Procare Blog

Did you know you can email or print a letter to the families in your child care, daycare or preschool directly through your child care management software? Procare Software® makes it easy to select only the group of families to whom a particular email should be sent then allows you to send them off all at once. You can even record the fact that you sent a letter by automatically including a note in each family’s log.

How to Email Letters

Select Families to Include

Begin by using the built-in Select Filter to choose only the group of families you wish to include for your email or letter. For example you may select only families with children in a certain classroom or only those with a balance due and so forth. You’ll also have the option to choose certain families within the selected group just before emailing or printing the letter.

Choose Your Letter or Write a New One

Next you’ll use Procare’s built-in Merge Letters feature to choose an existing letter or create one from scratch. Each person’s name and address (or whatever fields you choose to insert) will be included automatically.

1. Click the Merge Account Letter icon (looks like a fountain pen) on the account toolbar.
2. From the File menu choose Open (to select an existing letter) or New to create a brand new one.
3. For a new letter use the Fields menu to insert fields from Procare such as the parent’s first name (known as the payer) like <Payr-First> or the balance due on the account like <Acct-Balance>.

Email or Print the Letter

The last step is to email (see note below) or print the letter.

1. Within the Merge Letters feature click File > Email (or Print).
2. Choose whether the email/letter will be sent to the Current Account only (the one family displayed in the background) or to the Selected Accounts (those included in your filter).
3. For email enter a Subject line and a Message that will appear within the body of the email then click Continue. Note: The letter itself will be included as a PDF attachment to the email. So you may wish to say something like “Please open the attached PDF file for an important announcement concerning ABC Child Care.”
4. At the Email List screen check the families to whom you wish to send this email/letter then click the Email button. Any that appear in red do not have a valid email address. You may also want to check the box that says “Record in Customer Log” so you have a record of having sent this information to each family.

Note: The email option works with Microsoft Outlook or use your own SMTP mail server. Also, some third party email programs like gmail and yahoo may allow you to send email using SMTP protocol. See: Configure Email Settings

You may also be interested in a previous article on how to Email Statements to families. 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.