The card only appears for people who can manage settings, and only once the sample data is cleared. While the demo students and staff are still loaded, the demo banner takes over that spot instead.

Your school

Step 1 — School profile

Add your logo, contact details and motto.

Sidebar → School setup. Your name, crest, phone, address and brand colours. These appear on report cards, receipts and the parent portal, so it is worth doing properly before anything is printed.

Full detail: School profile and branding.

Step 2 — Set this term's dates

Enter when the current term starts and ends — the dashboard uses them to track the term.

Sidebar → School setup → Academic Calendar tab. Check the academic year and the current term, then give the current term a start and an end date. The step ticks once both are set. Almost everything else is stamped with the year and term that are current when it is created, so getting this right first saves a lot of correcting later.

Full detail: The academic calendar.

Step 3 — Confirm classes & subjects

We set these up from the school types you chose. Rename, remove or add before you enrol anyone.

Sidebar → Classes & subjects. Check the class names match your school's (JHS 1A, Form 2 Science…) and each class's subjects. Levels you do not run are on the Levels & grading tab, and subjects missing from the list on the Subjects tab of the same page. Nothing can tell whether you have looked, so this step ticks when you press Looks right on the card.

Full detail: Classes and subjects.

People

Step 4 — Add your staff

Add each person, and give them their login in the same step.

Sidebar → People → Staff → Add staff member. Their name, Ghana Card, SSNIT, the subjects and classes they teach — and, at the bottom, what they can do when they sign in. Choose No login for now for anyone without an email yet. See Adding staff.

Step 5 — Give staff their logins

Teachers need one to take attendance and enter marks.

Anyone added with No login for now is still waiting. Sidebar → Staff → Logins & access tab. Press No login yet, tick the teachers and press Give logins… to give them all a login at once. The step counts teachers — anyone with subjects, a form class, or a timetable allocation — and ticks once every one of them can sign in. Staff who never use the system, such as kitchen staff, do not hold it up.

Fees & students

Step 6 — Create your fee structure

Add fee types and the amount billed per level.

Sidebar → Finance → Fees → Fee Structure. Define what you charge and how much, per class. You can record payments before this is done, but you will not get meaningful arrears or statements until it is.

Step 7 — Enrol your first students

Register one at a time, or import a spreadsheet of the whole school.

Sidebar → People → Students. One at a time with Register, or a whole school at once with Import Excel.

Full detail: Adding students.

Optional — Build the timetable

The card ends with a link to Timetable. Its Setup tab walks through bell times, periods per week and who teaches what before you press Generate. It is not counted in the seven, because not every school runs its timetable here.

Once the seven are done

The system is ready for daily use. The next things worth setting up, in rough order of how soon you will want them:

1. Timetable — so teachers and students can see their week
2. Announcements — the fastest way to reach every parent and student