When Your School Software Vendor Closes: Getting Your Records Out Before the Lights Go Off

The email usually arrives on an ordinary weekday. Your student-records vendor is winding down, or has been acquired and is retiring the product, or simply stops answering. There is a date, sometimes a generous one and sometimes not, after which the system you run your school on will no longer be there.

The instinct is to start shopping for a replacement. That is the second job. The first is your records, because the obligations attached to them don't end when the vendor does. Your state board, your accreditor, and, if you take federal aid, the Department of Education all expect you to produce attendance, hours, grades, transcripts, and financial records for years after a student leaves. None of them will accept “our software company closed” as an answer.

This guide is for owners and administrators of licensed, clock-hour, and career schools who have just received that email, or who would like to be ready if they ever do. It assumes no technical background.

First, get the facts in writing

Before you export anything, write to the vendor and ask for clear answers. Phone calls are fine for reassurance; you want this part in an email you can keep.

• What is the last day we can sign in? And is there a read-only period after new data stops being accepted?
• What export will you provide, in what format, and by when? Ask for a sample file now, not on the last day.
• Does it include everything? Specifically: uploaded documents and signed agreements, attendance punches and not only totals, payment history and not only balances, and the audit trail of who changed what.
• What happens to our data afterward? Who holds it, for how long, and will they confirm in writing when it has been deleted?
• If the product was acquired, what does the new owner intend? A migration offer is worth hearing. A migration you are pressured into is not.

A vendor that is closing in good order will answer these readily. If the answers are vague, slow, or never arrive, that tells you how much of the next step you will be doing yourself.

Export everything now, while it still works

Do not wait for the official export. Systems that are being wound down get slower, lose features, and occasionally disappear earlier than announced. Whatever you can download today, download today, and do it again closer to the end date.

Work through the life of a student and ask, at each step, “could I prove this to an auditor from what I have saved?”

• Students. Every student, including withdrawn and graduated ones, with contact details, program, start and end dates, and status history.
• Attendance. The individual clock-in and clock-out records, not only the hour totals. Totals are a calculation; the punches are the evidence.
• Hours by category. If your program requires hours in specific subjects or settings, export them broken down that way.
• Grades and transcripts. Gradebooks and final grades, and a saved transcript for every student who has ever attended. Graduates request transcripts years later, usually when they are applying for a license or a job and are in a hurry.
• Money. Every charge, payment, refund, and adjustment, with dates, not just current balances. A balance with no history behind it is very hard to defend in a dispute.
• Documents. Enrollment agreements, disclosures, IDs, and anything students uploaded or signed. These are often stored separately from the data and are the part most often missing from an export.
• How your school is set up. Programs, courses, hour requirements, fee schedules, grading scales, and attendance rules. You will need these to configure whatever comes next, and they are easy to forget because they never change.

If a screen can only be printed, print it to PDF and file it by student. It isn’t elegant, but a complete set of PDFs is far better than a tidy spreadsheet with gaps. Keep every file somewhere your school controls, in more than one place, and treat it like the student records it is: limited access, not in someone’s personal email.

Check it before you trust it

An export you haven’t checked is a hope. Before the old system goes away, while you can still compare the two, spend an afternoon on a few simple checks.

• Count. Does the number of students in your files match the number in the system, including inactive ones?
• Spot-check hours. Pick five students, including one with a messy history such as a leave of absence or a re-entry, and confirm their hours in the files match the system to the minute.
• Balance the money. Do the payments in the export add up to the balances the system reports?
• Open the documents. Open a sample of the files, not just the folder. A file that won’t open or is empty is as good as missing.

Take screenshots of the system showing the figures you checked against, and keep them with the files. If anyone ever questions a number, you will want to show what the old system said on the day it closed.

Keep the school running in the gap

There may be weeks between the old system ending and the new one being ready. Students still arrive, hours still accrue, and tuition is still due. Decide the interim process before you need it, and give staff one plan rather than several improvised ones.

• A paper or spreadsheet sign-in process with a named person responsible for it every day, and a rule about how corrections are made and initialed.
• A simple payment log kept the same way.
• A folder for anything signed in the meantime.

All of this will need to be entered into the new system, so keep it consistent and complete. A clean interim record is a small amount of work; reconstructing one later is a large amount of work.

Choose what comes next without rushing

A closing vendor creates urgency, and urgency is a poor basis for a decision you will live with for years. A few weeks on careful spreadsheets is better than a rushed move to the wrong system. When you do talk to replacements, ask:

• Can you bring my history across, not just my current students? Hours, grades, and payment history for past students are what an auditor asks for.
• Can you handle how my school actually works? Clock hours by category, cohorts, make-up hours, and your enrollment paperwork. Software built for credit-hour colleges tends to fit clock-hour schools badly.
• How do I get my data out of you? You are learning right now what that question is worth. A good vendor answers it before you sign, in writing, and doesn’t mind being asked.

Six more questions worth asking any software vendor are in The Bill Nobody Quotes You.

If you do only three things

1. Get the vendor’s end date and export terms in writing this week.
2. Export everything you can today, documents included, and store it somewhere your school controls.
3. Check the export against the live system before the live system is gone.

Everything else can be worked out. Those three get harder every day you wait.

Neil Serdinsky is the founder of The Horizon Works Group, which builds and operates ATLAS for licensed and clock-hour schools. The steps above apply whatever system you move to, including if it isn’t ours.