When it comes to providing excellent childcare, there are no shortcuts! Unfortunately, for too long childcare and daycare service providers have been bogged down in a mountain of paperwork and documents that they hardly had time to actually take care of the children. In some places, this problem was dealt with by hiring a special supervisor or administrator to handle all the paperwork, the invoices and the rest of the administrative work.
Thankfully, nowadays there are better ways to deal with this problem, through using a daycare management software. These systems have become so advanced that they allow a daycare owner or provider to get rid of all the paper work and focus on actually managing, taking care of, and teaching the children. Let’s examine some of the top reasons why using a childcare management software application is beneficial.
1) No More Paperwork
This is by far the biggest advantage of using childcare software. The pile of paperwork that used to sit on the desk of the supervisor just disappeared. Actually, it just went into the computer. In the past, daycare supervisors would need to keep documents for every single child that entered the daycare. To make matters worse, in many cases they were required to keep records for children who have left the daycare, which made the amount of record-keeping enormous. Now, it gets stored in the application, and if using a cloud based system then it is even easier because the information is not even on the computer, it is in the cloud! That makes running a daycare so much easier and frees up much time for the daycare provider.
2) Cloud Based
Touching on that last point, there are different types of systems for managing daycares. Some of these systems are traditional while the more advanced ones are based in the cloud. These cloud-based software systems make running the system very easy for the user, because they do not have to worry about installation, backup, maintenance, upgrades..etc. All they need is an internet connection and that is it. Close Look Childcare Software is one of those cloud systems, and based on the features the only requirement for using the system is an internet connection and a userid/password. This point is extremely useful for many daycares who do not have in-house technical expertise.
3) Invoicing & Billing
Another area that used to be extremely difficult to manage is the billing. In the past, daycares would have to send out paper invoices to the parents, and they would have to process the payments and receipts of those invoices on a one-by-one bases. Nowadays, it is much easier to issue email invoices that simply go to the parent’s email. The parent can then pay that invoice either in-person or online via one of the payment processing systems. All the information is stored in the system making financial accounting so much easier than before, and saving the daycare owner a significant amount of time and money.
4) Children Communication
In the age of social media, where everything is known almost immediately as it happens, parents also want to know everything about their children as it happens. That is where some daycare management systems come in, by providing a parent app or area where teachers can send messages to the parent. Everything from how many times the child went to the restroom, to whether or not they ate their broccolli at lunchtime, can be communicated in real-time to parents.
5) Convenience & Security
It may be a surprise that storing information in the cloud today is actually more secure than storing it on a personal computer. In traditional software systems, the database usually resides on the computer that is located inside the daycare or the organization that is running the application. Today, with cloud software, the information resides in the cloud which means it is in a secure facility with many layers of software authentication to access it.
The use of childcare management software applications can save daycare operators huge amounts of effort, time and money. Compared to a few years ago, the process of managing a daycare has become much easier and requires less expertise due to software systems. It is no wonder that more daycare supervisors and owners are migrating to these new cloud based systems. And as the benefits of using these systems are tremendous, this trend is bound to increase.
