5 Tips on Saving Paper in Your Childcare Center

5 Tips on Saving Paper in Your Childcare Center
By lowering your expenses, you can increase your revenues at your child care center. Printing out paper records and parent information can end up costing you a hefty fee. While it might not seem like much each month, it accumulates annually. This problem is especially large for centers with high enrollment. The easiest way to reduce paper is to invest in childcare management software. The less you print, the more readily available your information is from anywhere, anytime. And you won’t be calling in a maintenance company for your printer, purchasing ink cartridges or buying reams of paper as often. And a bonus of printing less paper is that you can be an eco-friendly childcare. Here’s a look at ways to save paper in your childcare center.
  1. Direct Deposit for a Child Care Center

Not only does invoicing cost you money in printing and mailing, but it is also a time-consuming activity that you can eliminate when you move it to a digital practice. Direct deposit enables you to charge parents based on scheduled intervals and eliminate the task of invoicing and printing. Direct deposit through a childcare software is safe and secure. Parents can easily see what they’ve been charged and why. You can also offer a variety of attendance options without spending time worrying about how to handle invoicing. This opens the door for you to have a larger or fuller enrollment, which enables you to maximize your profits.
  1. Online Calendar

You need to keep your teachers, administrators, and parents on board with your events and activities, such as pajama day. After all, no one wants to show up in their pajamas on the wrong day. But printing off calendars and placing them in children’s backpacks are becoming antiquating and unnecessary. An online calendar makes your childcare center more agile. You can post any school closings, fun activities and special holidays so your staff and parents are kept in the loop at all times.
  1. Digital Report of a Child’s Day

Sharing what a child did for the day is an important aspect of keeping parents happy with their childcare choice. You can highlight circle time activities, the child’s mood and behavior and what they ate for lunch and at what time. These are all great and helpful details for parents to know. But printing off a review each day for every parent is expensive and time-consuming. Teachers can enter information about a child throughout the day. For infants, you can share when their diaper was changed, when they ate and how much, information on their sleep schedule and more. Parents will then get updates throughout the day and feel more engaged in their child’s care.
  1. Emergency Contact Information

It’s important to put emergency contact information at your teacher’s fingertips at all times. Printed sheets in every classroom though are not ideal. You have to reprint these sheets every time a child joins or leaves your childcare center. This makes for a great deal of wastes paper and leaves room for error if your team forgets to print a new sheet on a child’s first day. Move your emergency contact information to your daycare software. In case of a technology glitch, you could always have one master emergency contact information file you keep in a secure place in the office. But this way you don’t have to update it for every room.
  1. Email Newsletter

Newsletters are great because they keep your clients updated on what is happening at your childcare center. But printing and mailing these newsletters is cumbersome. Move your newsletter to email so you can still share these fun stories and tidbits with parents without the cost and wasted paper. Preschool software can help you manage your email list to make your newsletter simpler to send. iCare Software is a leading childcare app. Access it from anywhere using the secure web-based login. Learn more about iCare or schedule a demo to see how it can help you save paper.
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