As a child care provider, capturing the right information on your daycare application form is important. You want to make sure you get the information needed, and no more than that.
Best application practice includes keeping it as short and simple as you can while getting all the information you need to manage your programs.
What to ask in your daycare or preschool application
The basics are always needed. Make sure you ask these only once!
So be strategic in how you layout your day care student registration form so you don’t force the parent or guardian to type in or write out the same information more than once.
Especially if the family has more than 1 child, it can be tedious to enter the address or pediatrician information more than once.
Think about how you can make the process as quick, easy and streamlined as possible for parents or guardians to complete.
A great layout includes, in order,
- Child Information
- Name, Nickname
- Date of Birth
- Gender
- Age
- Existing Medical Conditions
- Allergies
- Photo release (checkbox)
- Guardian Information
- Name
- Phone number
- Relationship to Child
- Address
- Which Guardian should be called first?
- Emergency Contact Information
- Name
- Phone
- Relationship to child
- Authorized pick-up list
- Pediatrician Information
- Doctor Name
- Doctor Phone Number
- Doctor Address
- Insurance company
- Insurance Policy #
- Preferred Hospital
- Additional Questions and Comments
- Signature
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Customized Online Registration
Ideally, your registration process will be online with registration software that will allow you to customize the process for each applicant.
This makes registration more thorough and easier for everyone involved.
Essentially, moving to online registration forms allows you to create a personalized and unique flow for every parent when registering.
Some examples of why a customized process is best include:
Creates better reporting for you
Things can get messy if you have paper forms!
When everything is online, you can sort your applications in any way you need, including by family, by age, gender, and more.
Allows for easier family registration
Even if a family has only one child, they might have 3 parents/guardians and multiple emergency contacts.
Using software means that each individual family can register easily for their family size.
The specific form will be shorter or longer depending on their situation, but it will also ask them only the questions that relate to them.
A good registration software can ask the question, “Do you have another child?” and then prompt the forms and fields connected to a second child if the answer is yes.
If the answer is no, the parent or guardian can continue on with the application.
The same goes for any and all fields or forms you include.
Makes communication easy
Online software makes communicating with families easy! Your child care facility can simply filter and send messages to the people who need to read it, including upcoming holiday closures or events to your entire community or information on graduation to only the parents and guardians of that class.
Communicating quickly and effectively with your community is a strength for your business and community and it’s important to have the right tools to do that. It also helps increase your enrollment!
An online daycare application form automates the registration process for everyone
Plus when everything is already online, it saves you the time of transferring information from paper forms to an online spreadsheet. A registration platform creates this online database for your instantly.
Your registration software can also create a database you build as part of a multi-step application, registration, renewal and payments system.
If you accept a preliminary daycare application form with waitlists and a review process, you can use your system to gather data one step at a time. As families move through your process, you can add the forms necessary for that stage such as health and safety requirements, payment forms, and any other required documents.
Once a family has fully enrolled, you can collect payment details, manage registration fees, manage tuition, charge for additional products such as morning and afternoon request forms, extracurricular programming and more. Plus families can add children once they are ready or eligible to attend your child care programs.
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