In ChildFriendly Pro's September 2024 webinar, founder Laura Bancroft said the extra administration created by the national child care program can be reduced by replacing piecemeal systems with one platform, and showed how Alberta Affordability Grant and subsidy claims can be prepared from two reports that mirror the government claims portal, a task she said fell from hours to 20 minutes to an hour a month at her centers.
What the session covered
The webinar was hosted by Wayne Chen of ChildFriendly Pro and presented by Laura Bancroft, founder of ChildFriendly Pro and CEO of an Alberta child care company that she said operates 2,000 licensed spaces across multiple locations. Bancroft said that when governments began discussing a national child care program, she expected more regulation, more red tape and a significant increase in administrative hours. At the same time, her centers ran separate software for payments, online registration, parent communication and payroll that did not integrate. She said directors and office staff, all ECEs, were spending time on paperwork instead of training educators and supporting quality care. After demoing and fully setting up several existing products, Bancroft partnered with developers to build ChildFriendly Pro as a single platform, which she said had been running at her centers for over a year at the time of recording. The session covered the operational problems behind that decision, a demonstration of the Alberta monthly claims process, and audience questions on payroll, permissions and data migration.
Which paper-based admin tasks did Bancroft's centers replace first?
At Bancroft's centers, registration moved online with digital waivers, so office staff no longer tracked down signatures; she said the system knows how much space each program has at any future date, lets operators limit how far ahead families can register, for example three months, and sends families to the waitlist when no space is available. Monthly invoices are generated in one step for active registrations. Medication forms are signed by parents in their portal, and staff record each dose with reminders when medication is due. Before going digital, office staff transcribed every paper incident report into an Excel spreadsheet so patterns could be reviewed, which Bancroft said took significant time each day. She said her centers removed all filing cabinets within the first month of their beta. Bancroft also described replacing a whiteboard used to track which children did not need school pickup, with a school RSVP that families update and drivers check on an iPad; she called the old method subject to human error and a safety concern.
How do attendance and staff records help directors manage ratios?
Bancroft said her directors can see at a glance where every child is, including the gym or playground, and that parents can see the same location at pickup. Rooms turn red when they are out of ratio, and an icon appears when a room has an extra staff member not needed for ratio, so a director can move that person to a room that needs coverage. Bancroft said this revealed recurring surplus times, which helped her centers adjust schedules. Staff records hold contracts, first aid and criminal record check expiries and performance reviews, with reports that list who has an expiry coming up next month. Staff hours are captured as they sign in and out of rooms and can be split by task, for example a different rate for bus drivers while driving. In the Q&A, Bancroft said room staff needed a separate profile in each center they work in, while administrators could have one profile with access to several centers, and that permission levels depend on each staff member's role.
How are Alberta Affordability Grant and subsidy claims prepared and reconciled?
Bancroft said the Alberta claims portal requires centers to report Affordability Grant figures separately for children with and without Alberta subsidy. She explained that subsidy claims use the hours a child actually attended, while the Affordability Grant is based on the hours a child is registered to attend, which changes the counts. Her demo showed a 100 hour report matching the portal layout, a drill-down of the children behind each count for audits, and a subsidy claim report listing date of birth, program, registration type, withdrawal date, regular and extended hours, previous and current month fees, the subsidized portion and the subsidy expiry date. At the time the portal had no open API, so staff copied figures in by hand. After the government deposit arrives, staff record a bulk payment for the subsidy invoices, then compare each child with the payment report. In her example, a child invoiced $200 received $50, and the remaining $150 was either kept with Alberta subsidy as a subsidy adjustment or billed to the family's authorized sponsor. Bancroft said reconciled deposits sync to QuickBooks Online.
Admin problems and fixes Bancroft described in the webinar
| Time | Key point | What centers should do |
|---|---|---|
| 02:40 | Bancroft: she expected the national child care program to bring more regulation, red tape and a significant rise in admin hours. | Review which admin tasks will grow with funding and reporting rules before adding staff. |
| 03:42 | Bancroft: separate systems for payments, registration, parent communication and payroll did not integrate. | List every system in use and where staff re-enter the same data. |
| 07:57 | Smart registration checks capacity at future dates; operators can limit how far ahead families register, such as three months. | Route families to the waitlist automatically when no space is available. |
| 10:52 | Bancroft: office staff transcribed paper incident reports into Excel to look for patterns, taking significant time each day. | Record incidents digitally so trends by room and time can be reviewed without retyping. |
| 12:13 | Bancroft: rooms turn red when out of ratio, and an icon flags extra staff not needed for ratio. | Move surplus staff to rooms that need coverage and adjust schedules for recurring surpluses. |
| 13:16 | Bancroft: staff records track first aid, criminal record check expiries and performance reviews. | Run a monthly report of expiries due next month and follow up early. |
| 15:22 | Bancroft: a whiteboard for school pickup changes was subject to human error and a safety risk. | Let families mark no-pickup days in their portal so drivers see changes in real time. |
| 21:35 | Bancroft: Alberta subsidy claims use attended hours; the Affordability Grant uses registered hours. | Keep registered schedules and actual attendance accurate as separate records. |
| 24:02 | Bancroft: claims went from hours of gathering reports to 20 minutes to an hour a month, depending on center size. | Prepare the grant and subsidy figures from one report each, in the portal's order. |
| 30:54 | Bancroft: when subsidy pays less than invoiced, the shortfall becomes a subsidy adjustment or a family invoice. | Reconcile each child against the government payment report before recording the deposit. |
How ChildFriendly Pro automates this
Bancroft contrasted three or four separate systems, paper files and spreadsheets with the ChildFriendly Pro demo, which showed Alberta region reports for the 100 hour and subsidy claims (18:25), invoices split automatically between Alberta subsidy and two parents (27:04), and a settle-and-reconcile step that updates the subsidy invoice and creates an adjustment or family invoice for any shortfall (30:48), as shown in the September 2024 recording. ChildFriendly Pro syncs deposits to QuickBooks and tracks staff hours for export to a separate payroll system, which calculates pay.
Next steps
- Webinars and events for child care operators: all session recordings
- Child care billing with subsidy split-billing and PAD payments
- Alberta child care software for CWELCC split-billing and Affordability Grant claims
- Book a demo of ChildFriendly Pro for child care centers
