Staying Organized in Childcare - How Good Software Can Keep You on Top

The childcare business has never been more appealing as a small business opportunity.  With more parents returning to work after a year or so of having a child, the need for childcare has never been so high and competitive.  If you check the local classifieds, online ads and yellow pages you will be bombarded with ads promoting childcare and daycare centers.  Caring for children is definitely no easy task; a highly underestimated job in modern society today is the Stay At Home Caregiver.  According to some reports, the equivalent for a stay at Home Caregivers salary if they were to get paid would be roughly $138,095 according to a report recently done by Salary.com.  This figure is up 3% from an earlier estimate from 2006 which put the calculations at roughly $134,121.   What does this mean to you as a childcare provider? It means that your job is busy; your job is stressful and anything but easy. 

Just like any business, along with the work come many other administrative responsibilities such as filing for taxes, maintaining customer and child records, tracking billing, payments, employees and much more.   At the end of the day of watching 10 children and making sure they don't eat the Play Doe and be nice to each other, sitting down to full in paper work is the last thing you want to do before you go home.  Traditionally small business owners would tackle these tasks with lots of paper, folders, forms, patience and extra time at night.  Ok, it's the 21st century so society has almost gone paperless in many ways including managing these tasks using computers.  If you are still using the old fashion way with file folders, forms and paper you are literally spending hours upon hours a day or week simply keeping track of everything.  If you are using a computer congratulations you are definitely a world ahead, but are you still being as efficient as you can be? If you are currently using Excel or Word to write up and maintain documents and records that is excellent! But sometimes using Excel and Word can even be confusing and un-organized in its own way.  Using Word or Excel, you still are faced with the problem of saving all these files; and where to? Having multiple files scattered in folders all over the place isn't always the best way to store your information, especially if you are trying to find it in a hurry.  Not to mention, these are generic application programs geared toward a wide market and don't come with features you need NOW such as billing, tracking child immunizations, printing invoices and receipts.

Luckily, there are many software solutions that have been designed with the childcare provider in mind.  A good daycare system will accomplish a few things:

1) Cost Effective; meaning it will save you more money and time than what you had spent on it.
2) Easy to Use; meaning you don't have to be a computer science graduate to figure out how to use it.
3) Be Feature Rich; meaning it offers you a full range of features and functionality.
4) Upgrades Easy and Support; meaning you can get support when you need it, upgrade easily and quickly apply fixes and patches.

Now, there are literally hundreds of Daycare Solutions available; choosing the right one isn't always an easy task, a lot of vendors seem to be charging a lot but you don't always have to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to implement a good system.  It seems that most Daycare Management Systems are provided by small ISV's or small software companies; you want to select a product from a good company that has a firm grasp of child care management; you don't want to spend too much, but you don't want to spend too little; avoid products ranging in price from $10 to $20 as they may lack a professional touch and ultimately will make things more difficult than easy for you.

A) Offers you free support; whether it be from an email or phone number.

B) Has automatic updates; can be hard to find but some newer innovative packages such as Home Daycare Plus from Upsilon Dynamics supply this feature. Navigate to www.homedaycareplus.com for more information.

C) Offers features such as a basic punch clock, employee and care giver tracking, child and customer tracking, immunization tracking, invoicing and payment tracking, reporting capabilities, play room and rate management; just to name a few.

D) Find something you like the look of, something that is EASY to use and a product from a vendor that responds with results.  Most good software companies will gladly implement new features or fix bugs quickly if you work with them.

E) Offers you an easy to use 7-14 day trial with no obligations; just like buying a new car, test driving it first is always a good idea.

Choosing a Daycare System is like selecting a new car, you know they all have nice features; but in the end you want something that you are comfortable with, something that gives you great value for the price you pay and something from a company you know is willing to work with you to help you get the most from the software.  Following these simple guidelines will not only help you improve your profits, but give you more time to focus on the kids and in the end - yourself.