Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

• What is Daycare software?
• What are the common features of daycare software?
• What are the benefits of Daycare software?
• How much does Daycare software cost?
• Key considerations when purchasing Daycare software

What is Daycare software?

Daycare Software, also known as child care software, helps daycare providers handle essential tasks such as attendance tracking, staff and events scheduling, payment monitoring, curriculum planning, and student records management. The software also promotes effective communication between teachers and parents via features such as real-time messaging and emailing.

Moreover, daycare software helps improve work efficiency as it offers automation functionalities, enabling streamlining of tasks such as invoice generation, student enrollment, and child check-ins. These tools can serve multiple types of child care centers, including preschools, kindergartens, early education centers, after-school programs, drop-in programs, and camp facilities.

What are the common features of daycare software?

• Calendar management: Allows users to schedule and track important events, activities, and appointments within the child care center, facilitating efficient event planning and coordination between the staff and parents.
• Registration management: Helps make a list of and register attendees, visitors, customers, and children visiting the daycare facility. This allows the facility to keep a record of everyone who visits the day care.
• Attendance tracking: Enables daycare providers to store the daily, weekly, monthly, and year-long attendance history of a student as well as staff members.
• Employee management: Manages employees’ schedules and availability. Daycare managers can use this feature to monitor staff check-in and check-out times and total hours worked.
• Parent portal: Provides parents and guardians with an online gateway to access their child's data via a computer or mobile device. They can use this portal to update their child’s personal information and to communicate with the staff.

What are the benefits of daycare software?

• Automates record keeping: Daycare software automates record keeping by providing digital forms for daily reports, incidents, meals, medication, and assessments. It allows daycare providers to input information directly into the system, reducing manual paperwork. All recorded data is securely stored in a centralized database, enabling easy access and retrieval.
• Improves parent engagement: Child care software offers multiple features to support parent communication and involvement, which is necessary for the child’s development. It allows photo and video sharing, enabling parents to feel connected to their child's experiences. Shared calendars and scheduling features help parents participate in important events.
• Increases child security and safety: Improved child safety is one of the important benefits of childcare management software. The check-in feature provides reassurance to parents and staff, allowing them to track a child's arrival. It also serves as an attendance marker. Parents can list dietary restrictions on the parents portal and update emergency contact information. These combined features help protect the child and keep parents informed.
• Simplifies billing and invoicing: Daycare software solutions offer billing and invoicing features that support payment automation. The software can generate and distribute invoices automatically. It adjusts fees based on children's attendance and leaves, ensuring accurate billing. The tool also sends automatic reminders to parents about due dates and late payments on behalf of the day care providers.

How much does daycare software cost?

Most daycare software solutions on the market are priced on a "per month" basis, and their entry-level pricing plans range from $9 to $107* per month. An enterprise product that’s priced higher may include additional features such as immunization and allergy tracking, nutrition management, milestone tracking, and waitlist management.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of July 4, 2023.

Key considerations when purchasing daycare software

• Assess mission-critical features: As a child care provider, you should first identify your needs before choosing child care management software. Depending on the type of child care center you run, the features and functionalities you need from the tool will differ. For example, a daycare facility for toddlers will require features to track vaccination and nap times, whereas early education centers will need features to schedule lessons and classes. Hence, understand the pain points you want to address and then look for daycare software offering features that fulfill your needs.
• Analyze automation capabilities: Since automation features help save time and effort, it's important to understand the type of operations the tool can automate. Some of the typical administrative tasks that can be automated using child care software include child check-in, attendance tracking, payment reminders, and notification alerts. Having such automation options will make your day-to-day child care facility operations efficient and will leave you with ample time to focus on the well-being and development of the kids.
• Check integration with accounting software: Taking care of all the paper invoices and sending them one by one to parents is a hassle. Consider purchasing a daycare software solution that supports integration with accounting software as this will enable you to issue invoices that are sent directly to a parent's email. It improves the billing process, thus making financial accounting a breeze for the facility.