Connect Childcare – an alternative to Tapestry

… | Connect Childcare | Tapestry |
---|---|---|
Founded In | 2004 | 2012 |
Designed for | UK Nurseries | Schools - Nurseries - Childminders |
Cyber Essentials | Yes | No |
ISO | Yes | No |
The System | End to end nursery management | Online learning journals |
Cloud based storage | Yes | Yes |
A quick look into the features of each software provider will quickly show that whilst tapestry focus in on one area, Connect Childcare cover all aspects of nursery management.
Feature comparison
… | Features | Connect Childcare | Tapestry |
---|---|---|---|
Nursery Management & Admin | Bookings | Yes | No |
. | Occupancy | Yes | No |
. | Invoicing | Yes | No |
. | Grant Funding | Yes | No |
. | Business Reports | Yes | No |
. | Staff Management | Yes | No |
Child Development | Observations & Assessments | Yes | Yes |
. | Next Steps & Planning | Yes | Yes |
Parent Engagement | Secure Parent App | Yes | Yes |
. | View published events | Yes | Yes |
. | Receive notifications | Yes | Yes |
. | Request bookings | Yes | No |
. | Make Comments | Yes | Yes |
. | Upload their own photos | Yes | Yes |
. | See their balance | Yes | No |
. | Pay fees | Yes | No |
. | Parent signature capture | Yes | No |
. | Activities (ParentHub | Yes | No |
Tapestry is a great system, it’s a brilliant tool for online learning journals - but won’t do much more. This is great if observations and learning journals are the only items of paperwork you complete at your setting, but in reality, nursery management is complicated - and it’s likely every member of staff is completing mountains of paperwork for different reasons.
Do I really need one system to manage everything?
No. You don’t need to complete every one of your admin tasks in the exact same system. But, using systems that work together saves you heaps of time.
If you think about everyone that works for your setting, from Practitioners to Administrators to Accountants. Every time they put pen to paper they’ll be entering or updating staff details, child details or parent & contact details. This leads to a huge amount of time spent duplicating data and very often results in inconsistencies and inaccuracies in your records.
If everyone’s actions could be linked, so every time someone changes a staff record it updates across the board, you’d save hours of admin time, reduce confusion and increase accuracy of the data in your setting.
Connect Childcare believe that you should never have to enter information twice. Their three interfaces focus on different areas of nursery management, but each feed into the same centralised database.
From here, direct integrations are provided as well as a number of exports.
You can;
- Instantly collect payments from parents through ParentZone
- Automatically reconcile & allocate those payments
- Import and Export accurate account information to Xero, Sage & Quickbooks
- Export payroll reports
- Connect to your website enquiry form to automatically populate your waiting lists
Tapestry is a fantastic online learning journal, but, running a busy nursery takes more than just an observation tool.
Connect Childcare offer the same learning journals, backed up a huge range of other nursery management features. Along with additional integrations, it ensures that you never have to duplicate data again. Saving you time and leaving you with accessible and accurate data.
Tapestry for observations & learning journeys
Connect for nursery management
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About the Author
Connect Childcare have been developing purpose built nursery management software for the past 15 years. Their missions is: To develop management software that improves the lives of children, globally.
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