First Steps - Nursery Management Program

[Guest]

Hi everyone - just wondering if anyone uses this program in their setting and, if so, what thoughts do you have about it? Would love to get into a discussion about it but will hangfire with my own thoughts until I see what interest there is!

Look forward to hearing from you...

[Guest]

Hi Lesley, not sure if I've previously welcomed you to the forum

 

Don't use First Steps myself but there has been a previous discussion about it.

 

click on the link

 

HERE

 

go to 7th post down - from gemini69 onward.

 

hope it helps

 

Peggy

[Guest]

Thanks for the welcome, Peggy. Very nice to be here.

Your link was very useful - confirmed my own thoughts. I have also devised my own register but have to now convince my boss, who also happens to be the purchaser of this very expensive program, that the program is bobbins!

Wish me luck

[hali]

hello and welcome to the forum

[Guest]

Good luck, maybe if you can approach the subject by saying you want to devise your own register because.................ie: current one doesn't show in out times ( I'm guessing) which Ofsted require..ets... but you really find the 1st steps system useful for .......................whatever. Then her purchase doesn't appear to be a total mis spending of vital funds.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

We are now 18 months into First Steps and it is wonderful! Still having a few hiccups but the support team on the end of the phone are brill. They remotely move your cursor around and sort out the problem then tell you where you have gone wrong! It does take some time to get used to but we are now doing all our billing on it, mail merge, predictions for future fees and loads of other things. Once you get into it, it is a little addictive (heard that somewhere else before?!)

 

I would say though to get the best from it you do have to add as much data to the data base as you can, this takes time but is well worth it!

 

On another note we recently had inspection and the team were delighted with the system at least they can understand our registers now!

 

Gemx

[Guest]

Thanks everyone for the welcome.

 

gemini69 - do you think it would be worth me undergoing some training with Rio? My boss has said this is a possibility if I want it. I can see that the program could be useful if used properly but all it is really used for in our setting is taking the fees which seems like an awful waste of money to me!

[Guest]

My husband and I have both had training in our own setting and across at Rio. The training was hands on which was great. When we went over to them they had taken a back up of our data and we worked on actual child records which made sense to us.

Perhaps after training you would be able to persuade your boss that the programme offers more than just working out the bills!

Good luck, let me know how you get on.

 

Gem