5 min read
Successful implementation of automated payments: quickly and easily
The Australian Childcare Alliance recently reported that 'additional costs', 'affordability' and 'recruiting' are the most challenging aspects of implementing the National Quality Framework (NQF) for over half of all Successful implementation of automated payments: quickly and easily childcare centre owners but, keeping up with the demands of the NQF doesn't need to be such a challenge for you.
Automated payments are your secret weapon to getting your best staff out of the administration office and reducing the labour cost of manually processing parent payments in your centre – resulting in improved staff ratios and increased centre profits. Your competitors will wonder how you're managing to decrease your administration workload and increase your profits while they're struggling to keep up with the demands of the NQF.
When you switch your childcare centre onto automated payments, your parent community is likely to appreciate the more convenient way of paying you and your centre managers will definitely welcome their decreased administration workload! Even so, it's important that you prepare your parents and centre managers with a clear implementation plan ahead of time so the transition is fast, simple and trouble-free for everyone. Follow our implementation tips below to get up and running with automated payments and start decreasing your payments administration workload fast:
Do the training that comes with your automated payments solution
The best automated payments solutions come with training so you and your staff can quickly implement and start using your new software with ease. Learning new software is much easier when you have an expert on hand to show you the way, so choose a provider that has reliable phone or online training and support. With 17 years of experience behind us, we've helped many childcare clients implement their new Ezidebit payments solution and trained their staff on how to use their new software so that they can get up and running quickly and easily. A fast implementation is a successful implementation – after all, each day that your childcare centre is using automated payments to decrease your administrative costs is another day of increased profits for you!
Set a clear switch target for your centre managers
If you've worked out how much time it takes to manually manage parent payments in your childcare centre, chances are your centre managers will be very welcoming of anything that can help them to reduce this administrative burden. It’s important that your centre managers support your decision to switch to automated payments as they will be liaising with your parent community about the change. We recommend that you get your centre managers on board by demonstrating the time-saving benefits that your new automated payments solution will bring for them. The more families you have paying by direct debit will mean more time saved for your centre managers, so it's in their best interests to encourage as many families as possible to make the switch. We suggest you set a clear switch target for your centre managers to aim for (in our experience, shifting 90 per cent of families onto direct debit is a good target). Remember to reward your centre managers when they achieve the switch target!
Get your Ezidebit implementation plan ready to go
Our childcare payments experts are experienced in helping childcare centres implement their Ezidebit payments solution quickly and painlessly. Talk to one of our childcare payments experts about getting your implementation plan together ahead of time so that you have everything ready to make your transition a success.
You can start your Ezidebit training right now!
Knowing how to use your new automated payments solution will give you a head start so you can hit the ground running on implementation day. Set up a training call with Ezidebit and your centre managers right now.