Frequently Asked Questions I want to start collecting patient data now but I know it will take time for my hospital to approve the purchase and raise a purchase order. What can I do? We have been dealing with large organizations for a long time. We are used to the delays that you are describing. As we live in the real world and are reasonable, we are prepared to do the following: If you know you want the software and if you think your management will purchase the software, then we are willing to supply you with an Unlock code which will give you full use of the software for a period of up to 2 months. If we have not seen a purchase order from your hospital or some indication that things are moving towards a serious intent to purchase then we will speak and decide on the next step. Why a license and not just a straight purchase? STATIC is a VERY narrow vertical market product. We do not expect to make a lot of money from it. The customer base is just too small for that to be a realistic prospect. Over the years we have watched other narrow vertical market products disappear because there was no ongoing cashflow to sustain continued development of the product. Continued development does not just mean new features and additions. Some of the most expensive code maintenance is completely invisible to the user, keeping up to date with operating system changes for instance. There must be a financial incentive for us (the developers) to continue to work on STATIC. The only reasonable way we can do this is by selling STATIC on a license basis. STATIC is updated all the time. In fact in the last year there has been a new release every month. These are not just bug fixes but also substantial new additions to the program. We should be releasing an upgrade to STATIC every 3 months during the course of this year. Using the license model of delivery means that you the user will have no extra expense during the time that your license is valid. If we used the "fee for upgrade" method of product delivery it would entail our company raising invoices and collecting payment every 3 months from all our customers. We do not think that this would be a useful way of using our time. What happens when my license runs out? STATIC will warn you about 60 days in advance that its license needs to be renewed. We will have sent you an Annual renewal notice and invoice at about the same time. If you pay the invoice then you will be issued a new Unlock code for the next year. If you ignore the expiry date, then eventually you will no longer be able to enter new patients into the database. You will still have full access to all old data within the database and be able to use all the reporting and export functions. The only function that will cease is the ability to enter new patients. If you want to renew the license after a break that is less than 6 months then you can do so, however if the break is more than 6 months then the Initial License fee will be charged again. What happens if our Help line time runs out? We will be amazed if this happens! The Help line is there in order to help you out when things do not go as planned. STATIC is very well thought out (at least we think so!). Most aspects are intuitive and easy to use. However you may still come across problems which we may not have envisaged. In that case Help line is available. Help line is not for Custom programming or for additions to the database. The amount of time we give you per year is very generous and it would be unusual if you would require all of it even in the first year. The main reason for even offering Help line is that in the past we have had customers who think our time is free. This is clearly not true (to any reasonable person in business). But as we are experts in the computer field we often became the defacto ITS Department for their organization. We would often quickly solve problems that their own ITS Department could not solve and that the dealer or operating system vendor could not solve either. We can understand that users would prefer to use us for help in these cases but really we are only responsible for STATIC and not for the whole computer installation. Despite this caveat, we are still happy to help out if we can but it will eat into your Help line time. What happens if I want to upgrade to Client Server? Easy. First the datafile and application is actually exactly the same for STATIC Lite, Pro and Pro Client Server. STATIC is differentiated internally by the way it is deployed and by the Unlock codes issued. In order to upgrade you will have to buy the Client Server software ( once off cost) and then we will calculate the pro rata cost difference between your new and old installation. Ensure you have a network that works. Install the Client and Server software, insert the new Unlock code and the upgrade is complete. There are no changes to your datafile. It really is that simple. I need things added to the database. Talk to us. We have work in progress all the time. The chances are that your request is already on our To do list. If it is not, we will look at it, and if we think it has general utility for all our users then we will put it on our To do list. If it is a change that is driven by Health Department requirements then the item will go to the top of the list. If it is nice but not vital it will be dealt with when we can. Some changes are quick to implement and will be done "On the fly". Other changes require a substantial effort on our part and may take some time to implement. We do have a Budget for the time we spend on STATIC programming, so the time we spend on STATIC is not limitless, If your request is specific to yourself or only to a small number of users then the change belongs in the category of Custom programming and will be charged for. Custom programming If you require additions to STATIC that are not covered by our budget or our programming intentions then you can pay us to do some Custom programming. This is not a trivial matter. If you require this then please call us.