2nd August 2023 Nursery Management Software All Posts

Five ways to save time in your early years setting with Connect Childcare

It is likely that when you decided to pursue a career in early years education, you had a passion for child development and the rewarding feeling you get when helping a child to learn and grow. However, the large amount of paperwork can be overwhelming, taking up a huge amount of time and overshadowing the brilliant work that is being done or distracting you from what needs to be done.

Nursery software such as iConnect can help practitioners by making administration more efficient allowing them to save time on admin tasks and focus on what matters- the children in their care. Throughout the blog, we discuss 5 key ways our nursery management software could help your childcare setting to save much-needed time.

1. Reduce time spent on paperwork and collating multiple documents

Many do not release that child development comes with a mountain of mandatory paperwork. The burden of this paperwork can be overwhelming and cause high levels of stress among early years professionals, impacting their love and motivation for their role.

Unfortunately, we can’t remove the burden of admin work altogether, but we can take advantage of modern technology to make it quicker and easier.

Connect Childcare’s established software package has features for owners, managers, administrators, practitioners and parents, to help alleviate some of the administration pressures on nurseries.

Practitioners can use iConnect to log observations at the touch of a button, without taking time away from the children. Managers can run cohort trackers and other reports without ever leafing through a folder, and administrators can easily keep track of bookings, bills and payments.

Every feature in Connect Childcare’s extensive software package has been developed to help you save time and operate more efficiently.

2. Keep your data safe and secure

Looking for missing paper files can be a huge source of stress and waste a lot of unnecessary time. Online records are only as good as the data that is entered, we admit. But it’s a lot harder to lose a document on a secure and searchable electronic system than it is to misplace a battered lever arch folder containing the one existing copy of vital information and documents. 

3. Automated payments with Connect Cashflow

One of the challenges you may face in your setting is the admin time required to send invoices, receive payments, and stay up to date with finances.  With Connect Cashflow, parents have the convenience of being able to pay their fees, by card, directly from their nursery app. Parents can view their invoices and outstanding balance on the app so will always be aware if they owe any fees. Admin staff will no longer need to spend hours chasing up late payers and your cash flow will benefit as a result.

4. Efficiently record and report on child development

Learning journeys, observations and assessments seem to take the most time for early years practitioners. On average, a practitioner working in a setting without nursery software will spend 11 hours per week creating paper copies of these documents.

With the use of iConnect in place, the same Practitioner will spend just 1.5 hours a week on average. Saving a huge amount of time and allowing for a better work-life balance and reduced stress levels.

Nadia Salim from Fisherfield Childcare told us “Staff are much happier using iConnect and it has positively transformed the way we record children’s learning journeys. It has so many uses, from monitoring late payments to finding out which staff are working which shifts, that I really don’t know how we managed without it.”

You can also use iConnect to effectively track child development across your setting. Our ‘Big Picture Report’ feature enables you to create your own overview of child development across all of your cohorts, using the Birth to Five Matters or Development Matters framework. 

5. Effortlessly communicate with parents

Strong parental engagement is central to promoting children’s healthy development and wellbeing. Yet one of the most challenging aspects of managing an early years setting is parents actively engaging with practitioners, to understand more about their child’s education.

As we all know, the demands on parents’ time and attention coupled with varying drop-off and pick-up times on different days means it can sometimes be difficult for families and practitioners to chat face-to-face regularly, and reliably. We understand there is limited time available to focus on strengthening parental engagement and that is why our ParentZone app enables parents to be involved with their child’s learning and development, wherever they are. This provides busy parents with an insight into their child’s day and lets them see what they are up to, helping them to feel involved and stay connected regardless of their location.

Find out why practitioners love iConnect

See it for yourself. We’re sure you’ll love it! Request a demo and our team will show you why so many nurseries choose our software to help save time in their settings.
Book Your Demo
Share this article
About the Author

Marketing Executive at Connect Childcare

Latest Posts