7 Biggest Child Care Challenges & How Technology Can Help

Having the right tools in place at your school or daycare means more enrollments, more secure finances, and long-term success for your school. For this reason, we wanted to address the common challenges and help you identify these pain points while providing potential solutions along the way.

7 Common Child Care Challenges

Below we explore 7 challenges that come with operating a school, daycare, or child care center of any kind.

1. Collecting Tuition on Time

Creating an environment that is nurturing and secure for students is crucial. However, in order to reach the standards you set out for your child care center, timely funding is paramount. Balancing the business and personal aspect of the relationships you develop with students and parents can be made easier by simplifying online payments.

Young parents trust technology more than past generations. According to a 2017 AITE study, 69 percent of millennials pay bills either online or with direct debit, and 52-percent of millennials never write checks. Offering multiple payment options and producing email reminders will help you stay on top of things so your doors can stay open.

2. Managing & Growing Enrollment

One of the toughest parts of operating a child care center is managing the flow of new students. You never want to turn away a family, if you can make room somehow. Knowing where there is space and what you can offer with a few clicks, rather than scrambling to organize your files, makes managing your classrooms and keeping them in ratio a breeze.

Utilizing the right child care solutions allows you to get a look at the big picture. This includes better managing your waitlists and using enrollment reports to determine what the availability is when prospective customers inquire about your child care center.

3. Keeping Track of Family Records

Operating a child care center comes with the responsibility of getting to know the ins-and-outs of every student under your watch. There is no shortage of information that you will need to track – immunizations, authorized pickups, and allergies are just a few that come to mind.

Having immediate access to important information simplifies the day-to-day operations. The family data module from Procare can save your center time and money, allowing your staff a chance to spend their time focusing on child development instead of combing through file cabinets.

4. Juggling Family Communications

Part of running a child care center is becoming a part of the local community’s fabric. Maintaining open lines of communication with parents is a key to making sure your child care center is successful. It’s not so different from how any business must rely on customer communication in order to continuously improve their product offerings. The major difference being that millennial parents are glued to their cellphones, and they might expect you to be as well.

Millennials check their phones 100 times per day, presenting you with numerous opportunities to reach them. Consistent and detailed communication with the families at your school will help your business run smoothly. Our software has been integrated with KidReports, presenting you with a way to simplify your day by providing an all-in-one comprehensive solution for center management and parent engagement. Keeping parents in the know about schedules, special events, added programs, tuition, billing, and changes in policy is beneficial.

5. Bookkeeping Can Be Hard

Manually tracking the vast quantities of information that comes with running a child care center can take up more time than would be preferred. Bookkeeping is a challenge, but it’s necessary, and most importantly it can be made easier.

By establishing a system for bookkeeping, you can improve communication with parents, cut down on unnecessary expenses, and continuously optimize your operations. Running a child care center is a continuous learning process, and the proper daycare bookkeeping software can help you each step of the way.

6. Managing Staff & Payroll

Child care centers mainly focus on the development of students, but, in a way, the child care professionals are developing their skills. Tracking and organizing data on the employee side of things shouldn’t be cast aside.

Your center will get a boost from Procare’s employee data and payroll module as a result of the structure and stability that comes with it. Providing employees with a stable environment to develop their careers enables them to go ahead and replicate that environment with the students and parents that come through your doors every day.

7. Security & Attendance

Providing adequate security measures at your child care center goes hand in hand with accurately tracking attendance and storing your data. Safety is paramount for parents, and part of that is keeping track of the kids who are under your watch.

Keeping accurate attendance data plays a role in keeping up with licensing requirements, maintaining ratios, and forecasting your staffing needs amongst a variety of other factors. Leveraging student attendance tracking software and security hardware can help you eliminate entry by unwanted visitors, track who comes and who goes, and provide a strong, secure environment that parents will prefer.

Final Thoughts

Operating your center presents a slew of headaches that can be eased by investing in modern child care technology that will assist with communication, data collection, organization and so much more. Consider the challenges listed above, and ask yourself – are you doing all you can to overcome them?

Looking for ways to automate and organize administrative and business functions such as registration, data collection, and payment processing at your child care center? Learn how Procare can help!