Stage 2: Kickoff

Sponsorship and decision ownership, not expanding the working roster. Name who makes final calls, who owns prep lanes, and get the client's mind thinking about scale and importance. Many have not prepared.

phase_key: kickoff

What this stage accomplishes

• Project owner and executive sponsor are named as final decision makers.
• Leads are named for COA/GL, gathering current references, next-round business data, and design-decision review.
• Current references (how they work today) are in motion so the implementer can map to Vista.
• Next-round business data has lane owners from the Onboarding working matrix (assignment now; data itself waits for Stage 4).
• Timeline expectations are framed against the Stage 1 start and go-live dates (educational overview, not a forced track picker). Typical purchase-to-live is about six months with a few hours of effort each week.
• Vista environment pattern is clear: test companies on the production SQL server; company copy test→live about one month before go-live.
• The team leaves Kickoff ready for Code Format Design.

Typical work / artifacts

Decision ownership and sponsorship

Name:

• Client Project Owner and Executive Sponsor as final decision makers
• Leads for COA / GL
• Who gathers current references
• Who owns next-round business data
• Who reviews design decisions

Kickoff is about conformity and air cover. It does not rebuild the Onboarding working matrix. Sponsor and project owner are often different people from the matrix doers (see Stage 1 open flag).

Sign-off gate: There is no meaningful difference between dual sponsor sign-off (e.g. CFO + Controller) vs a single Client Project Owner gate as titles. How they handle decision ownership is internal. What matters is that someone drives the work and makes sure it gets done.

Current references (data readiness)

Current references = how they work today (policies, processes, close needs) so we can translate into Vista. Larger clients often already have process policies (e.g. to purchase something they must do A, B, C). Those are some of the easiest/highest-value artifacts because the implementation follows their procedures. Same for PO three-way match: if required, training must cover receiving / receipt matching as the Vista translation.

In general: company policies are good; more accounting-type policies are good (journal entry requirements, job cost adjustments, how AP invoices are handled). Also consider AP and payroll check processes.

Reporting is important but we will never replicate every report. Do not ask them to bring every AP/AR report. Ask what data they need to close the books (e.g. AP aging must match GL) so the implementer can map "in Vista use this report and compare to that report."

Ready means enough process + close-data intent to map training and Vista equivalents, not a perfect cleansed data dump or a full legacy report library.

Next-round business data

Who on the Onboarding working matrix prepares and validates:

• Chart of accounts (COA / GL)
• Departments
• Vendors
• Customers
• Employees

Those are lane owners. Keep ownership on the doers already named in Stage 1.

Priority order (COA first)

The GL chart of accounts is the single most important setup item. It drives setup in all of the other forms. Second most important: departments. Give COA + departments and you can do the full base setup with no other questions. Departments complete department setup tables that are more involved than importing the COA alone: you create additional accounts for each department; that setup goes hand in hand with COA.

Beyond those two: vendor list, customer list, and employee list are very necessary for importing. Lane samples matter later; they are not the gating item ahead of COA + departments.

Job cost: clients usually do not just import all jobs (minimum ~five imports to populate all tables), so full job import typically isn't done. Very helpful: pick a handful of jobs, pull the full setup, and manually enter or import those so you can run newer jobs in Vista. Some clients also replicate cost related to those jobs to compare reports. A nice concept when they want it.

Gatherers: typically the lane owners (AP vendors, Billing/AR customers, Payroll employees, Ops/Controller departments) unless IT or a consultant extracts.

Departments only at Kickoff

At Kickoff you only need the departments. Departments drive how the chart of accounts needs to be set up and how department forms are set up. Crews, unions, deductions, liabilities, and similar deeper structure are Stage 4 Core Configuration work, not Kickoff depth. Do not over-collect crews/unions/burden at Kickoff. Payroll side: any union-related and/or prevailing wage information is very beneficial when available, but the depth of that setup is Stage 4.

Employee pack (when HR/PR in scope)

With HR and Payroll in scope, employee data is more than a name-only roster. Needed employee records include name, address, birthdate, SSNs/socials, salary amount, hourly rate, and Vista-specific setups such as payroll group, payroll department, and related fields.

