Great Software for Child Care Centers

We love this program. It provides us with one place to quickly find out so much information. Log-in and see total enrollment, enrollment by classes or ages. Tracks child information without searching through files or looking in multiple places. Tracks employee attendance and any other info you might want to add like: Date of Hire, schedules, vacation time accrued or used, etc. Many things a pre-programed, but you can personalize it yourself or request assistance from a fantastic customer service person. This makes my job so much easier, especially with continual changes to State Day Care Licensing regulations. You do have to enter each child's information when they enroll, but once and it's done. Can update any information with only a few clicks and everyone that you assign a role can see everything.

Pros

Simplicity of use. Saves paperwork. Can be used to create reports. Easily see everyone who is still in the building (children and staff members). Records many different types of information (attendance, immunizations, medicals, state required paperwork, Food Program info for the USDA CACFP, tuition fees, and other misc info.) You can program it to add user specific information such as allergies, restricted pick-up, authorized individuals for pick-up, etc. We even have a door unit that stores fingerprints of authorized individuals for pick-up and then allows the door to unlock for entry.

Cons

W e have had to replace the door unit after someone cracked the screen and someone just chipped the fingerprint reader which may need replaced (it is still working). This is the result of individual user misuse though and not an actual flaw of the program or hardware. There is an annual update fee, but it is well worth the cost for the time and paperwork it saves.

We love Procare!

Overall I have a great experience! We have a large center with kids infant up to 13 years. We also are unique in that we use it for our swimming programs too. These range from 2 years old up to adults and the customer support to help us set this up was fantastic!

Pros

Procare does a lot for our center! We also love how there are additional features you can add on. It is great for tracking families, payments, and even adding activities. Overall we have had good experiences with the customer support. We also love the cloud so we can access this anywhere! The customer support is usually great as well. The people are willing to help and teach you learn more about Procare's capabilities!

Cons

Procare does a lot but some of the features are a bit updated. The texting feature isn't great. It still uses phone emails to send these and we always have problems with it working correctly. The emails are also not great. It can't be customized, images can not be added unless it is an attachment and it can only come from one email administrator unless your company uses Outlook. I also feel like the customer support overall is great but sometimes, I get someone who doesn't seem to know what he is talking about. After a long wait, this can be very frustrating.

Happy Customer

It was amazing to be able to have one system that recorded everything I needed for families. I have nothing but great things to say about Procare!

Pros

The product was easy to use and navigate. Simple and clear instructions for families and amazing customer support!

Cons

The one thing I would change, which is minor would be, being able to click on emails and have it automatically sent to the email window instead of having to copy/paste

Unfortunate investment of time and money

Overall I think the core and idea of procare is beneficial but ONLY if it works. Can't use a product if it is continually locking up.

Pros

This has a great foundation of ideas. Student check in/out, Employee check in/out, billings, time tracking, payroll, general ledger. Truly an all in one for a small preschool. Too good to be true for sure!

Cons

The cloud base software clearly has issues they can not fix. Our check in computers are constantly locking up since the last update in November 2019. After using the same computers and hardware for 5.5 months they ran an update and now problems. We manually key in employees and students often which is time consuming because the computers are locked up at the time parents are picking up or dropping off. Tech support is NONRESPONSIVE to emails and hold times are on average of 35-45 minutes when calling tech support. They said today it is because they are "swamped". That speaks volumes, that means their product ISN'T working. They have been "working on patches to fix this" but in the mean time they have used the excuse it was because I wasn't hard wired to the internet. After the expense of hiring someone to run the wire and hardwire all of the computers they still are locking up. Now Procare support wants me to replace the router because it maybe causing problems. Cutting my losses at this point. A lot of time invested in a software that locks up frequently through out the day. Training is horrible and much of my experience has been self guided. They do have an extensive online resource which is very helpful but yet time consuming as you navigate which article you really need. When training is scheduled it has been late and limited to one function of the software. When asking about other functions you are directed to schedule training for that specifically.

Procare in a nutshell

Overall I think it has great ideas but it needs to be more user friendly or "dumb proof" having to double click on certain things to view billing or data took a while to train other people.

Pros

-you can generate tons of reports with data entered -check in kiosk can make payments and check in and out. -automated billing

Cons

-adding a child's schedule if its not 5 days is a lengthy process. - always updating when moving kids to new classrooms -features aren't user friendly.