Each daycare business has its own individual policies and procedures. However, all daycare providers must issue standard childcare authorization forms in order to protect the children in their care as well as their daycare employees.  Daycare authorization forms keep the children in your care safe and limit your liability as a daycare provider. There are a few simple authorization forms that all daycares must implement:

Childcare Pick-up Authorization: Each parent or guardian must complete and sign a childcare authorization form for each child in your care. This form lists the names of all persons authorized to pick up the child. It details the name of the adult(s), their date of birth, their relationship to the child, and their contact information (address and home, work, and cell phone number). The form should also include a statement that says “Under no circumstances will my child be released to anyone other than the individuals named above, without prior written authorization”.

Field Trip or Activity Permission Slips: The field trip or activity authorization form, gives the children in your care permission to leave the facility or participate in a special activity that is outside of the normal daily routine. The field trip consent form should contain the location of the activity, the date and time of the activity, the mode of transportation involved (walking, car, bus etc.).  The field trip consent form should be signed by the daycare provider and the parent or guardian. It should also include a statement similar to: “I understand that the center will take every precaution and care to insure my child’s safety. Adults who will provide proper supervision and will exercise every precaution to avoid accidents, in accordance with the state licensing regulations will accompany visiting groups”.
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Owning and managing a daycare business can involve many monotonous yet essential tasks. Fortunately, software for daycare businesses can help automate the following boring tasks, making daycare administration and management extremely efficient, and freeing you up so you have time to concentrate on  other important childcare jobs and administrative functions:

• Billing and invoicing: Childcare software automatically creates invoices based on child attendance and the rates you have established. Daycare software then records and bills for child care and day care tuition charges. It also keeps track of fees for supplies and activities, co-payments, and family discounts. These invoices can be sent to clients on weekly, bi-weekly and monthly basis.

• Payment Processing: With the client’s authorization, quality daycare software will automatically process childcare tuition payments using the client’s checking or savings account or credit card information. The software then transmits the transactions and posts the tuition payment directly into your daycare business’ bank account. The software then automatic posts the payments to the client’s ledger. Electronic fee collection not only saves hours in paperwork, but also helps childcare business owners avoid bounced checks and late payments.

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Many daycare business owners spend countless hours calculating daycare tuition and fees and dealing with bounced checks and other collection headaches. How can you eliminate this tedious child care job? The best way for child care centers to increase successful payment collection is by investing in childcare software.

Daycare for software businesses usually include fee collection programs that will dramatically reduce the time and effort you  would normally spend collecting and processing payments through electronic funds transfer (EFT).

There are three ways that quality child care software may process payments:

• Recurring ACH (Automatic Clearing House) transactions: These are bank to bank transactions. Payments are automatically deducted from the client’s checking or savings account and deposited then into your daycare’s business account.
• Recurring credit card transactions:  Here, the client’s credit or debit card is automatically charged on a recurring basis.
• Point of Sale Transactions (POS): POS transactions allow you to process payments through a credit or debit card swipe on-site.

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How do you reward the children in your care? If you’re rewarding them with food, consider this: “An article published in the December 2005 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine concluded that policies in schools that allow students to snack frequently; to consume high-calorie, low nutrient-dense foods and beverages; and to have food as incentives and rewards were associated with higher body mass indices in middle-school students”.

While this study doesn’t apply to preschool aged children, as a daycare provider it is still important to know the hazards of using food as a reward and how using non-food rewards.

Hazards of food rewards

When you reward or bribe a child with food, these same children may continue to reward themselves with food later in life. When children are rewarded with treats, they unfortunately associate these treats with happiness or being good. Studies show that associating food with with good behavior or bad behavior has long-lasting effects on children’s food preferences and their eating styles. It also may contribute to overweight and obesity. (more…)

Daycare food programs provide cash reimbursements for nourishing meals and snacks served to children ages 12 years and younger in licensed family day care homes. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) improves the quality of daycare by making it more affordable for many low-income families. The CACFP child care component is a state and federally funded program that gives financial aid to licensed child day care centers and day care homes.

