What to Look for in an After School Management Software

Managing after school programs can involve juggling a lot of responsibilities, all of them a top priority. You’ve got to get consent, cover registration, communicate updates effectively, and make sure everyone is paid up and ready to go on the date, not to mention all of the internal communications and outreach involved to keep everyone in the loop.

Dealing with all of this without fully-completed forms, or illegible paperwork can be a significant and time-consuming challenge, and often one that’s repeated with multiple concurrent programs at any one time. Savvy institutions are learning how to lean on software solutions to simplify these needs, while at the same time, experiencing an improvement in data quality and security, communications, and other bottlenecks.

Here, we’ll go over some of the key features of such a software solution and talk about how they improve the experience for both faculty, students, and parents. First, some context.

What is After School Management Software?

After school management is one of the trickier requirements of running the multitude of valuable programs for students that good institutions implement. There are a lot of moving parts in managing these programs, and as regulations become more involved and protective, there’s a lot more involved than simply taking payment and setting off.

Modern after school programs need modern management solutions, and this requires making use of the numerous handy features of any good after school management software solution. These solutions can cover a huge amount of the repetitive and innumerable tasks associated with running programs and as such offer a significant improvement in speed, efficiency, and security.

A good program handles registration, payment, and communications, among other things, and keeps all the work in one handy digital platform, reducing the risk of duplicate entries or lost information.

As a way of handling your multi-site projects, whether in-school, afterschool, or extra-curricular, it’s a good idea to make use of the software that’s available. Here, we’re going to take a look at some of the best features to look out for when choosing after school management software. One of the handiest features is registration, so before we go over a more comprehensive list of useful features, let’s take a look at that.

How After School Registration Software can Help

Being able to simplify the registration and enrollment process is a huge bonus to working with these software programs. These processes are some of the most critical and yet most cumbersome of all of the tasks that need to be completed when running an after school program. This, therefore, makes a good argument for a more secure and automated way of doing things.

Before we get to that, let’s look at some of the issues commonly faced at the enrollment stage. The major challenges of enrollment and registration include:

So, automating and digitizing your registration processes are great ways to compensate for all of these inherent flaws in a paperwork system. Digital forms can restrict submission until mandatory fields are completed; they have no issue with messy handwriting; they can assign each entry a unique identifier, and it’s a breeze to store them safely and to find them with a search function when needed.

This is only one of the powerful elements of good after school registration software for afterschool programs. There are other features of a management system that apply to other elements of school programs, so let’s list a few.

Features of Good After School Management Software

The features you are looking for will depend on whether how much you want the software to do for you. If you’re simply looking for after school registration software, a lot of the features below will not be necessary. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive solution to multiple program management, it’s worth trying to find something with the following capabilities:

1. Digital Check-In

The student management system as a whole should be able to incorporate a form of digital check-in and check-out for students or their parents to log their attendance. This makes reporting, statistics, and billing for after school programs a lot simpler.

Tracking these metrics allows you to make sure billing is adjusted accordingly, and that parents are invoiced for the specific attendance of their children.

2. Fundraising

If you’re looking to raise funds as part of the program, or for the program itself, it might be useful to have a fundraising feature on your management software system. This can help by generating a shareable donation link to send out to supporters.

3. Enrollment

Signing up for the programs can be streamlined very effectively with good management programs. Look out for an enrollment tool to help with this process and give parents something easy to use to sign up for their kids.

4. Tuition Management

Billing and payment tools are one of the best features of a good software solution for after school program management. Finances are one of the key responsibilities of managing programs, and it’s important they’re tracked properly and received promptly. Management software solutions should be able to automate most of this work for you.  

5. Form building and templates

Much of the paperwork involved in after school program management can be taken off your hands too. Find a solution with digital templates or form builders that can help you standardize, tidy up, and publish all the necessary paperwork to stay compliant and safe.

6. Communications

Perhaps one of the single most important elements of a management program is the consolidating of various communications channels. Being able to send out emails and text messages from a single platform keeps communication simple between staff and parents.

Look out for apps that can provide internal communication too. Monitored, recorded outgoings can help keep track of whether messages are being opened, and set reminders to parents about upcoming activities. Secure, personal messaging is also a good thing to have when you need it, and the ease with which digital communications aid in gathering informed consent is one of its strongest appeals.

Curacubby can help you with all of these features and more. Check out our platform and see how various afterschool program tasks can be automated and streamlined to save you time where you need it. Curacubby is a complete platform for operations, finance, and commerce, and extends to numerous school, recreation, and enrichment programs.

Conclusion

The best after school management software covers many bases, not least of all, enrollment and registration. These platforms take the risk and effort out of some of the most fiddly and time-consuming processes while improving their quality at the same time.

For deeper implementation, consider check-in monitoring, billing, form templates, and integrated communications platforms to make the best use of an all-in-one platform for your afterschool management. Click the button to learn more.