Procare Blog

Are you still keeping track of children on the waiting list at your child care, daycare or preschool with paper and pencil, or perhaps a computer spreadsheet? Using Child Care Software specifically designed for the management of your center can help you more efficiently manage your waiting list and make more informed decisions about how to market your child care business.

In this article we’ll show you how Procare Software® can help you both manage your waiting list and keep track of how people found out about your center. 

Waiting List Categories

It’s easy to set up a waiting list by creating enrollment categories in Procare. You could use just a single status like “Waiting List” or create multiple items like “Wait List – Student”, “Wait List – Faculty / Staff”, “Wait List – Public” to categorize each person on the list. This may be useful if you have different levels of priority for each group.

1. From the Procare Home screen go to Configuration > System > Data Management > Status & Relationships > Child’s Enrollment Status.
2. Enter a new status on the top blank line, then click Save > Exit.
3. Then look up a family and assign a waiting list status on the Child’s Enrollment screen.

Waiting List Report

Use an enrollment report to find out how many (and which) children are on the waiting list.

1. In Family Data & Accounting choose Reports > Family Data > Child Enrollment. To see a list of children whose status has changed (everyone new to the waiting list) choose Change of Enrollment Status. To include everyone at their current status (everyone on the waiting list) choose Enrollment Status Summary.
2. Choose a Date Range then click Run Report.
3. With the report on screen dbl-click a status (like Waiting List) to get a detailed list of all children assigned that status.

As an alternative try the following report that let’s you sort by name, age, or classroom. Choose Reports > Family Data > Filtered Reports > Child: Birthday – Age Summary. Use the Filter to select the Enrollment Status of “Waiting List” as of a date you specify.

Track Your Marketing Source

Be sure to ask new enrollees and those on the waiting list how they heard about you. That way you can track the source and get a picture of what marketing sources are working for you. For example you may wish to track how many people saw your add in the yellow pages, found you online, heard from a friend, saw your flyer, or found a coupon, etc.

1. Create a tracking group called something like “Marketing” and items within the group like “Yellow Pages”, “Online”, etc. See the knowledge base article on how to Manage Tracking Items.
2. Assign your marketing items to the Account Tracking screen for each family.
3. Use the Account Filter to get a quick count of the number of families with each referral source.
4. Print a report to get a list of families assigned to each category like Reports > Family Data > Tracking Account: Contact Information. Then choose your “Marketing” category and Run Report.

Here’s wishing you success with your enrollment, waiting lists and marketing efforts. Until next time, cheers!

-Phil

P.S. You may also like to Follow Me on Twitter.

If you have questions or comments about this article (or suggestions for another article) I’d be pleased to hear from you. Drop me at note at phil@procaresoftware.com.