If they are processing payroll: federal and state filing statuses; employee-specific deductions (medical, dental, vision, 401k, child support, garnishments); matching employer benefits/liabilities; direct deposit; employee leave.

Most importantly, if converting mid–calendar year, always load employee accumulations (YTD calculated amounts: gross wages, federal withholding withheld, etc.) needed for W-2s at year end.

Who gathers it: typically Payroll, unless the company has IT that can extract from behind the scenes, or a consultant who can pull from a database.

Timeline chart

Educational overview. Compare the client's locked start and target go-live to a 3 / 6 / 9-month flow. The Playbook chart remains framing; Todd's norm is the ~6-month purchase-to-live pattern.

Typical path: About six months from purchase to go-live (example: purchase in January, start implementation around March, work those ~four months, go-live in July). That is very common. Faster schedules just compress that path.

Effort: Clients still have regular jobs/workload. They need to dedicate at least a few hours each week to Vista-related work. If they do that, a successful implementation is very likely. No effort gets bad results.

Extremes:

• ~2 months: compressed exception (e.g. SRC PoC span). Still depends on dedicated effort. Very small, dedicated companies can go live in about one month if they own setup, entry, and training.
• ~12 months or more: usually ridiculous as a timeframe except exceptions like multiple products together and/or multiple companies. Clients that try ~12-month implementations often never go live because they never do the work.

Risks: A short timeframe risks incomplete setup, weak training, and not being ready. The same failure happens on a 3, 6, or 9 month plan if they don't put in the work. The real risk of extending the implementation is stale master data: e.g. import ~1000 vendors in March for a Jan 1 go-live. Do you maintain that list for nine months, or fresh-import before go-live, and if fresh-import are you ready / how much manual change remains?

This is not a forced track picker. Timeline is client-dependent. Labels may need fine-tuning. Both Onboarding and Kickoff exist to get the client thinking about scale and importance before configuration starts.

Vista environment (prod vs test)

Vista is always a single SQL server unless the client is large enough to purchase a true test server and production server. Even in that dual-server case, a brand-new implementation creates test companies in the production server. That is where all setup, testing, and training occur.

About one month prior to go-live, a company copy happens on that production server: test company → live company number. Formats remain the same. Setups copy from test to live. Test transactional data/records do not copy. Master setup files such as vendors, customers, and employees are included in that copy.

Separately, once or twice a year the production server may be copied over to the test server (for large clients with a true test server) so the client can work with their live company numbers using more current information.

Do not teach a generic "stand up a separate early sandbox VM or config stays theoretical" story as the Vista default. The default new-impl pattern is test company(ies) on the production server, then company copy ~1 month before go-live.

Process investment mindset

Reinforce the Stage 1 process-investment mindset while naming sponsors and data-readiness owners. Client chose to upgrade ERP. Invest in process improvement, not a software swap that clones legacy pain.

Mission Prep

People and sponsorship, financial foundation, data readiness, decision coverage, plus any custom prep items. Statuses and owners as needed so nothing is orphaned before design.

Connection to Company Tracker / Vista

Mission Prep is process prep owned in the Playbook, not a Company Tracker sync panel. Tracker sync for setup visibility and assignees starts in later stages (notably Core Configuration and Integrations). The actual business-data files themselves are not needed until Stage 4: Core Configuration.

Exit / moves to next stage

Kickoff can be closed once next-round business-data owners (vendors/customers/employees/departments, plus COA) and due dates are assigned. That assignment means "you go get the data." The actual data itself is not needed until Stage 4 Core Configuration. Do not hold Kickoff Complete waiting for samples/files to arrive.

Decision ownership, sponsorship, data-readiness ownership, and timeline framing should also be in place for design work. The implementation then moves to Code Format Design.

In the product

In Mission Control, complete the Kickoff workspace for the selected company. For step-by-step UI, see Complete the Kickoff Stage. For shell navigation and exports, see Run the Implementation Playbook.