childcare scheduling software?

[Jessie Rymph]

Hello all! 

I'm getting closer to opening my business in Seattle! I am negotiating with a space. 

I'm hoping to be able to offer parents flexible online scheduling and drop-in care (based on availability). 

I found Appointment-Plus and I'm wondering if anyone else knows of useful software.

Thanks!!

--Jessie Rymph

[Nicole Russel]

I was thinking about Cobot but hadn't decided yet.  I'm very interested to know what others are using too.

-Nicole

[Elizabeth Officreche]

Appointment plus looks interesting Jessie - extremely adaptable to all manner of appointments.

I couldn't find any software that did all that I needed  e.g. the maths behind the childcare required ratios (so showing availability when there was room/staff available), taking payments online, allowing the parents to log in and make/edit their own bookings etc. This saves the headache of a staff member dealing with all of this - and really appeals to the parents, since they can log on and change their minds at any time of the day or night (outside a cut off period).

So mine is bespoke - a large investment, but one that I reckon will pay off through licensing/franchising. We've just been shortlisted for website of the year by Nursery World so we must be doing something right!

I'm going to make a presentation showcasing its capabilities at some piont soon - we've nearly been open a year now, so have tweaked it to suit our (flexible) market. And I made sure all the parameters of the data settings are adjustable - both products and legislation ratios  - so it should be able to be used all around the world. Meanwhile, there is a really little demo video at the bottom of our FAQ page if you want to have a look:

http://www.officreche.com/Faqs

This is just from the member's point of view - the staff have a much wider access.

Wishing you lots of luck and strength with the space negotiations

Elizabeth

[Jacob Sayles]

Elizabeth,

I would be interested to know more about your platform.  We developed Nadine to run Office Nomads and originally Jessie and I talked about extending it further to do appointments.  That would be too much of an investment to justify the work and with other options out there it's not really worth it.  Is your system extensible and usable by others at this point?

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

[shazia Third Door]

Hi Jessie and Group,

We developed our own web based booking system, as we could not find anything on the market to meet our needs.

We decided not to sell/license to other providers in the EU just yet, however we can provide US/RoW with a demo and start discussions re licensing to other markets. Given that the regulatory and compliance requirements are different across the pond, we'd need to understand the business rules that apply as part of a gap-fit analysis against what we have developed.

As with any system, ours is constantly being updated as our offerings, customers and market evolves. We actually learnt more from our difficult customers that push the system and our processes, which helped refine and improve our services.

I would recommend that before you purchase a booking and resource management system, map out the cross functional end-to-end processes, dependencies and constraints so you can plan out how you will later integrate and build out other systems in a scalable way (such as HR, finance, demographic analysis, nursery management records, reporting etc). After all, these systems should remove admin overhead!

Do you have a business requirements or functional requirements specification created? If not, that should be your starting point before selecting a bookings tool. I can provide you with some general tips to create a traceability matrix if you call or email me.

All the best,

Yusuf
(co-founder of Third Door)

[Elizabeth Officreche]

That sounds like very sound advice from Yusuf - all that he says chimes with my experience.

And Jacob, I've had a draft email to you saved, but the kids took priority for a few days - apologies - something  I'm sure you all recognise....

Speaking of which - congratulations on the birth of Henna, Shazia and Yusuf - what wonderful news!

So Jacob, our platform is extensible and usable by others, but we're not ready to license just yet. I'll send you a email directly and we can talk further if you want to discuss specifics.

Have a lovely weekend all