Custom software for daycare centers, preschools, and childcare groups who need enrollment, attendance, billing, and parent communication built into one platform rather than juggling four separate tools.
Generic childcare apps cover basic check-in. We build the full operational system — CACFP meal tracking, licensing documentation, tuition automation, and daily parent reports — that keeps your center running and your licensing current.
Child enrollment, waitlist management, and digital intake forms with family profiles
Attendance tracking with parent check-in/out and real-time room ratios
Parent communication app with daily activity reports, photos, and messaging
Billing, tuition management, CACFP meal tracking, and licensing compliance documentation
Summary
RaftLabs builds custom childcare management software for daycare centers, preschools, after-school programs, and childcare groups. We develop child enrollment and waitlist management systems, attendance tracking, parent communication apps with daily activity reports, billing and tuition management, staff scheduling, CACFP meal tracking, licensing compliance documentation, and parent portals. Fixed cost, 12-14 week delivery.
3+Childcare and early education businesses in 3+ markets
·10-12Week delivery for childcare software
·100+Software products shipped
·FixedCost delivery
Childcare management software built for the compliance and communication demands of running a center
Running a licensed childcare center means managing enrollment paperwork, maintaining room ratios, tracking meals for CACFP reimbursement, sending daily updates to parents, collecting tuition, and keeping licensing documentation current — all at the same time. Generic scheduling or billing tools don't understand the regulatory context. Neither do consumer communication apps.
We've built management platforms for service businesses with complex compliance requirements. We understand what a childcare director actually needs: a single system that handles the operational and regulatory workload without generating more administrative work than it saves.
What we build
Child enrollment and waitlist management
Digital enrollment with family profile creation, emergency contact management, medical information, authorized pickup lists, and allergy documentation — all collected before the child's first day. Waitlist management with configurable priority rules: sibling preference, enrollment date, and program type. Automated waitlist notifications when a spot opens. Enrollment status tracking from inquiry through application, offer, acceptance, and active enrollment. Document management for immunization records, custody agreements, and enrollment contracts with expiry date alerts. Re-enrollment workflows for existing families with pre-populated forms to reduce administrative time.
Attendance tracking and room ratios
Parent check-in and check-out via PIN, QR code, or mobile app with timestamped records for every drop-off and pickup. Real-time room ratio dashboard showing current child-to-staff ratios by classroom — flagging when a room approaches ratio limits so staff can be redistributed before a compliance breach. Authorized pickup verification with photo display for staff confirmation. Late pickup tracking with automated fee calculation. Attendance reports by child, classroom, and program for licensing and funding documentation. Absence recording with reason tracking. Integration with billing so attendance data feeds directly into tuition and subsidy calculations.
Parent communication app
Parent-facing app with daily activity reports: meals eaten, nap times, diaper changes, activities, and mood notes sent by classroom staff throughout the day. Photo and video sharing with parent consent controls — photos shared only with the child's family. Two-way messaging between parents and staff with message history stored against the child's record. Push notifications for important center announcements, emergency closures, and individual child updates. Parent portal for viewing upcoming events, center newsletters, and accessing shared documents. Broadcast messaging for group announcements by classroom, program, or the full center. Read receipts so staff know which families have seen critical communications.
Billing and tuition management
Tuition billing with flexible schedules — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly — configured per family. Automated invoice generation and delivery by email or in-app notification. Online payment processing with card and ACH bank transfer. Subsidy and voucher management for CCAP, Head Start, and other assistance programs — billing split correctly between family portion and subsidy payer. Late payment tracking with automated reminder sequences and configurable late fee application. Family account statements with payment history. Sibling discounts, registration fees, and supply fees all handled in the same billing system. Integration with QuickBooks or your accounting software for reconciliation without double data entry.
CACFP meal tracking and reporting
Meal count recording by classroom and meal type — breakfast, AM snack, lunch, PM snack — with the daily child attendance feeding directly into meal counts so there's no separate tracking sheet. Menu documentation with meal components recorded against CACFP reimbursable meal patterns. Monthly claim preparation with meal count summaries by age group ready for submission to your state agency. Attendance-linked meal counts that flag discrepancies between children present and meals served. Meal component compliance tracking against USDA meal pattern requirements. Record storage that meets the three-year documentation retention requirement. Sponsor-level reporting for multi-site programs submitting consolidated claims.
Staff scheduling and licensing compliance
Staff scheduling with ratio-aware shift planning — the schedule builder shows projected child counts and required staffing levels for each time block so you schedule enough coverage before the day starts. Time and attendance tracking for staff with clock-in/out records for payroll. Certification and training tracking: CPR, First Aid, mandatory reporter training, and state-specific credential requirements with expiry date alerts before a license lapses. Licensing documentation management: inspection reports, corrective action plans, license certificates, and required postings stored and searchable. Incident and accident reporting with documentation workflows that meet state licensing requirements. Staff-to-child ratio alerts that trigger when a classroom drops below required coverage during the day.
Problems we solve for childcare businesses
Child enrollment managed on paper with manual data re-entry
Enrollment paperwork arrives as a physical form. Staff re-key the same data into the management system, the billing tool, and the parent communication app separately. Every re-entry is a chance for error, and a missing field isn't caught until a licensing inspection or a billing dispute surfaces it.
Daily check-in and attendance not visible to parents in real time
Parents drop off their child and have no confirmation of arrival unless they call the center. Attendance records are updated at the end of the day rather than at the point of check-in. Parents who ask about their child's day get a summary call rather than a real-time update.
