SUPPORT

CHICS Support

The Support Service is included with annual licence charges. For the first 12 months after  program installation, advice and necessary updates are free. Some specific non-operational work may be charged at a reduced ‘supported’ rate as below.

CHICS support is designed to provide users with a value-for-money service to give maximum effectiveness to the packages.

It will help you with -

Day-to-day telephone queries - Most problems will be sorted with telephone advice. You MUST have a phone next to the computer. The service is available 5 days a week (office hrs 10-5), and provides a same-or-next-day return call.

RING   01277 424427  to talk with Colin, James or Mark.

Emails are welcome but aren't guaranteed immediate response (Colin, James or Mark @chics.co.uk).

Please note support is predominantly for one-off advice and help. It is unfair to take advantage and use support as a regular free resource for day-to-day operational questions for temps or in place of training. In such instances we may suggest that a caller would be better to look at the training option to improve effective system use.    

Backups by email/upload - For more intransigent difficulties, send us your records by email attachment or upload and we will take you through a problem step by step.

On Site visits - Calls on site, or extensive advice on problems not directly associated with a program fault are liable to charges at our standard 'supported' rate.

General advice on how best to run your systems - we have practical management and system experience which can help you arrange the way your software and hardware works, to best suit your organization.

Regular updates with extra useful features - Support gives you regular updates which will contain useful features fed through from the user group, or to take account of changing practice and regulatory/statutory requirements.

User Group meetings -  Advanced use seminars for clients at most Group Workshop meetings. Client discussions and feedback

CHICS Web Site - www.chics.co.uk Supported users have privileged access to the User area with advice on IT and housing issues, online help with advanced features of the CHICS system, and Upgrades for download.

Reduced cost help with -

• Computer breakdown or theft - help to get your organization running again.
• CHICS X – Audit Trail
• General software / hardware advice - independent advice on major purchases or your ideas
• Training - Intensive advanced CHICS training
• New staff induction
• Year End Accounts preparation
• Customizing your system - Changes can be made to systems to suit individual associations and co-ops. We can provide estimates for these on request

The support fee varies depending on the client's size and on the modules purchased. The support fees are invoiced in advance (See prices sheet for full list). As with all our charges, support fees will be subject to review each year.

We think that the support service will save your organization time and money. Most help comes free as above. Any charges incurred by CHICS supported clients are half those for 'non-supported' users.

Performance specification

We aim to ensure that your rent accounting or management systems will never be delayed by more than two weeks by difficulties directly attributable to design or construction of our packages.

Rent systems should take 30 minutes a week operating time to maintain 100 records at a reasonable turnover.

Please contact us for more information.