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Sep 21, 2023 5 min read

Five Challenges to Collecting Tuition and How Procare Can Solve Them! 

Leah Woodbury By: Leah Woodbury

Collecting tuition for your child care center can be one of the least pleasant parts of your job. It puts tremendous financial pressure on you when parents pay late, and awkward conversations with families are unavoidable when payments get behind. 

If you’re struggling with these challenges at your child care business, it’s time for a new tuition-collection process that brings more to your bottom line! The Procare fully integrated payment-processing platform was designed specifically for the child care industry. And when combined with Procare child care management software, you get a fully end-to-end solution to meet all your center management needs.  

 Let’s take a look at five challenges in collecting tuition and how Procare can help you solve them! 

Challenge 1: Finding a Way to Make Getting Paid Easier 

Today’s families expect a modern digital payment system. With payment-processing software, you can easily collect payments from parents in ways that are convenient and secure for both of you. 

Younger parents in particular prefer paying their bills online — a recent study showed that HALF of millennials, the largest group of parents, have never even used a check!   

Procare gives parents a choice in how they pay. Payments can be made automatically from their checking accounts or billed to their credit cards. And it’s easy to set up recurring plans.  

With Procare’s fully integrated center management platform, billing and payments are automated. The billing software in the platform gives your center all the touchless payment options you need, making tuition collection a seamless experience for center providers. 

Parents can access and make payments from a computer or through the Procare child care app on their phone! 

Challenge 2: Syncing Tuition Collection With Your Child Care Management Software 

An integrated payment-processing platform that’s designed for the child care industry can help you avoid the issues you may find in reconciling your balance sheet and month-end finances if you use third-party add-ons.  

Using an accounting program that isn’t synced with your tuition, payroll and tax data — or if you’re doing bookkeeping on your own with pen and paper — often means that simple mistakes are harder to avoid and easier to miss! 

And you could be paying too much by subscribing to several piecemeal services that don’t work together to give your program a single, complete financial picture — so you’re not saving time or money. 

You need a software system that does all of the above … plus simplifying paying bills, tracking expenses as well as handling budgeting and overall financial reporting while making profitable business decisions based on revenue flow. 

Challenge 3: Getting Paid in a Timely Manner 

With Procare, funds are typically processed the following business day (subject to bank funding and processing approvals)! This means you get your money faster, ensuring you can cover ongoing costs.  

And when parents make a payment online, it posts automatically to their ledger and is deposited into your account automatically.   

Other payment processors can wait for a payment to clear before giving that money to a center – sometimes up to seven days, said Marissa Ryan, a payment-processing expert at Procare.   

“Cash flow is so important to small businesses,” Marissa says. “And Procare is one of the only payment processors with that fast of a turnaround.” 

Challenge 4: How to Offer Multiple Payment Options 

Procare’s tuition-collection and payment-processing platform was built with parents in mind, allowing for convenient online and secure payments that ensure your center gets your tuition on time.  

It’s incredibly unpleasant when the need arises to speak with parents about late tuition. And keeping up with making monthly payments by check is difficult for busy parents as well.   

Procare gives parents a choice in how they pay. Payments can be made automatically from their checking accounts or billed to their credit cards. And it’s easy to set up recurring plans.  

Parents need convenience and flexibility when they pay tuition, including self-serve and mobile options. With a comprehensive payment-processing platform, you can accept all forms of payments. 

Parents can access and make payments from a computer or through the Procare child care mobile app on their phone! 

Challenge 5: Creating a Clear Financial Picture 

A payment-processing platform that integrates with your child care management solution can provide transparency for payment processing across all your sites with top-level and site-level reporting.  

You get a real-time view of all center financials and receivables in the integrated dashboard showing tuition charges and balances tracking/calculations, multi-family billing options and fee transparency.  

Families also can see their end-of-year statements, which they need for tax purposes. Other child care software providers don’t offer the feature of allowing parents to access their monthly or yearly statements – and it’s something that today’s parents want to do quickly and easily, when and where they want. 

How Procare Can Help! 

A full end-to-end solution that provides child care management software and payment processing in one place makes your business more efficient while improving your bottom line.  

With Procare, you get a solution that helps you manage these top challenges to drive more to your bottom line and increase your profitability, including: 

  • Enabling families to pay via the Procare child care mobile app 
  • Automated invoicing 
  • Ledger posting 
  • Quicker funding 
  • Reduced administrative payroll hours processing tuition payments

Want to know how much time and money you could save by using Procare’s secure and effortless child care payment processing? Enter some details into this online calculator to learn about your potential savings of using automation! 

Procare Cost and Time Savings Calculator Automated Payment Processing Cost
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Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s all-in-one child care management software. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s secure and effortless child care payment processing. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s classroom management. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*:

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* Our data model is based on our experience working with over 100,000 child care centers, before and after school programs and youth organizations since 1992.

Switching to will save you
hours and a month!* a month!

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The cost and time savings shown here are what the Procare all-in-one solution will help you save at your child care organization. Fill out the form below to see the full breakdown.

We understand that smaller centers and in-home daycare providers are operating on a tight budget, and that is why we provide all these features for the affordable price of just $25 per month. Let us handle the business of child care so you can get back to caring for your children.

To learn more about Procare home version, click below.

*Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative.​ *Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative. *Please note that the classroom management functionality is not available for in-home users. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative.

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For over 30 years, Procare Solutions has helped child care businesses big and small tackle their biggest operational challenges.

From contactless check-in, attendance tracking and staff management to family engagement, tuition collection and extensive reporting, we have the solutions that child care professionals want most.

More than 37,000 child care businesses choose Procare because we give them everything they need to focus on what they love—providing amazing experiences to the children in their care.

Our data model is based on our experience working with over 100,000 child care centers, before and after school programs and youth organizations since 1992.

Learn more at procaresolutions.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leah Woodbury

Leah Woodbury is the head of content at Procare Solutions. Her job includes writing about topics that matter to child care professionals and finding ways to help them do their important work. She’s a mom of two who loves getting updates about what her preschooler is doing during the day via the Procare child care mobile app!

Leah Woodbury