Billing and subsidy calculation done manually each month
Tuition billing, subsidy splits, and voucher deductions are calculated in spreadsheets. A family on a subsidy program requires staff to manually calculate the family portion and the government portion for each billing cycle. One miscalculation causes a reconciliation problem that takes hours to fix.
Staff-to-child ratio compliance tracked without automation
Room ratios are checked visually during the day. When a staff member steps out or a room gets an unexpected drop-off, the ratio breach isn't flagged until a director walks past. Licensing requirements don't allow for a manual check every 15 minutes -- the system needs to flag it automatically.
Incident and medication records stored in paper files
A child has an allergic reaction. The staff member needs the medical record. It's in a filing cabinet in the director's office. Paper-based medical and incident records aren't accessible in the moment they're needed, and they're not searchable when a licensing inspector asks for documentation going back 12 months.
Parent communication scattered across multiple channels
Center updates go out on WhatsApp. Individual messages go by email. Permission slips come home in the bag. Emergency notifications go to a phone tree. No parent has a complete picture of communications, and no staff member knows which parents have seen which messages.
How we work with childcare businesses
We spend the first two weeks mapping your enrollment workflow, your compliance obligations, and how your staff actually manages check-in, billing, and parent communication today. We look at what your licensing authority requires in documentation and what your current tools fail to produce. The output is a product specification that reflects your center's operations, not a generic childcare software feature list.
We design the data model around the child record as the central entity -- linking enrollment, attendance, billing, health, and communication in one place. For CACFP programs, we design the meal tracking architecture so attendance data feeds directly into meal counts without a separate recording step. For multi-site groups, we design the permission model so center directors see their center and group administrators see everything.
Development runs in two-week sprints. At the end of each sprint, your team can test real workflows -- a parent checking in their child, a staff member posting a daily report, a director running a billing cycle. Real testing against real workflows catches usability problems before they affect parents or licensing inspectors.
We test every workflow against your compliance requirements before launch. Room ratio alerts, CACFP meal count accuracy, subsidy billing splits, and incident report storage are all validated against the rules that apply to your licensing jurisdiction. We test the parent app on iOS and Android across different devices and connectivity conditions.
We migrate existing enrollment records and configure billing rules before go-live. Staff training is included. The first 30 days after launch are supported directly -- any issue that affects daily operations or parent communication is resolved quickly. We document everything so your team can manage the system independently after the support period.
What to ask any childcare software team
Compliance and records
Can the system handle CACFP meal tracking with attendance-linked meal counts?
How does the platform manage staff certification and expiry alerts?
Are incident and medication records stored in a way that meets your state's documentation retention requirements?
Can the system generate room ratio alerts in real time during the day?
Parent experience
Can parents check their child in and out via a mobile app?
Can staff post daily activity reports with photos from a classroom device?
Does the parent app consolidate messaging, reports, and billing in one place?
Delivery and cost
Is pricing fixed or hourly?
What is the source code ownership arrangement?
Do you have experience with subsidy and voucher billing for CCAP or Head Start programs?
Childcare software development cost
Scope
Estimated range
Timeline
Parent communication and check-in app
Parent communication and check-in app
$25,000–$50,000
8–12 weeks
Enrollment and billing system
Enrollment and billing system
$30,000–$55,000
10–14 weeks
Staff scheduling and compliance
Staff scheduling and compliance
$20,000–$40,000
6–10 weeks
Full childcare management platform
Full childcare management platform
$70,000–$130,000
14–20 weeks
Frequently asked questions
Off-the-shelf childcare platforms handle standard enrollment, billing, and parent communication well for most centers. Custom software is the right choice when your CACFP tracking and reporting requirements exceed what the platform supports out of the box; when you're operating a multi-site childcare group and need consolidated reporting alongside per-center management; when your subsidy and voucher billing arrangements are complex enough that the platform's tools create reconciliation work every month; or when you're building childcare management software to sell to other operators. We'll tell you honestly if a platform subscription would serve you better than a custom build — the wrong answer is building custom when a $150/month platform would handle it.
CACFP compliance requires accurate daily meal counts by age group, documentation of menu components against the USDA meal pattern, and monthly claim submissions with supporting attendance records. We build meal tracking so daily attendance feeds directly into meal counts — staff record which children ate each meal, and the system generates the monthly claim summary with counts by age group ready for submission. The key is eliminating the separate paper tracking that creates discrepancies between attendance records and meal counts. We also store records with the three-year retention that CACFP audits require. We are not CACFP compliance consultants — we recommend you verify specific documentation requirements with your state agency. Our system supports the tracking and record-keeping; your policies complete the compliance picture.
Yes. The parent experience works best when daily reports, photos, messaging, and billing are all in one app rather than spread across three tools with different logins. We build parent-facing apps where classroom staff post daily activity updates throughout the day, parents can message teachers directly, push notifications deliver important updates without relying on a parent checking their email, and billing and payment are accessible in the same interface. The complexity is usually in the permission model: which staff members can post to which classrooms, which parents see which children's information, and how broadcast messages target the right audience. We design these access controls during discovery based on how your center is actually organized.
A focused enrollment, attendance, and parent communication system typically runs $30,000–$55,000. A full platform with enrollment, attendance, parent app, billing and subsidy management, CACFP meal tracking, staff scheduling, and licensing compliance documentation typically runs $65,000–$120,000. Cost depends on the number of centers, subsidy billing complexity, and how much of the licensing documentation workflow needs to be built versus managed outside the system. We scope every project before pricing it — fixed cost, agreed before development starts, no hourly billing.
Childcare software by product
Childcare Management Software -- enrolment, digital attendance with ratio monitoring, daily parent reports, EYFS observations, and billing
