There are a lot of moving parts to operating a childcare facility. Between selecting a location to start a facility to tracking meals and monitoring finances, you can feel pulled in a dozen directions at once.
This handy checklist provides a reminder of Things-to-Do at every point in your journey from startup to daily operations.
Getting Started
You have decided it’s time to open a childcare center. What steps do you need to take?
- Determine demand - estimate the number of families seeking childcare services in your area. Keep in mind the rates you hope to charge and the type of childcare services and activities you intend to offer. Limit your estimate to those actively seeking services that can pay your rates, not everyone who needs services.
- Identify the financial feasibility - estimate overall startup costs of developing your facility. Include soft costs (permits, fees), hard costs (construction, equipment), hidden costs (staff, board time), contingency costs (emergency set-asides for construction issues), and lost income (if your program cannot run during part of construction).
- Obtain a license - Licensing requirements differ from state to state. Contact your local childcare office to determine what your state’s regulations. The state can provide a list of tasks to complete before you can get a license.
- Secure financing - It can take between $10,000 and $50,000 to startup a childcare center. Consider not just bank loans but loans from friends and family, grants, or a partnership.
- Select a location - Find a location in the area you want to do business that is close to schools and can be accessed easily by your potential clients. Be sure to have plenty of room both indoors and out for the activities you hope to offer.
- Select childcare management software - Enrollment, billing and payment processing, scheduling, meal tracking, and more are all streamlined with the right childcare management software. Save hours of paperwork and manual tracking by using a software solution specially designed for childcare operations.
- Hire staff - Find qualified teachers and assistants as well as a receptionist. Prepare an employee handbook with all the important information they need to function.
- Write policies - you need to document everything for relicensing and a potential audit. Make sure you develop safety, employee, and client policies that cover everything from billing dates to managing illness.
Is everything in place for a fun and profitable childcare center? Great! Let’s move on.
Attracting Clients
The work of attracting clients actually begins while your childcare facility is being built. In fact, you need to start about three months before you expect to open. However, customer acquisition deserves its own list.
- Differentiate your business - Craft a message detailing how your childcare facility differs from competitors. What type of activities do you hope to offer? What age range will you accept? Will you provide meals? Look at everything you hope to do and create a plan to inform potential clients that your facility is the place for their children.
- Develop a promotional plan - What is the best way to let people know about your new business? Perhaps your demographic spends time on social media such as Facebook; perhaps an ad campaign is in order. Ask local business to help you distribute fliers; always carry business cards to leave with people you meet; and participate in community events such as local craft shows. Host an open house to let people see how much your children will love being there.
- Register with local childcare directories - Let the local childcare resource and referral agencies as well as city directories know you are open and ready to accept children.
Getting the word out is a start. You will always need to market your business as children age out or leave your care.
Beginning Operations
The first few weeks and months will test your organizational skills and show you places you may need to tweak your operations.
- Build a clientele - You probably will not start with full enrollment but that’s OK. A shake-down period is advisable for most new businesses, even franchises that opening new locations. It gives you, your staff, and your customers time to get used to everything.
- Determine the best time to open - in most areas of the country, opening just as school starts in the fall or in January after the holiday break seems to be the best time to start accepting new customers. The school break schedule allows parents time to take a tour, register, and enroll.
- Establish a waiting list - a waiting list is a good way to build enrollment slowly until you are ready to completely operational. If you are lucky and have a lot of interest, a waiting list will help you fill in where a potential customer drops out.
Beginning your childcare business is a bit like flying a plane. You begin to taxi slowly, putting on speed until you are airborne.
Maintaining Your Business with Childcare Software
Here are some standard activities you need to perform to keep your business going.
- Invoicing, Billing, and Payment Processing - this is an area where a childcare management software solution can save you time and improve your revenue stream. Providing online invoicing and bill payment is becoming an expected part of the service, particularly for upper income parents. Automation reduces late payments and lost checks.
- Meal tracking - if you provide meal service and are participating in certain programs, you need to keep track of meal counts and reporting. Automation helps here as well, keeping track of everything from special meal requirements to your meal budget.
- Scheduling and room ratios - maintaining child-teacher ratios for each age group gets complicated, especially if you have groups moving between rooms for different activities. A childcare software solution streamlines your scheduling and planning tasks and can provide notifications of understaffed classes and separate billing for added activities that are not part of the normal service.
- Weekly and monthly financial tracking - manually tracking financials creates a mound of paperwork. Using third party accounting software or an accounting module integrated into a larger solution can provide fast reporting with flexible categories and easy-to-read graphs.
Once your business is up and running, you can maintain a disciplined schedule for your daily, weekly, and monthly activities to reduce the chance you will miss something.
A well-run childcare center builds a solid reputation for service.
From obtaining your license and bank loan to your first class of kids, you have hundreds of steps and tasks to perform. You can’t keep everything in your head at all times. Use this management checklist to keep you on track to opening and operating a top notch childcare facility.
