Daycare software for home providers who are also the whole office

A home daycare day does not end at pickup. After the last child leaves, there are sign-in sheets to file, tuition to tally, a parent who still owes for last week, and a text thread that has grown too long to search. Much of it happens at the kitchen table, and most of it is the same every week.

DCare.app was designed for that table. It assumes one provider, perhaps an assistant or a family member who helps, and a group of children small enough that you know every parent by name. It does not assume an office manager, a director or an IT person. Everything runs in a web browser on the laptop, tablet or phone you already own.

The goal is modest and practical: invoices that send themselves on schedule, sign-ins that record themselves at the door, and one place for parents to look before they ask you.

Many home daycares charge weekly tuition, often due on Monday or Friday, while some families prefer monthly. In DCare.app each child has a rate and a frequency. Weekly children are invoiced for the week beginning Monday; monthly children on the billing day you pick. Families with more than one child can receive a sibling discount, entered as a percentage on the family and applied to every child except the one with the highest rate.

Extras are one-off charges: registration, an activity fee, a summer field trip or a late pickup. Each has its own description and due date, and appears on the family's invoice and in their portal right away.

All amounts are in US dollars, dates are written month first and times use AM and PM. If you also care for school-age children only in summer, mark them inactive during the school year and they will not be billed, while their records stay in place for next year.

Licensing rules in most states expect daily attendance records with arrival and departure times, and many providers keep a paper sheet by the door for that reason. Paper works until a parent forgets to write the time, scribbles an unreadable initial, or the sheet goes missing the week before an inspection.

DCare.app turns a tablet by the door into a sign-in kiosk. Each parent uses their own four-digit PIN, or a QR code on their phone, to sign their children in or out. The time is recorded in your time zone, and the record shows which parent did it. The kiosk is locked to that one task, so a parent at the tablet cannot see invoices, other families or your settings.

The daily attendance report lists every child with times and who picked them up, and it exports as a CSV file. DCare.app does not know your state's specific record-keeping rules, so check with your licensing consultant that the report contains everything your state requires before you retire paper entirely.

Texting parents from your personal phone is quick, but it mixes business with family messages, and it leaves no clear record of what was announced. DCare.app gives each family a portal where they see what they owe, every invoice with its lines, payments you have recorded, and the messages you send.

Messages can go to one family or to everyone, and each one keeps its date. Use them for closures, holiday schedules, illness notices, or a reminder that tuition is due. Parents also use the portal to set their kiosk PIN, show their QR code, print any invoice and download their family's data.

DCare.app does not post photos, daily reports or lesson plans. If parents expect photo updates through the day, you will need a separate tool for that, and it is better to know now than after you switch.

Card and ACH payments through Stripe are planned for dollar accounts, including optional autopay, but they are not active yet. No DCare.app account can collect online payments today. The billing page and parent portal both make that clear, so parents are not shown a pay button that does not work.

Until then, parents keep paying the way they already do: cash, check or a bank transfer. When a payment arrives, record it against the invoice as an offline payment. You choose the method and the date, confirm that the money has actually been received, and the invoice is marked paid with a receipt line on the printable copy. Recording a payment never charges anyone; it simply updates your books.

This keeps your balances accurate now and means nothing changes for parents until you choose to switch on online payments later.

Home daycare providers usually need a clear year-end picture of income, and parents often ask for a statement of what they paid for childcare. DCare.app helps with the raw material. Invoices and recorded payments export as CSV files that a tax preparer can open in any spreadsheet, and the owner can download a complete JSON export of the account at any time.

What DCare.app does not do is prepare tax forms, calculate deductions or produce year-end tax statements for parents. Your preparer can build those from the exports. Printable invoices are operational billing records, and they do not include a tax identification number unless you add it elsewhere.

Many home providers rely on an assistant, a substitute or a family member for part of the day. Invite them by email as staff. Staff can take attendance, see families and children and send messages, which covers almost everything they need when you step out. They cannot see invoices, payments or settings, and they cannot change rates.

When an assistant leaves, remove them from the team in Settings and their access ends immediately. The attendance they recorded stays in your history.

A home daycare with a dozen children can usually be set up in about the length of a long nap. Here is the order that works best.

1. 1
   Create your account. Choose the United States region, your time zone and closing time, and the Start plan.
2. 2
   Add families. Enter each family with parent names and email addresses. Parents use these emails to sign in.
3. 3
   Add children. Give each child a date of birth, a tuition rate and weekly or monthly frequency.
4. 4
   Set fees. Pick a monthly billing day if you need one, and enter your late pickup fee.
5. 5
   Put a tablet by the door. Open kiosk mode and leave it there. Ask parents to set their PIN from the portal.
6. 6
   Send the first invoices. Generate invoices for the current week or month and check a couple before parents see them.

DCare.app suits licensed family child care homes and small group homes that bill in dollars, care for up to about sixty children, and want simple billing and sign-in that parents can use without training. The Start plan covers up to twenty-five enrolled children, which is more than most home programs need.

It is not built for multi-site centers, for programs that rely on state subsidy billing inside their software, or for providers who want lesson planning, assessments, photos or meal tracking. Being honest about that is part of being useful.

On Monday morning, parents arrive and tap their PIN on the tablet by the door. Each child is checked in with the time, and you can see at a glance on your phone how many children are in. If a family has not set a PIN yet, you check their child in yourself from the attendance page while you say hello.

If you bill weekly, Monday is also invoice day. You press Generate invoices once, glance at the totals, and every family can see what they owe for the week in their portal. During the week, any extras, such as a late pickup on Wednesday or a craft supply fee, are added as one-off charges in a few seconds.

Through the week, payments arrive the way they always have. You record each one against its invoice when it lands, and the overdue list on the Today screen tells you who still owes by Friday. On Friday afternoon you send one message to all families about next week's closure for a holiday, and nobody has to scroll a text thread to find it later.

At the end of the month you export the attendance, invoices and payments as CSV files and drop them in the folder you keep for taxes and licensing. The paperwork that used to fill an evening takes a few minutes.

The safest way to switch is to pick a clean start date, usually the first Monday of a week or the first day of a month, and run your old method until then. Finish collecting what is owed under the old system so that DCare.app begins with no carried-over balances to reconcile.

Keep your old paper sign-in sheets and spreadsheets for as long as your licensing rules or your tax preparer require. DCare.app does not import historical records, and it does not need to. Everything from the start date forward lives in one place, and everything before it stays where it is.

Most home providers have a parent handbook with tuition, late pickup and closure policies, and the best way to use any daycare software is to make it match the handbook exactly. If your handbook says tuition is due every Monday for the week ahead, bill those children weekly. If it says a late pickup costs a set amount per occurrence, enter that amount in Settings so you and any assistant always use the same figure.

Sibling discounts, registration fees and annual supply fees should also mirror the handbook. A sibling discount becomes a percentage on the family; a registration or supply fee becomes a one-off charge with a clear description. When a parent compares the invoice with the handbook, the two should tell the same story.

Closure days are announced with a message to all families, which keeps a dated record of when parents were told. If your policy is that tuition is unchanged during holiday closures, there is nothing extra to do: invoices continue on the normal schedule.