A reader recently asked if ProCare Child Care Management Software would work for a drop-in center. An excellent question, indeed. The short answer is “yes”, but giving you the best advice means asking a few more questions, since drop-in care can operate in a number of different ways. Whether families return and how you handle drop-in billing are two important considerations.
One Time Only Families
Do children at your drop-in center tend to come just once? This model might fit a daycare provider operating in a retail or entertainment environment, like a mall or casino. Children are dropped off for a while, but it’s unlikely you’ll see them again, at least not on a regular basis. If this is the case for a large percentage of your families then ProCare may not be the best choice for your situation.
Returning Families
ProCare is intended more for returning families, and children you expect to see regularly, even though you may not know just when they will “drop-in”. If you have a mix of part time and full time children, along with drop-ins, then ProCare can be an especially good fit. The next thing to consider is how families are charged their drop-in fees.
Pre-Pay for a Block of Hours
In some centers, families may purchase a preset block of hours in advance, then use up a few hours each time they drop-in. You can easily record the payment for the block of hours in ProCare Family Accounting letting the family carry a credit balance on their account. As hours are charged to their account the credit balance gradually decreases until it reaches zero. At that point additional blocks may be purchased.
Note: Another option would be to use the Deposit on Account feature, but that’s an article for another day.
Pay Me Now
The ”Pay Me Now” model means a family pays when the child is picked up. Or they might pay a deposit at drop-off with any remaining amount due at pick up. This means you’re charging fees and accepting payments throughout the day as various children come and go. In this case you may manually record charges to their Ledger Card (based on Attendance Reports) or use the Variable Daily Posting feature to quickly enter the hours and have the calculation done for you.
Pay Me Later
The most efficient way to process drop-in fees is the “Pay Me Later” model. Here you wait until the end of the day or week and charge all families at once. This saves time as you don’t need to record charges and payments every time a child comes or goes. The parent can pay the next time they come in or use the Tuition Express Payment Processing service to automatically collect fees and handle credit card payments.
Future of Drop In Billing
One thing we’ve heard is that drop-in centers would like to take advantage of the Automatic Billing feature, but charge just one family at a time. That way you could use the “Pay Me Now” approach without manually entering hours or amounts. Drop-in billing has been a hot topic of discussion among the ProCare team and there is a strong likelihood that something along these lines will be available in a next generation ProCare product. Stay tuned.
Good luck with your drop-in centers and until next time, cheers!
-Phil
If you have questions or comments about this article (or suggestions for another article) I’d be pleased to hear from you. Drop me at note at phil@procaresoftware.com.
