Your Computer as Day Care Worker

While running a day care is all about caring for children, when you get a population of several dozen or more children, there is a lot of detail that must be kept track of. Some of the areas of documentation that must be kept track of include

. Each child's profile data including birthday, allergies, medications, nap issues as well as the basic data such as name, address, parents, emergency contact and how long the child has been in your day care.
. The payment history of each child including when the parents were invoiced and if the child's account is up to date.
. Parent information such as place of work, home, work and cell phone numbers, email addresses and family history information such as whether the child is from a single parent home, if the child has lost a parent to death or the result of a divorce. Its not meddling to learn this information because it is part of the child's emotional profile.
. Alternative pick up information so if the child is going to be dropped off at day care by her older brother every Tuesday and Thursday but picked up by Aunt Helen Wednesdays and Friday's, you know all of that information and have those person's profile information so you only turn over the children to recognized and trusted adults.

The problem is that when you are running a day care, keeping up on the many details that you have to know about to run a day care is one thing that very easily falls through the cracks. Then one day you walk into the office to mountains of disorganized papers and it seems impossible that you could ever get it straightened out.

This is where your computer can be the most important day care worker you have. There are several day care scheduling software packages that are designed specifically to organize the unique details that you must know to run a day care and to integrate that information with your accounting software and other packages that must tap that data base from time to time. The investment you make in the computer and the scheduling software is definitely a necessary part of your budget and not a place to cut corners.

In addition to the important details about each child, that scheduling software can be a huge lifesaver in managing your day care workers. When I think of " scheduling software" the first thing that comes to mind is how to create and maintain the work schedules of each employee you have so you always have adequate staff on hand to manage the kids.

This can be a real juggling act in light of the fact that you may not have the same number of kids each day. As you have some children there 5 days a week, others Tuesday and Thursday, others Monday Wednesday and Friday and others once a month, knowing how many children to expect and how many workers to have on hand could drive you crazy just keeping up on it. But this kind of balancing is a perfect task for a computer program like childcare scheduling software because it can do the math on your expected child population each day and then take the worker schedules and match things up so you know what to expect. It can also alert you when you will have holes in your schedule so you can get out ahead of such problems and it can help you maintain a list of backup workers to call upon when a worker calls in sick so you are not caught short staffed which is hard on the rest of the staff and not good for the kids.

On the business side of things, day care software can help you track supplies and maintain your budget so you have a tool to watch the costs of running a day care and know in advance if you have any issues with money and what it is costing you to run your facility. These are just a few of the benefits a good computer and good software can offer you to take a huge amount of stress and worry off of you the owner and administrator of your day care. And when that worry is lifted, you can focus on what is important which is taking care of those little ones who are in your charge.

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