In 2011, a survey by Edutopia.org found that an online parent portal was the second most desired ways parents wanted to receive news from their children’s school. At the time, nearly half logged in once or twice a week while another quarter of the parents surveyed checked in three to five times per week.

Meal tracking is an essential part of childcare management, particularly if your facility participates in government reduced lunch programs or other subsidized programs. The federal government leaves it to the states to administer federal programs, which simplifies filing for you but still makes you responsible for keeping track of all meals served to your kids.

Every morning and every afternoon the great parent stampede occurs. In the morning, parents line up to sign in their children so they can rush off to work. In the afternoon, they line up to sign out their children so they can rush home to fix dinner.

The owner of a childcare management facility wears many hats, just like any other small business owner. The accountant hat may be one of the most time-consuming and least liked of them all. However, using a software solution that combines all the required applications for invoicing and billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and general ledger can streamline your bookkeeping process while reducing errors.

The key to a good relationship is good communication and the most important relationship you will have in your childcare center, outside of the one you have with the children, is the one you have with their parents.

One of the most difficult challenges in running any business is managing the employees. Turnover in the childcare industry is one of the highest across all business segments and is an ongoing problem for childcare services.

According to a report by the Afterschool Alliance, there were 10.2 million attending after school programs. Such programs have shown to result in significantly higher test scores, improved day school attendance, and reduce criminal activity within the community.

Childcare management software is probably the best thing since sliced bread for running any childcare business. Just think what sliced bread did to speed up PB&J sandwich production. On top of spending time with the kids, their parents, and your staff, there are numerous other tasks to manage -- from activity enrollment and scheduling to newsletters and communication with parents.

Summer camp is just around the corner, but most administrators have been working long before this to get ready for the campers and counselors coming their way. When you think about it, summer camp is simply short-term childcare over the course of a season.

While the thought of camping and computers don't often go together, technology can streamline paperwork and help you keep up with all your administrative chores. Management software for summer camps provides an abundance of tools that make preparation and administration less stressful for you and your staff.

If you are in the market for a new childcare management solution, you have plenty of options available. There is software for almost any business size, some with seemingly endless bells and whistles (also known as features), and others that look extremely simple to operate. You can choose from cloud-based solutions or installed (on-premise) software.

Whether you operate a daycare center, an after school program, or any other type of childcare service, there's a solution for you.