What we collect before we start
This is what school data migration into Ecole looks like end to end: what we collect, who types it in, and when the switch actually happens. We start with what already exists, not with a clean copy of it: admission registers, attendance registers, the fee spreadsheet, and last year's mark sheets, in whatever form they are already in, bound ledgers, loose sheets, or a spreadsheet nobody has kept up to date. Nothing needs to be retyped, reformatted or tidied up before we look at it, because tidying it up is our job, not a precondition for starting.
- Admission registers
- Attendance registers
- The fee spreadsheet
- Last year's mark sheets
- Anything else the school already keeps by hand
Admission numbers stay exactly as they are
An admission number is not just an ID. Parents write it on fee challans, teachers write it in the margin of a register, and a correspondent recognises a child by it faster than by name. Moving from a paper register to a school ERP does not reset any of that: Ecole keeps every admission number exactly as it already is, no renumbering, no new sequence, no starting again. If a school issued numbers unevenly across the years, or skipped a run of them for reasons nobody remembers now, that pattern carries across unchanged rather than being smoothed out to look tidier than it ever was.
A family with two children admitted two years apart already has two different numbers written on old receipts, old bus passes, old exam admit cards, and a dozen other pieces of paper the school does not control. Ecole does not ask a school to explain a gap in that sequence, or to renumber a child to make the records line up more neatly. It keeps what the school already has, because the number the family already knows is the one that has to keep working.
Who enters the data
We do the data entry, not your staff. A correspondent's office already runs on thin coverage, and nobody wants to pull people off admissions and fee collection to retype years of attendance registers into a screen. Our team enters admission records, attendance history where a school wants it carried forward, the fee spreadsheet, and last year's marks. This is part of what Ecole includes at onboarding, not a separate charge negotiated afterwards, because a migration a school cannot afford to finish properly is not a migration worth starting.
The check that matters is the teacher's own read of the printed roll against the register, line by line, because only the teacher knows the children well enough to catch what a spreadsheet cannot.
The printed roll every class teacher checks
Once a section's list is in Ecole, we print it and hand it to that class teacher, not to the office, and not to us. A class teacher reads their own roll the way they read a register: name by name, in the order they call it every morning. They are the only person in the building who will notice that a child who left last year is still listed, or that a name is spelt differently from how the family actually spells it, or that a section has quietly gained a student who was never really in it.
An office clerk checking the same list against a spreadsheet will not catch either kind of error, because a spreadsheet does not know the children and a clerk was never in the classroom to notice who answers to which name. That is why the check has to sit with the class teacher and nobody else, even though it takes longer than letting the office sign off on all of it at once.
Setting up classes, sections, subjects, fees and the exam pattern
Alongside the historical data, we set up the year ahead: classes and sections, the subjects taught in each, the fee structure, and the exam pattern. The fee structure means fee heads such as tuition, transport, books, exam and uniform, instalment due dates, and any concessions the school already grants, staff ward, sibling, RTE, merit or discretionary. Exam types, maximum marks and weightage are set as configuration for your board, not written into the software, so changing a single weightage later does not need a new release from us.
Concessions are entered with the rule that decides who can grant them: an accountant can apply the ones that follow a fixed rule, and the ones that need judgement go to a principal or correspondent for approval. None of this setup depends on the historical data being finished first; the two run alongside each other, so the year is ready to start the moment the dual run below begins.
The one-term dual run
Once the setup is done, the school runs both systems for a full term. The registers stay the authority: if Ecole and the register disagree, the register wins, and we find out why before either side is trusted again. Nobody is asked to trust the new system before it has proved itself against the one everybody already trusts. We switch over only at a term boundary, once a full term has reconciled clean across attendance, fees and marks, and never in the middle of one.
For a class teacher this looks like taking attendance in the register as always, and marking the same section in Ecole as well, for the length of the dual run. It is more work for a term, not less, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. The point of running both is not to make the term easier; it is to prove the new system against the one everybody in the building already trusts, before anyone is asked to give the register up.
What reconciling clean means
Reconciling clean is not a feeling and it is not a single sign-off. It is three separate checks, one per area, and all three have to pass before a term counts as done.
Attendance
Attendance for the term is checked against the paper register, and the switch does not happen until the two agree.
Fees
Every receipt in the day-books has to add up to what Ecole's ledger shows for the same term, counter by counter and payment mode by payment mode, matched the same way an accountant closes a day-book at the end of any ordinary day. A single receipt that does not line up holds the whole term open until someone finds it.
Marks
Every mark on a physical mark sheet for that term's exams has to match the entry against the same student, the same subject and the same component, not just the same total for the paper, because two different mistakes can add up to the same number by accident.
The migration checklist
Every step below is designed to catch one specific kind of mistake before it reaches a family or a report card, which is why the checklist has a name for who is responsible at each stage.
| Step | Who does it | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| Data entry | Our team | Formatting differences across registers and spreadsheets |
| Printed roll check | Each class teacher | A missing student, a misspelt name, or a child who has already left |
| Setup review | School office | The wrong section, subject or fee head before the year starts |
| Attendance reconciliation | Class teacher and office | A day marked in the register but not in Ecole, or the other way round |
| Fee reconciliation | Accountant | A receipt in the day-book that the ledger does not show |
| Marks reconciliation | Subject teacher | A mark that does not match that exam's mark sheet |
| Term-boundary sign-off | Principal or correspondent | Anything from the rows above still open, which holds the switch rather than forcing it |
None of these checks depend on trusting Ecole first. Every one of them depends on trusting a paper document that already exists in the school, and asking Ecole to match it, exactly, before anyone is asked to put the register away.
Leaving: your data is not held hostage
Digitising school records does not mean losing control of them. Export of every student and fee record is self-serve, available any time, without asking us and without a fee. That is true from the first day a school is on Ecole, not only if it ever decides to leave.
The same openness holds day to day, not just at the exit: there is a log of who changed what, and who opened a child's record or a fee ledger, visible to the school throughout rather than produced specially the day someone asks for it. Read more about access and trust, or see the wider frequently asked questions if a specific worry is not answered here.