The following is a best practice plan for implementing your new Spike computer software. Although this plan may take you several weeks to complete, you will discover that a series of practical gains are achieved along the way.
Steps to: - Implement Spike into your service
Install the Spike software on your computer according to the instructions accompanying your CD, or ring the Help Desk if you would like some assistance.
Familiarise all those who will be using the Spike software with the basic functions of operation, and if applicable to your service, assign each user with a name and password.
Enter your service's details and charge types.
Define each group your service will be using.
Produce copies of new Spike enrolment forms and send these out to parents and get them filled in to make the next step easier and most accurate.
(Set aside a morning or an afternoon to achieve steps 1-5)
Enter details of children attending the service, the accounts to which their bookings will be charged, and any permanent bookings you are aware of.
If you fast track, at some future time you must complete the entering of supplementary information from the enrolment forms for the children and their adult associates.
(There is a lot of work in step 6, even using the fast track process described later, it could still probably take around 15 minutes per child).
Once you have begun entering this large body of data, get into the habit immediately of making two types of daily backups to protect your work; one to take off site i.e. a floppy, zip or CD backup, plus a Hard disk safe copy.
Print out Group, Room or Section Attendance Sheets according to your requirements.
Pay close attention to any errors which might show up now. eg. discrepancies or omissions in children's names or booked times.
Produce some sample bills.
Compare with actual bills produced by your old system.
Plan commencement of Spike billing:
Management Committee must adopt any billing changes such as weekly billing, billing in arrears or implementing bonds in lieu of billing in advance.
Select a date on which you will start issuing Spike bills.
Give information to parents explaining the new bills.
You may choose to produce a parallel test billing run to compare Spike bills with the bills produced by your old system.
Commence issuing Spike bills, usually at the beginning of a CCB claim period.