– January 12, 2017
Balancing happy customers with a successful operation can be difficult in child care services. This is especially true when it comes to late pickups. It can be tempting to allow “personal favors” for parents who have a lot on their plates, however, parents can easily take advantage of these “personal favors.”
If the atmosphere of your child care service is usually friendly and laid back, you may be reluctant to add penalizations to your policies for fear of creating tension. But, over time, a lenient pick-up policy will cause your child care program to lose money when parents are late and staff members are forced to work extra time. If the fees aren’t consistent, parents will get the impression you’re not serious about persistently ending the day as scheduled and may take advantage of your policies.
Accurate billing is important to uphold the mutual agreement outlined in your policy statements. Modern management applications designed for school aged child care (SACC) programs take the hassle and pressure out of keeping track by doing it for you. The systems allow parents to easily access policy documents and account information for themselves, which enforces compliance. Smart technology will pay for itself by capturing each billable event and relieving the stress of policy enforcement.
Management software for your child care service doesn’t just optimize your time and money, but creates an easy, trackable trail. It’s not every day that a parent questions an item on your bill, but you have to be prepared to answer any challenges. With a digital record-keeping system, you’re already covered without any extra consideration or effort. Billing for extra services will automatically be tallied and the fees are calculated accurately per your specifications.
Many child care program administrators and managers agree that charging a late fee to encourage promptness is good for business as well as structure. Still, some policy makers have expressed that they are not against forgiving a couple of allowances in the spirit of good faith. What is holding them back, however, is the logistics of implementing a forgiving fee system. Children may have different pick up times on different days, and parents who are late may call and want to know if they’ve used their freebee yet. With older, unintegrated record keeping systems, the staff member would have to double-check that every child coming or going was on time and notate the extra fee. That roadblock is eliminated altogether when attendance records are saved to one cloud-based file.
Not assessing late fees automatically can cause your program money. That's why checking children in and out with a management software is an easy solution tailored to the unique needs of both staff and parents.
