A Guide to Selecting Child Care Software for Your Centre

These days, there are countless registered childcare management systems on the market in Australia. If you’re a child care centre director starting a new facility or if you’re already in operation with a CCMS software and you’re thinking of switching to another, it can be an overwhelming experience. Not only are there manydifferent features to consider in child care management software, but many child care application companies express their offerings using different structures. This makes fair comparison a hard task. You can be sure that all registered child care software providers meet the basic criteria set forth by the Department of Social Services so claims can be made against Child Care Benefits, Child Care Rebate, Inclusion Support and others. But just because particular CCMS software meets minimum requirements, that doesn’t mean it’s ideal for your centre.  So how do you find one that’s best for your needs? Below, this article will share three steps for helping you work out which child care management software is best suited to your centre.

Step 1 – Decide What You Want

You’ll find the child care applicationthat’s most suited to your needs only after first deciding upon what you want. Here are seven important points that may be part of your deciding factors:

• Ease of use
• Level of data security
• Available user support
• Integrations with other software
• Training options
• Usefulness of software tools
• Degree of value for money

Whatever your factors are, try to keep them to ten or less. You can switch out ones from the list above that may not be relevant to your centre and add in ones that make more sense for you. You may want to use a spreadsheet to lay out your criteria along with noting down the names of the different CCSS softwareproviders you’re evaluating.

Step 2 – Give an End Date

Researching the competing options for child care management software may seem like a big time sink, but if you stick with it, it will pay off dividends. Putting in the time now to do your due diligence will save a bad decision later on, as well as wasted money. Research is important, but you don’t want it dragging on forever. Make a mark in your diary on the day when you’ll stop doing research on CCSS software so you have a finite time to dedicate to the task. This usually means it will get done faster without wasting too much time on the decision.

Step 3 – Evaluate

It helps to draw on the help of your team for this step. Give everyone a copy of your spreadsheet and the research you’ve done and let them make up their own minds. You never know, one of your staff might find a crucial feature in one of the child care applications that you hadn’t noticed. When everyone has cast their votes by filling out their copy of the spreadsheet, have a group discussion. You can then come to a group consensus on which CCMS softwaremight be best for childcare management in your facility.