Moving your school off spreadsheets: a checklist

Most schools put off switching tools for the same reason: it feels like a week of retyping and a month of confusion. It doesn't have to be. With a bit of tidying and a clear start day, a school with a few hundred students can switch in days.

Pick a start day

Choose a quiet week, not the first weeks of September or January. A Monday right after the end of a month works well: payments for the month are settled and you can count lessons left on a single date.

That date matters. Every student's balance in the new system is "lessons left on the start day". Lessons before it stay in the old file; lessons from it are recorded in the new one.

Tidy the lists before you move them

• One row per person. Merge duplicates like "Anna K." and "Anna Kowalska".
• An email for every teacher. They need it to sign in.
• Emails for students where you have them, and a guardian for anyone under 16.
• Leave out students who left long ago.
• Group names that are clear to everyone: "English B1, Mon/Wed 18:00" beats "Group 7".

Clean data moved once is better than messy data moved fast.

Decide what stays behind

You don't need to move everything. Payment history and past attendance can stay in the old file. Keep it read-only and store it as long as your accountant needs. What you move is what you need from the start day: people, courses, groups, the timetable and lessons left.

Write your rules down first

Before you set up, agree on the rules the system will apply: which absences use a lesson, how much notice a cancellation needs, whether packages expire. Setting them once at the start is easier than fixing balances later.

Bring teachers in first

Teachers decide whether a new tool works, because they record the lessons. Show them the one screen they need, reporting a lesson on their phone, before students hear about the change. Fifteen minutes is enough.

Then tell students what changes for them: where to see their timetable and how many lessons they have left.

Don't run two systems for long

A week of checking the new system against the old one is useful. A month is not: people stop knowing which one is right. After the first week, the old file is for reference only.

Check after the first week

Look for lessons that took place but weren't reported, balances that look wrong and students without a group. Most problems show up in the first week, while they're still easy to fix.

How Lessora helps

Lessora imports teachers, courses, groups with their schedules, students and lessons left from Excel, Google Sheets or CSV, and shows you what will change before anything is saved. If you'd rather not do it yourself, send us your files and we'll import them for you, free on every plan, including the trial.