We’ll demonstrate how Oakdale Private School went from 80 hours per week down to 20 using business rules for billing.
Oakdale Private School offers early childcare from ages 6 weeks to 2 years old. Then it has a preschool program for ages 3-5. And it offers after-school programs for children up to age 12. The school offers great flexibility to its clients in Houston, Texas.
To complicate things further, the school has a large population of subsidized students. With so many programs and flexible attendance, the school needed a more automated childcare software that could meet their complicated needs.
The Challenge
The school faced many large challenges that led to heavy administrative burdens.
- Large student population of 500 children
- Had to monitor and calculate bills one child at a time
- Dedicated a great deal of time to package required information for subsidized students
- Schools that receive subsidies must prove their bills are accurate with documented attendance and proof of no tampering, meaning you need clear audit trails and verification processes.
- One gap or error in recordkeeping would mean questions or inquiries before receiving subsidy payments
All these administrative challenges led to the school spending 80 hours per week on office tasks. That’s two full-time equivalent positions. Not only that but staying in touch with parents was challenging since there were so many parents to communicate with.
And maintaining a license requires stringent recordkeeping in the following areas.
- Age-based teacher-child ratios live for each room throughout the day
- Immunizations, medical records, and parental permissions
- Diapering, meals, and naps for young children
- For teachers, first aid and CPR certifications plus immunization and medical checks
Maintaining these records is extremely time-consuming, but also important.
Oakdale Private School Solution
To solve their challenges, Oakdale Private School implemented iCare Software to manage its attendance tracking, billing, reporting and parent communication. Here are some of the ways iCare helped.
- Used iCare Software’s rule-based billing to bill based on a child’s schedule, attendance and pre-programmed rate charge to automate billing.
- Only required occasional updates to the child’s schedule or voucher if they were subsidized.
- Could pre-program changes to a child’s schedule for the future so they don’t have to set reminders to make the update.
- Billing used preset models based on a child’s age, the number of days and hours attended, family income, enrollment type and more.
- Alerts for important recordkeeping milestones, such as a new immunization record due from parents, or deadlines for a yearly physical.
- Using childcare software allowed the center to communicate with parents via email, SMS, questions at check-in, alerts, chat and a school calendar.
The Impact for Oakdale Private School
After implementing iCare Software, Oakdale Private School reduced its administrative time by 75 percent from 80 hours a week to just 20 hours.
But it was about more than just cost savings for the school. They also enjoyed the fact that they never faced questions about their records for subsidies or licensing purposes. The data showed a clear audit trail and the reports included the information that was required.
Schedule a free demo of iCare Software to see how the childcare app could solve your challenges and help you experience seamless operations with less manual labor.