Abstract In this paper the atom-phonon coupling model is applied to explain and illustrate the behavior of a linear chain of molecules in the case of spin crossover (SCO) compounds. It is well known that besides the system's cooperativity which influences the hysteretic behavior of SCO complexes, the size of the system also plays a determinant role. The system's properties are analyzed using a parabolic algorithm as a new method proposed herein for the first time in order to take into account the phonon contribution. Based on exact calculations, this method is closer to the reality and more efficient than the mean-field approximation (MFA). In particular, both the parabolic algorithm and the dynamic-matrix method are tested and compared and it is shown from the analysis of the system's behavior that large size can be handled without generating all the system states. We also analyzed the role of degeneracy, and the thermal variation of both the entropy and heat capacity in the ferromagnetic-like coupling case.