Preschool Wait List: Keep in Touch with Parents
Waiting in line can be a hard thing to do, especially if you’re waiting for something important to you. For children, that might be as simple as waiting for lunch on pizza day. For their parents, it might be waiting for an opening at your child care, daycare or preschool. And for you, as their provider, it might be waiting for the official pre-registration payment to hold their slot.
A key part of making sure they do enroll is keeping in touch with the people on your waiting list. Luckily, for child care administrators, it’s easy to create a contact list of parent names, phone numbers and email addresses for your wait list families. By using Procare Software®, you can create a printed list or choose to email or send text messages to selected families all at once. Continue reading
Subsidized Child Care: Now Accepting Deposits
When it comes to subsidized child care, have you ever been caught holding the bag? That is, being responsible for a financial shortfall because someone else did not live up to their end of the bargain. Perhaps a family left without making the co-payment for their final month. Or, maybe your state agency paid less than expected and you’re unable to collect the remaining balance from the parents. In either case, it’s an unenviable situation to find yourself in when child care services have already been provided and you’re left with little chance of getting paid.
In order to provide a quality early childhood experience for all the children in your care, each family needs to pay their share. When you’re not collecting full payment for subsidized care, that impedes your ability to keep good teachers, maintain the playground, provide enrichment programs, offer healthy snacks, etc; the list goes on and on.
So what could you do to keep from getting stuck holding the bag? Last week, we talked about taking Deposits for Summer Child Care. This week we’ll take the deposit concept further and show you how to make sure subsidized care gets paid in full.
Daycare Policies & Subsidized Care
In order to ensure payment, consider adopting a policy that requires a deposit. The deposit would be paid in advance and used to cover the co-payment for their last month. In other words, when a family eventually leaves the center their prepaid deposit would be refunded to pay their final month of child care. Continue reading
Prepaid Deposits for Summer Child Care
The summer session at your child care, daycare or preschool may not include building sand castles, but with dozens of crafts, fun field trips and plenty of outdoor play, families may already be signing up. A great way to handle summer sign ups is by charging a prepaid deposit. Doing so has two benefits. First, you’ll know you’re getting at least some of the money up front; second, people are much more likely to keep their commitment when they pay a deposit.
According to the policies at your center, you may eventually credit the prepaid amount back to the family (toward their summer tuition) or, if the deposit is non-refundable, convert it to a fee, such as a registration or forfeiture fee. This may be appropriate if the child ends up being a no-show.
So let’s get out our sand shovel and dig in to see how Child Care Software from Procare can help you keep track of prepaid deposits. You may also be interested in a previous article on Tracking Summer Enrollment. Continue reading
Learn Procare at Procare University
Are you looking to improve your knowledge of Procare Software®? Perhaps you’re just getting started or know how to do a few things, but want to learn more. You might be a new staff member who needs to get up to speed or perhaps you’re the person in charge of training new hires at your child care, daycare or preschool. You might even be completing your degree in early childhood education and want to bolster your resume. Or, you may be a consultant who helps people nurture and grow their child care business.
For all of you, we’re very pleased to announce the official launch of Procare University, also known as Procare U. A few months ago you saw a Sneak Preview of Procare U. Now there are lessons available to cover the basics of using the Family Data and Family Accounting modules.
3 Part Approach to Learning
Procare U is different from and enhances other ways to learn Procare, such as Free Webinars, Videos, Articles and Custom Training. Each online class at Procare U takes a three part approach to learning. Continue reading
Road to the Future: Mobile Apps for Child Care Management
Roads are wonderful metaphors. They can represent links between time and place, ways to get from here to there and anticipation of what’s coming around the bend. So what might that road look like between technology and your child care business?
Well, there’s a good chance you have some kind of mobile device, perhaps more than one. You may own a smartphone, iPad, or similar tablet or Android device. If so, you’re familiar with the dazzling array of “apps” available to do anything from teaching kids the alphabet to checking your bank balance and everything in between. So, it’s probably no surprise we frequently hear the question: “Is Procare working on a mobile app for child care management?”
With that in mind, I recently had the opportunity to speak with our development team about the future of mobile apps and what that might look like when using Procare Software® together with Procare Data Hosting. So here’s a sneak peak, a road map, if you will, of what we’re working on. It’s all very preliminary right now and there is no fixed timeline, but it’s still exciting to think of the possibilities and perhaps feel rather like a Procare insider on this little day trip. Continue reading