Types of Daycare Businesses Eligible for Daycare Food Programs

Who may participate in CACFP?

• Eligible public or private nonprofit child care centers
• Infant centers
• Care centers that provide care outside of school hours
• Head Start programs
• Other institutions which are licensed or approved to provide day care services may participate in CACFP.

What if your child care business is for-profit? If your child care business is for-profit, the business must receive title XX funds for at least 25 percent of the children enrolled or licensed capacity (whichever is less).  Your for-profit child care center may also be eligible if at least 25 percent of the children in care are eligible for free and reduced price meals. (more…)

Home daycare providers can cut costs by finding daycare forms online. Contracts, policies, authorization forms, permission slips, daily reports, and other forms are critical to daycare business administration. Rather than creating forms from scratch, owners of child day care centers can print out important forms and customize them.

Consider the following resources for free and for cost daycare and preschool forms:

Free Daycare Forms

Supporting Providers:  Free forms, pintables, articles, and much more for your daycare business. Forms include business forms, registration forms, contracts, policies, reports, logs, health and medical forms, and authorization forms.

Step By Step Childcare: Step by Step Childcare provides free accident reports, accounting reports, sample brochures and flyers, business cards, contracts, daily reports, and daily schedules.

The Daycare Lady:   A wealth of free daycare business forms in Microsoft Word or PDF format, organized alphabetically. (more…)

A child care contract assures that there are no misunderstandings between you and your clients. It also protects you and your business from potential litigation. The contract states requirements and policies that both you and your clients must follow. A daycare contract form should include at least the following:

Hours of Operation: List the days and hours your child care center will be open for business.  Also detail any holidays you will be closed or any other days that the child day care center will be closed, if applicable.

Fees and Payments:  State the fees per week or month. Be explicit about whether or not sick days, holidays and vacation days are paid days. Some things to consider and disclose: When are weekly and month fees due? What are the consequences if fees are unpaid? (Termination? Suspension? ) How much will you charge for returned checks? How many returned checks will you allow before the client must pay in cash? (more…)

When you open your child care center, many of the rules and regulations you will be under are enforced by the state in which you live. Insurance requirements are one such regulation that varies from state to state. However, you should invest in insurance in order to protect yourself, your daycare business, your clients and your employees. It is wise for child care centers to invest in liability, structural, accident, health and workers’ compensation insurance.

Liability Insurance: Liability insurance will protect you in the event you are sued for damages. These damages could include child injuries, pet injuries, accidents, personal injury (libel, slander), damage to your own property, and damage to the property of others. The amount of coverage depends on the particular policy you select. There are other types of liability insurance to consider such as sexual abuse and liability insurance, child abduction liability, special events liability (fieldtrips, fundraisers, etc.) and corporal punishment. Daycare liability can be stand alone or an endorsement on your homeowner’s insurance. (more…)

Opening your own child care facility is an interesting business venture that you might think of getting into. Children may seem easy to handle and if you love to be with kids, this may seem as your perfect dream job. Imagine working as your own boss, with flexible working hours, hand-picked staff and a lot more. This can instantly make your decision of setting up your day care facility. But is it really that simple? You might think that running a day care facility is the same as running a business which means that there are a lot of things which you need to keep in mind. If you want to know how you will be able to make your day care center a successful one, here are some of the steps which you might take.
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Some parents, especially mothers, often feel a sense of guilt when they have to leave their child in day care centers. Those parents have no choice but to support their family financially so they have to work rigorously out of necessity. As a result, they make the very hard decision to leave their child in day care centers, outside their home, away from them at the time of their work. Because of these inevitable circumstances, many parents, especially mothers, can’t help but to feel guilty for leaving their children in the hands of childcare providers. Here are some approaches parents can follow to avoid feeling guilty:
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