From enrollment to daily child monitoring, communication with parents, billing and reporting, staff management, and class scheduling, childcare management software enables you to remain at the top of your center’s operations. What’s more is that you get to track and control your business from a single dashboard, which eliminates the fatigue and inefficiencies synonymous with manual daycare management.

What is Childcare and Daycare Management Software?

Childcare management software is a digital platform designed to help you manage your daycare center more efficiently. Essentially, the software enables you to automate childcare administrative tasks, streamline communication, and step up your monitoring, thereby achieving efficiency in your daycare business.

From enrollment to daily child monitoring, communication with parents, billing and reporting, staff management, and class scheduling, daycare management software enables you to remain at the top of your center’s operations. What’s more is that you get to track and control your business from a single dashboard, which eliminates the fatigue and inefficiencies synonymous with manual daycare management.

• Efficient daycare management is crucial for the success of the business in that it:
• Enables you to create an environment that promotes learning and development
• Gives parents peace of mind knowing how their children are faring through real-time updates
• Frees time for the daycare staff, allowing them to give the children more attention
• Allows you to keep tabs on your staff’s day-to-day activities even when you’re physically absent

Childcare management platforms vary in features from one provider to another. But most solutions are designed to allow you to choose the features that match your goals. Once you decide on the platform, you can pay for the features you want for your daycare. Nonetheless, you can still upscale (acquire more features) or downscale (drop some) as your needs change.

Some common childcare management software features include:

• Enrollment tools
• Child portfolios
• Attendance check-in and check-out
• Immunization records
• Nutrition planning
• Real-time updates through photos, videos, and reports.
• Payment processing
• Staff attendance management
• Lesson planning and classroom management
• Activity and meal tracker
• Online staff training

Childcare Management Solutions

No matter the size of your daycare, you can find a suitable management solution to suit your goals and budget. While researching, you will come across a sea of platforms all offering to help you manage your business better.

Most solutions offer similar basic features, but the add-ons may vary. Before choosing a solution, you need to profile your needs first. For instance, highlight the administrative tasks that take most of your staff’s time and any other challenge you face as an institution. You should also consult your short-term and long-term goals so that you select a comprehensive solution that addresses the challenges while helping you achieve your goals.

Wonderschool

Wonderschool is our very own solution that empowers center directors to run their businesses effectively through seamless collaboration between teachers and families. The solution offers a comprehensive suite of business management, marketing, sales, and curriculum planning tools designed to help you manage your program with ease. Some features of Wonderschool daycare software include:

• Website builder
• Events and marketing tools
• Lead and enrollment management
• Parent communications
• Contactless check-in and check-out
• Billing and finance management
• Analytics

Childcare Platform

As already mentioned, a childcare platform allows you to manage your daycare with ease. It gives you control over your business, enabling you to collaborate with teachers and families and streamline the business processes.

Ideally, a good platform should provide flexibility, convenience, and security in every aspect of child care management – admission and scheduling, reporting, communication, planning, payment processing, etc.

Admissions and Scheduling

A practical childcare management software should provide tools for tracking enrollment and registration, and scheduling classes.

Reporting Tools

The software should allow report generation and provide alerts for attendance, milestone progress, children’s birthdays, payment status, etc.

Communication

A childcare management solution should enable you to keep parents informed about their child’s daily progress through multiple methods of communication – mobile app alerts, text messages, and emails.

Planning

A good solution should also allow you to create daily, weekly, and long-term activity plans for easier class management.

Payment Processing

Child care management solutions should enable you to automate billing for easier payment collection. It should also capture payment status to keep your financial records updated.

Benefits of Childcare Management Software

Lack of childcare management software subjects your business to more risks. From costly errors synonymous with manual processes to communication challenges between teachers and families, running a daycare the traditional way has become cumbersome and outdated.

Moreover, the risk of losing clients to businesses that have automated their childcare management remains apparent, as families prefer the efficiency and transparency brought about by digital solutions. In a nutshell, getting a digital management solution for your daycare center is indispensable.

Some of the benefits you stand to gain include:

Efficient Billing Processes

The ability to automate your payment processing ensures efficiency in the billing processes. In addition to sending automatic invoices to parents at preset dates, the system also sends payment reminders. This is beneficial as it increases the collection rate while taking away the stress of having to bill the parents manually.

Again, automated payment processing eliminates the risks of possible errors, which drag the payment process and increase friction between parents and the child care managers. Lastly, it provides easy financial reporting as you can easily retrieve the reports from the system.

Easy Remote Management

Childcare management software provides center directors the convenience of managing their business even remotely. One needs only to log into the platform to get real-time updates of the daily operations. In addition to enabling you guide the on-ground team, this feature helps keep the staff accountable as they know they’re monitored closely.

Reduced Costs

Automating administrative tasks leads to time and cost (direct and indirect) savings. This eliminates the need for hiring additional staff to handle the tasks. Also, going paperless saves the business a great deal in terms of resources.

Enhanced Client Relationships

Availability of an online platform where parents can register their children, pay their care fees, and monitor their daily activities provides great convenience. Automating the processes also eliminates the risk of errors, leading to better relationships as conflicts are easily avoided. Overall, the software enables you to achieve positive customer experiences.

Better Service

Automation frees staff time, allowing them to spend more time with the children. This enables them to monitor the children’s learning and development more closely, to pick areas where they need more assistance. As a result, your childcare service quality increases. Moreover, with reduced managerial tasks, owing to simplified processes, you can focus on improving your business, which translates to better performance.

Improved Communication

Perhaps the greatest advantage of using childcare software is that it fosters better communication. You can use the platform to relay vital information to families or teachers quickly. Parents also get real-time updates on their children’s progress. In a nutshell, the software helps streamline communications between directors, teachers, and families.

The Costs of Childcare Management Software

The cost of childcare management software depends on the provider you choose and the features you need. There are two categories of solutions – subscription-based (cloud) and on-premise (installed).

Generally, the subscription packages are mainly on a monthly or annual basis and often include the cost of support. On-premise is usually a one-time purchase, hence you have to incur additional infrastructure expenses and the cost for regular software updates.

As the cost is determined by the solution or features you settle for, you may need to request a custom quote from the providers you’re interested in.

Interested in Learning More About Childcare Management Software?

Child care management software is crucial for the smooth running of your daycare. Besides, the efficiency it brings about and the resulting time and cost savings are worth every penny you spend. Since no two solutions are the same, you may need to do in-depth research to find one that suits you. To achieve this, you can take the following steps:

• Read online reviews to identify the best solutions
• Go through their feature lists and pick the platforms that suit you
• Sign up for a trial and familiarize yourself with the software
• Select the best deal

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the process, then we welcome you to join us at Wonderschool. Some of the benefits of joining the Wonderschool family include:

• Marketplace with insights
• Website with direct enrollments
• Attendance tracking
• Online billing
• Peer community
• Partner discounts
• Ongoing professional development, among others.

Sound interesting? Click here to join and start enjoying the benefits of this amazing community, or contact us for more information.