Moving From SIMS to Arbor

[Jobos]

It looks like we are moving from SIMS to Arbor over the summer holiday and wondered if someone could give me a few pointers on the best way forward?

 

Thanks.

 

[AlistairB1983]

6 minutes ago, Jobos said:

It looks like we are moving from SIMS to Arbor over the summer holiday and wondered if someone could give me a few pointers on the best way forward?

 

Thanks.

 

 

What sort of areas are you looking for pointers on?

 

Having completed the move, twice, most recently a couple of years ago over Easter, I would say that their migration team/process is extremely thorough and handled pretty much everything we needed to know/ask, and the few things it didn't we were able to get direct help for.

 

I think perhaps my main piece of advice would be to ensure that all relevant staff complete their training programmes BEFORE the summer and, if possible, utilise as much time on the 'dummy site' as possible to try and become familiar with it. Although they might forget some of it over the summer when the actual transfer takes place, they'll be quicker to find their feet in September. 

 

That and make sure to manage people's expectations (especially teachers!) effectively. Arbor does not work EXACTLY like SIMS, so staff need to remember that and rather than trying to repeat the process, they need to find a new way to achieve their end goals. i.e. rather than running 'their' report from SIMS, they might now have to run a slightly different one in Arbor, but net result is they get the same sort of data to achieve their goal (e.g. reporting attendance/similar).

 

Launching in September isn't personally what I would ever chose, but a local Secondary here made that switch this year and, apart from a couple of emails from them (as I offered to help answer any questions) it seems to have been a relatively straight forward process.

 

Happy to try and answer any questions you might have about the move. Although should clarify I'm a Data Manager rather than on the IT team, so I can't answer any of the 'back end' type questions.

[Jobos]

14 minutes ago, AlistairB1983 said:

Launching in September isn't personally what I would ever chose, but a local Secondary here made that switch this year and, apart from a couple of emails from them (as I offered to help answer any questions) it seems to have been a relatively straight forward process.

 

 

Thanks, you make it sound like like it's not as bad as I thought but why is summer not the best time to move?

[Jawloms]

We have just finished going through this. The only pointer you really need is to trust their process. They make it all very clear what to do when, and how.

[The_messenger]

Arbor have a good onboarding process. 

 

My main issue was the automatic transfer of data via Wonde and GroupCall  to 3rd parties (CPOMS, catering etc.) so don’t get caught out..

admittedly we did the switch on the Wednesday of a February Half Term a couple of years ago.. made for an "interesting" first week back.

 

[AlistairB1983]

On 06/03/2026 at 13:04, Jobos said:

 

Thanks, you make it sound like like it's not as bad as I thought but why is summer not the best time to move?

 

Because once you move over you'll want to spend some time checking the accuracy of your data/getting everything embedded etc.

 

September is obviously a month when you'll have a whole bunch of not only new data (with new Year 7s/Year 1s joining) as well as new staff members. It's just an extra complication on an already stressful month.

 

But, things will pass. It's not the end of the world and everyone will get through it. The main thing is to make sure your Data Manager is up to speed with it all in time for the census in October.

[hallb15]

We moved from SIMS to Arbor last year and as others have said above, Arbor are very experienced at this and made it pretty smooth sailing for us.

 

Where we experienced issues was with third parties who sync with SIMS. They all have difference processes for the move and each have their own timescales and costs.

 

Parentpay were the worst for us - least helpful, longest timescale and most expensive.

[Jawloms]

Costs? We've switched Wonde, GroupCall and currently switching ParentPay and have experienced no costs.....

[andy_b]

90% of the problems we experience when moving schools is that Staff don't do the training and then complain they don't know how to do anything.

 

 

[mikes]

We had costs for a few things - Entrysign being one I can remember, but they weren't massive costs, a few hundred ££ 

We were moved by our LEA in the middle of March or April if I remember, had the usual learning curve issues and lil bits and bobs but nothing big. 

[Buzzer90]

InVentry charge too if you're using them.

[Jawloms]

3 hours ago, Jawloms said:

Costs? We've switched Wonde, GroupCall and currently switching ParentPay and have experienced no costs.....

Well I take that back! ParentPay have just sent me an email telling me it's going to cost £600 to make the switch!! Wonde, GroupCall and StudyBugs all just went "Yeah, that's fine".

[36Degrees]

3 hours ago, Jawloms said:

Costs? We've switched Wonde, GroupCall and currently switching ParentPay and have experienced no costs.....

 

We were charged by Cunninghams and InVentry and will be by ParentPay

[psydii]

37 minutes ago, Jawloms said:

Well I take that back! ParentPay have just sent me an email telling me it's going to cost £600 to make the switch!! Wonde, GroupCall and StudyBugs all just went "Yeah, that's fine".

 Parent Pay have their own MIS they want you to buy. 😆 

[Buzzer90]

35 minutes ago, Jawloms said:

Well I take that back! ParentPay have just sent me an email telling me it's going to cost £600 to make the switch!! Wonde, GroupCall and StudyBugs all just went "Yeah, that's fine".

They quoted us the same initially and then after 'review' reduced it to £300...  Whether that was because we were migrating several at once or you can just ask for a review and see what they say.

[emmaburt26]

Am very late to this thread but thought I'd tag on my query here.

 

We are migrating over the summer from Sims to Arbor and I wondered if anyone else had done the summer move and if you had your timetable for next year in sims and did it migrate into Arbor?

 

Arbor are saying it won't but other people on the Arbor community site are saying it will as long as you have the timetable imported in sims and you've run Apply Timetable process.

our migration starts on the last day of the academic year.

 

Upskilling 6 timetablers across our secondaries in time to build in Timetabler rather than Nova feels like a very big ask given it's now June!

 

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

[SL_Thing]

On 04/06/2026 at 20:35, emmaburt26 said:

Am very late to this thread but thought I'd tag on my query here.

 

We are migrating over the summer from Sims to Arbor and I wondered if anyone else had done the summer move and if you had your timetable for next year in sims and did it migrate into Arbor?

 

Arbor are saying it won't but other people on the Arbor community site are saying it will as long as you have the timetable imported in sims and you've run Apply Timetable process.

our migration starts on the last day of the academic year.

 

Upskilling 6 timetablers across our secondaries in time to build in Timetabler rather than Nova feels like a very big ask given it's now June!

 

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

At my last school  i did a summer migration, all went fairly straight forward and this was a week before I left.

 

Timetable will go in, as long as it's SIMS prior with all the right dates etc it will come across. Back in 2022 you couldnt then export the timetable out of Arbor to Timetabler, but I believe by now that should be the case.

 

Timetabler also should be very easy for your timetable team to work as it was written by the guy that originally wrote Nova so shares some ways f doing things, might look different but should operate in much the same way. Just got to avoid the 'how is it done in SIMS mentality', and instead use the knowledge of what you are doing to do the job (not sure if im explaining that well 🙂 ). 

[KK20]

parentpay wanted to charge us (this was a couple of years ago).  We said, please send a formal quote so that we can balance this cost vs implementing arborpay instead at the same time as we migrate to Arbor.  Suddenly the costs were waived.  We coudnt get round the Inventry charge.