00 Before you open anything
Put the folder where your school files live.
Unzip the download and move the whole folder somewhere permanent — not your downloads folder, not your desktop. Somewhere you would look for the school's records in two years.
Keep the folder intact. The Command Center reads its own styling from the assets folder beside it. If you move only the one file, it still works, but it will look plain.
Your school data is tied to the browser you open the file in, on the machine you open it on. Picking a permanent home now means you always open the same file, in the same browser, and your data is always there waiting.
01 Two minutes
Open the file and answer four questions.
- Double-click command-center.html. It opens in your browser like a web page.
- The setup panel appears the first time only. Enter your school name, state, approving agency and target first class date.
- Choose Build my Command Center.
Do not have an agency name yet? Type what you think it is. You can change every one of these later in School Profile.
Bookmark the page now. That bookmark is how you get back in every day.
02 Three minutes
Finish the school profile.
Go to 11 · School Profile and fill in the rest: city, license or approval number if you have one, owner or director name, school email and phone.
These are the details that appear on anything you print out of the Command Center, so make them match your legal documents exactly — same school name, same spelling, same suffix. Mismatched school names across documents is one of the most common things a state reviewer flags.
03 Eight minutes
Add your programs — this one is load-bearing.
Go to 04 · Programs and add the program you plan to open with. Enter:
- Theory, lab and externship hours — the Command Center adds them into total clock hours for you.
- Tuition, fees, books and supplies — these become your total cost of attendance.
- Hours per week — this converts clock hours into program length in weeks.
- Credential earned and exam prepared for — the specific certification, not a general description.
Three other modules read from your programs. Students get assigned to them. The break-even calculator prices seats from them. And when the state asks for clock hours, this is the number you quote — in the catalog, in the enrollment agreement, on the website and in the application. Enter it once here, and everything downstream agrees with itself.
Add every program you intend to offer in the first two years, even the ones that are not built yet. Seeing them side by side often changes which one you open with.
04 Ten minutes
Tell the roadmap the truth about where you are.
Go to 02 · Launch Roadmap. Eight phases and 64 tasks are already loaded, from entity formation through the first day of class.
- Check off everything you have already done. Be honest. A checkbox you ticked out of optimism will cost you later.
- Put due dates on the next ten tasks only. Not all sixty. Ten. Dated tasks are what feed the "Next up" panel and the overdue alerts on your dashboard, and a wall of sixty dates just becomes noise you learn to ignore.
- Add an owner where someone other than you is responsible.
- Add tasks your state requires that are not in the default list. Use the "Add a task" button at the bottom of the phase it belongs to.
When you are done, your readiness percentage on the dashboard is real. If it reads 34%, that is genuinely where you are, and now you can see exactly which 66% is left.
Already running a school? Mark Phases 1 through 4 complete and spend your time in the Vault, Staff and Money modules instead.
05 Four minutes
Log every body that can hold you up.
Go to 03 · State Approval and add one row for each: your state approving agency, any accreditor, your business license, fire and occupancy clearance, your surety bond, your insurance.
Enter the renewal date on every one you can. That single field is what turns this page from a list into an early-warning system — the dashboard starts flagging anything renewing inside ninety days, and turns it red once it is past due.
Nobody loses a school license because they could not meet the requirement. They lose it because the renewal notice went to an email nobody checks and the deadline passed. Put the dates in.
06 Seven minutes
Walk the Document Vault and mark it honestly.
Go to 05 · Document Vault. Sixty-eight documents are listed across eight categories — governing, admissions, academic, student services, faculty, operations and records.
Go down the list and set each status: Missing, Drafted, In review, Approved or Published. For anything you have, add the version date and note where the file actually lives — the folder path, the drive link, the filing cabinet drawer.
Resist the urge to be generous with yourself. A catalog you wrote two years ago and never updated is Drafted, not Published. The vault percentage on your dashboard only counts Approved and Published, and it should feel uncomfortable the first time you see it.
If your state requires a document that is not on the list, add it with the "Add a document" button.
07 Three minutes
Add everyone who teaches or signs anything.
Go to 07 · Staff & Credentials. Add yourself first, then every instructor, coordinator and administrator — including the ones you have only had a conversation with.
For each person, the fields that matter most are credential, license number and expiration date. The expiration date is the one that saves you: anything within sixty days turns amber on your dashboard, anything past due turns red.
Then mark the background check status and whether the faculty file is complete. During a site visit, "complete" needs to mean the folder actually contains the resume, the credential copy, the job description, the signed contract and the evaluation form.
08 Five minutes
Add students, then log the money against them.
Go to 06 · Students. Add everyone in your pipeline — not just enrolled students. The person who called last Tuesday and has not called back is an Inquiry, and they belong here.
Set the stage, program, cohort and start date. In the Charged column, enter the total tuition and fees assigned to that student.
Then go to 08 · Money and log payments. Pick the student from the dropdown on each payment, and the Students module fills in the paid and balance columns automatically. You never type a balance — it is always calculated, so it is always right.
While you are in Money, log your expenses so far: the entity filing, the application fee, insurance, any equipment. And enter your cost to run one cohort in the break-even panel. If a cohort needs eleven students to break even and your classroom holds eight, you have found something important before it cost you anything.
09 Two minutes
Stop re-hunting the same eight links.
Go to 10 · Resources. Eight placeholder rows are waiting for your state agency page, its forms page, your certification body, your learning platform, your CRM, your payment processor, your website and your document folder. Paste the real URLs in.
Use the notes pad underneath for everything that does not have a field yet: the name of the person at the agency and what they told you, why you priced tuition where you did, the exact wording of a deficiency you have to answer. It saves as you type.
10 One minute — do not skip this
Back it up, right now, before you close the tab.
Choose Back up my data in the top-right corner. A dated file downloads to your computer. Move it into your school records folder next to the Command Center.
Your data lives in this browser on this device. That is deliberate — student names, balances and credential numbers do not belong on someone else's server. The trade-off is that clearing your browser data, switching browsers, or a dead laptop takes the Command Center with it unless you have a backup.
Back up every Friday. Keep the last four. It takes six seconds and it is the difference between a bad afternoon and a lost year of records.
That same backup file is how you move to a new computer, or hand a copy to your program director: back up on one machine, choose Restore a backup on the other.
— After setup
The rhythm that keeps it true.
A tracker nobody opens is worse than no tracker, because you start trusting numbers that stopped being accurate in March. This is the smallest routine that keeps it honest.
15 minutes
30 minutes
1 hour
visit or audit
— Support
If something goes wrong.
My data disappeared.
Almost always one of three things: you opened a different copy of the file, you opened it in a different browser, or browser data was cleared. Find your most recent backup file and use Restore a backup. Then bookmark the one file you intend to use and only open that one.
It looks plain and unstyled.
The assets folder is not sitting beside the file any more. Keep the folder together, or re-download it.
Nothing saves.
You are most likely in a private or incognito window, which throws data away when it closes. Open the file in a normal window.
I want to start over.
School Profile → Erase everything and reset. Back up first — it cannot be undone.
Can I use it on my phone?
It is readable and the checkboxes work. The tables want a real screen. Use a laptop or tablet for setup and weekly work.
Write to us from the contact page with a description of what you are seeing. Technical support is included for as long as your school licence is active.