The right early year's software can make or break your setting
Choosing the best early years software can do absolute wonders. It not only provides a less-stressed work environment for everyone but also helps the staff to deal with their day-to-day tasks more proficiently.
With the growing demand for this software, there are a lot of options out there to pick from. Yet it’s crucial to choose your software carefully — or switch to a new one after careful consideration.
How are you supposed to choose? What are the pain points with your current software, if you are using one?
Each early years software offers elements that can impact your time management, parent partnerships, customer support, and other vital parts of your day-to-day work. That’s why it’s crucial to identify what features matter most to you and look for those aspects when choosing nursery software that will suit your setting best.
So let’s talk about what to keep an eye out for when you’re choosing early years software.
Child Development
Above all, the core intention of going digital with your EY setting is to have an easy-to-use tool that records quick observations, obligatory assessments, and checks to maximize the quality of your child care. If you aren’t getting that from your current (or future) software, it might not be a good fit in the long run.
With personalized and detailed profiles for each child, good nursery software allows you to record your day-to-day care moments as well as key developmental milestones in children’s lives. Recording this should be easy — you shouldn’t be completely drawn away from your real-life work with the children.
From meal times to nappy updates and allergies, early years software accounts for all the activities in a digital journal that helps run your setting smoothly. It also creates more time for connecting with children, so you can focus on your relationships instead of stacks of files and spreadsheets.
Parent Communication
Two-way quality communication between you and the parents is another vital requirement that elevates your EY setting. Long gone are the days of a hefty address book to contact parents and discuss their child’s development every week.
For instant contact and messaging, it’s essential to have good digital software for your EY setting to bring the discussion into one place. After all, it’s easier for your team to make contact through a dedicated portal, rather than making their personal phone numbers or Facebook available.
Nursery software should be easy to access for parents and make it simple for you to send those key updates over to parents throughout the day. It should provide a parent portal where parents can easily communicate regarding their child, and you can respond quickly with just a few taps to save time.
Sharing pictures and videos of their child is a great way to take the parents on the journey of their child’s development. Being able to send video clips, images, or just simple notes to share those everyday moments can make a world of difference for the parents in your community.
A strong connection with parents can effortlessly increase your nursery's reputation, and act as a conclusive factor for prospective parents by making your EY setting the best one available.
Billing and Finance
It’s no secret that dealing with nursery billing and invoicing is a tedious task that requires a lot of attention and valuable time. But an efficient and flexible software system can shoulder a lot of the work for you.
Here are some key features you should look for, which can make the biggest difference:
● Creating batch invoices with editable features, based on children’s booking and funding status
● Easily incorporate discounts, additional service fees, or funding if available
● Able to send financial documents to the parents in the legally required format for your area
● Integrated payment system with automatic reminders, so parents can pay tuition directly through the app
When it comes to something as critical as finances, you’ve got to make sure your software is a perfect fit. If you’d like to learn some more about all the ways a good EY software can ease your budgeting, you can read all about it here.
Occupancy
Occupancy planning, room and staff rotas, schedule arrangements, session distributions — all these plannings are easy to map out in EY software. No more spending hours in calendars and spreadsheets.
An occupancy planner is one of the best features to look for in nursery software, as it allows you to see a complete visual of the sessions booked, with available spaces and other requirements. That makes it easy to schedule your team and stick to ratios, but also find extra spots for enrolment.
It should also go the extra mile and show a sorted chart of rooms for you to plan future sessions, or report on upcoming occupancy in advance. It undoubtedly minimizes the pressure of planning everything at once, as it allows access to all information on one screen.
These occupancy, availability, and ratios already in the system reduce the need for double data entry and working in multiple spreadsheets. Utilize this time in making decisions on how to target and improve your occupancy and eventually boost your revenue.
Red flags of a bad nursery software
If your staff can’t adapt to your current nursery management system, it’s important to reflect on why that might be.
Is your staff underusing the current nursery software or avoiding it altogether? A bad user interface with complicated steps could be one of the reasons. Nurseries are already hectic places, so you don’t want any additional stress points during the day. Make sure the software is easy to use and comes with a user guide in detail.
Bad nursery management systems fail to adapt to the way your business works. If the software isn’t open to customization, it can cause problems in managing daily tasks. You should have room to edit or create fields, personalize your schedule and curriculum, or adjust the way invoicing or sending notifications to parents can change from nursery to nursery.
If the software fails to integrate with the other systems you are using, this can cause problems on the way as well.
Better Security
Another essential feature that should be part of your nursery software is its data protection and security policies. When you’re working with information like medical records and billing details, you can’t be too careful.
That’s why it’s necessary to let a secure, up-to-date security management system take charge of protecting your sensitive data.
While choosing nursery software, look through their website to ensure how they focus on data storage and security. Moreover, for a credible and better understanding of the data collected, your nursery software should be GDPR compliant, which helps run the setting smoothly.
Software in Real-time
If your current software requires continuous refreshes and countless updates to change a little information, it might be time to switch to a new one. EY software should make the workflow smoother instead of taking extra time.
To distinguish between different providers, always look for how quickly they integrate real-time updates across other devices. It’s essential to have a swift automatic integration system so that if educators update any information, the parents can easily access it on their own devices.
It should also provide an autosave feature that allows you to make the changes and exit with no extra thought.
Ask yourself these questions before deciding:
● How would you rate your staff’s adoption of the current system?
● Do you trust the reports generated by your system?
● Are you continually having issues with your system?
● Does your system provide you with a reliable forecast?
● Does your system facilitate and streamline critical business processes?
● Does your system store data? If so, is the capacity enough for you?
● Can your system adapt to your needs?