This guide will go over all the main concepts of Sproutary to give you a solid foundation and understanding of Sproutary as you are getting started.
Before Sproutary, you probably had folders and unwieldy binders of papers that contain all of the information about your Families and Sprouts. The first step of getting Sproutary ready is entering this information into Sproutary. Don’t worry, we make it easy to get the data back out at any time if you still need it for your records.
When entering a Family’s information on the Family List page, you may be missing a few pieces of information such as their email address or phone number. Many fields are optional, so enter in what you know and you can always come back to fill in the rest. Please note: Families will not get communication or be able to login until their email address is entered.
It’s a good idea to give your Families a heads up that you will start using Sproutary soon. We have some example on-boarding documentation that will help Families understand what Sproutary can do and help you gather information such as email addresses and PINs. Feel free to customize that document to fit your specific needs and what you would like to communicate.
Families are able to login to their account once you enter in their email address. They will get a welcome email with instructions on how to login after you accept the Family.
They will have 24 hours to set their inital password - if they miss the email they can always go to the Forgot Password page to reset it anytime.
If you have a lot of information to enter in, please email us at hello@sproutary.com and we can help! If you are coming from another software product, we can likely import the data into Sproutary to save you time.
Filling out your Center’s profile helps make Sproutary more useful to you and your Families. You can access the Settings page to fill in your business address, tax number and more.
Sproutary allows you to keep track of the attendance of your Sprouts easily.
Sproutary allows you use a tablet to allow Families to check in and out as they come and go. This allows you to keep track of how many hours Sprouts are spending at daycare and how to help plan and forecast staffing.
Having a tablet kiosk provides an easy way for Families to check in their Sprouts every day as well as providing an easy way to inform Families about upcoming events.
If you have any questions or need help, please reach out to us at help@sproutary.com anytime.
Use any iPad running iOS 11 or newer.
Use an Android tablet running Android 9 or newer.
Note - We cannot recommend any “budget” tablets ($49.99 sale ones). Many times they come with outdated and insecure versions of Android that may be incompatible with Sproutary.
We strongly recommend you look into a secure stand for your tablet. Amazon sells many options that start at around $70.
You are able to set a message that displays at the top of the tablet so Families are up to date on information happening at the Center such as closings, events and more. The message is set on the Settings page.
You can optionally provide Families a 4-digit PIN to enter in each time they check in or check out their Sprouts. You can also setup a PIN for you and your Employees to check in or check out any Sprout in case a parent forgets their PIN. These options are found on the Settings page.
Sproutary allows you to take credit and debit cards as well as electronic checks (eChecks or ACH).
Each Sprout has a rate and a billing type. The two billing types are Hourly and Weekly Tuition.
Setting a Sprout to hourly billing, the invoiced amount would be:
(number of hours checked in) * (rate) - for example: 6.5 hours * $2.25 = $14.56
Setting a Sprout to weekly tuition billing, the invoiced amount would be:
1 * rate per week - for example: 1st checkin of a week $125.00 would be 1 invoice item for $125.00. Subsequent checkins for the week would create invoice items at $0.00
An item is a charge to the family.
A refund can be applied to an account by creating a Payment and selecting “Refund”.
Invoices are sent on a schedule of every 1, 2, or 4 weeks. You can set this on your Settings page. Families will be notified via email that they have an amount due. If the Family has AutoPay setup, they will be charged at the time the invoice is created.
Sproutary takes care of all your invoicing needs. To record non-electronic payments, go to the Payments page and find the Invoice you want to record. You can quickly edit the Invoice right from the table by clicking on the status.
Auto Payments is a way for your child care center to accept Credit/Debit cards as well as eChecks/ACH transfers seamlessly from Families.
To begin accepting payments from Families, you first need to verify your business with Stripe, our secure payment processor. To do this, go to the Settings page and click the “Verify with Stripe” button. You will be taken to a Stripe page to fill out your tax information as well as the bank account where your money will be deposited. Once verified, your business will be ready to accept electronic payments!
ACH (Automated Clearing House) or eChecks is a way to transfer money from a Family’s checking account to yours automatically when an invoice is created. ACH payments take up to 5 business days to process. Because of this, ACH payments take up to 7 business days to be reflected in your account.
eChecks/ACH fees are very low compared to credit card processing. ACH payments on Sproutary cost 0.80%, capped at $5, with no monthly fees or verification fees. So, a $100 payment incurs an $0.80 fee.
A bounced ACH/eCheck transaction will incur a $4.00 fee. You will be notified via email of the failed transaction.
Credit/Debit cards can also be accepted via Sproutary. Since the fees are a bit higher for credit card processing, we recommend you talk to Families who want this option and build the credit card fee into your tuition cost.
Credit/Debit cards cost a flat rate of 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction.
You can also choose to pass on the fee to the Families who use AutoPay.
Keeping a Sprout’s schedule up to date allows you to keep track of late pickups, plan when Sprouts move from one room to the next, and a lot more. You are able to set the weekly schedule of a Sprout just by clicking on an individual Sprout, then setting the checkin and checkout time.
After a Sprout has a week’s worth of attendance, you can use the Auto Schedule feature - this will look back at the Sprout’s attendance for the week and set it to match that schedule going forward.
It is important to keep track of your Sprouts’ immunization records for state and federal audits. Sproutary helps you keep track of these by giving you a quick and easy way to enter, view, and download all of your immunization records.
Sproutary will notify you on the Immunizations page if any Sprouts are overdue on any CDC recommended immunizations schedules. Use this data to remind parents to bring in their immunization records.
Note: Many states still require a physical copy of the immunization record. Please keep the paper copy for these purposes.
Classroom management allows you to organize and plan when Sprouts move. You can easily move around one or many Sprouts to different classrooms.
Classrooms are also how the kiosk page is organized.
Forecasting allows you to pick a date in the future and see how your schedule may look then. This will help you when planning room assignments or knowing when you need to start looking for new Sprouts. Forecasting looks at your Classroom age range and the age and schedule of your Sprouts to forecast when a Sprout would move from one Classroom to another as well as how full the Classrooms may be.
Sproutary offers a convenient way for Families who are on the go to chat with you and your employees in real time to ask questions or give updates on what is going on. Snow day tomorrow? Easily notify all Families via chat.
Sproutary provides you notifications to allow you to stay up to date with how your child care center is doing.
Sproutary allows you to manage Employee logins and time cards.
To add an Employee, go to the Employee page and click New.
Many times a day care employee also has their children at the daycare they work at. To make an Employee a Family, click on the Employee and then click the “Make Family” button. You can now associate Sprouts to their account.
Employees can check in and out from the same kiosk that your Sprouts checkin from. You may also have PINs to checkin and out.
To download the timesheet report for your Employees to do your payroll, go to the Employees page and click “Download” - Select the date ranges you would like to report on. This report can be opened in a program such as Microsoft Excel.
You should now be well on your way to understanding and taking advantage of all that Sproutary has to offer. You should now start exploring the other pages of this documentation to dig deeper into features you’re interested in. If you have any questions, we’re always here to help @ help@sproutary.com