It is challenging for childcare providers to try and engage parents who have very busy schedules. You know the scenario: it’s either the morning or early evening and carers are dropping off or picking up children and are rushing to get out as quickly as possible. You want to have a chat with them about some important nursery information or perhaps pass them a bill, don’t take their need to hurry personally. However, running a business you need to make sure these important communications and bills/invoices are passed on as they can have a massive effect on your business.
Parents want nothing more than to hear regular updates on how their child is getting along, it’s just life gets in the way sometimes.
Waving your child off to school does get easier as the year goes on, but when they are waving their child off to nursery it is a lot harder.
Letting the parents stay involved in their day to day life – even when they are not physically there
Everyone’s lives get busier and busier, hence why they send their children off to nursery. Most children come from a home where both parents work, this results in children spending more time with childcare providers than they may with their parents at home.
Children can’t tell their parents what they did that day. This means it is up to the childcare providers to tell the parents and make sure they are keeping them in the loop, letting them know what they are learning and doing in the day, engaging with the parents so they don’t feel left out.
Keeping parents involved in their child’s day and keeping them informed of what they are learning will make parents feel more involved even though they cannot physically be there with them to enjoy the new experiences, just being able to hear and see what their child has done is a gift.
The easiest way to tell parents is by mobile technology, whether that be pictures of their child throughout the day, videos of them or even weekly/monthly roundups of what they have achieved. To most people phones are convenient and always used. Many products are simple to use to create accounts for the child’s details and then pass on the round-up of the child’s undertakings directly from the software application.
So you have solved how to keep parents in the loop with regards to the child’s development but now we are going to look at the other part of running a nursery that shouldn’t be a dirty word, it’s what makes you operate as a business and that word is MONEY!
Getting paid is crucial to your business longevity and survival and pretty much every nursery we speak to has experienced the scenario where a carer/parent has not either picked up the bill/invoice or not paid on time.
Below we are going to look at how you can introduce systems that will help you streamline this whole process and take out those awkward conversations of “I need to speak to you about an outstanding payment!”
Parents are very busy people, from working many hours to then taking care of children, and even making sure everyone has everything they need before leaving the house, there is just no time to spare. Helping parents save that little bit of time is important for them and really useful.
The majority of parents just don’t have the spare time or the energy to check their child’s long-winded payments. Like many other businesses, automating your enrollment and payments saves your customers massive amounts of time but more crucially gets you paid on time! Direct Debit offers the most efficient method to collect payments. Take a look at your utility bills. You may be surprised to see a majority of them are taken directly from your business account, think about how much time it took for you to administer that payment? The answer will be zero!
Moving childcare administration and payments to a managed service will massively improve the time spent admin plus reduce the number of defaulters as this is taken of by managed service (SimplyCOLLECT)
Automated payments allow parents with busy schedules to pay for childcare without having to think about it. This will stop the worry of the childcarers thinking of when they will next get the money and stop them constantly asking the parents to make payment and being told they will as soon as they have a spare moment, it happens. It won’t just take the pressure off the childcarers; it will also take a massive pressure of busy parents trying to make payments, most parents do not aim to not make the payments, but time can be consumed so quickly without either party realising.
You will build much stronger bonds with parents when they can be kept up to date easily regarding their children. Additionally adding a carer/parent software application to show progression will be able to see the care you provide as well as the progression their child makes. It will help the business run much smoother.
SimplyCOLLECT offers a complete end to end payment service which gets you paid on time every time! No more awkward conversations about money. Our team will take care of any non-payers.
Put your nursery childcare business on the right path today, contact one of our team who will happily discuss how we help many businesses up and down the UK just like yours, to cut admin costs and get back your time!