Childcare is one of the most important considerations for working parents and they spend as much as almost 8% of their monthly income on it. This makes for a potentially lucrative and sustainable business options as the demand for quality child care solutions continues to grow. Most small child care business and after school programs, however, lack the needed infrastructure to effectively manage the day to day operations, including payment processing and check in check out requirements.

With almost 33 million children currently in some form of child care program and each preschool child spending about 36 hours per week in such programs, the need for flexible, child care solutions has increased and entrepreneurial Americans have stepped up to offer them. Rightly the primary focuses of such businesses is usually on the wellbeing, education and development of the children, meaning that administrative tasks can fall by the wayside or take a back seat. Such lapses mean money — and time — lost, but the cost of hiring full-time administrative staff can be exorbitant. Child care management systems offer a way to address the administrative burden with little human capital requirements, and still reap the benefits of effective, efficient and tailored solutions.

The cloud has made such child care management systems even more accessible and flexible, integrating fully with mobile application and granting the business owner or manager access to their data in real-time anywhere any time. Such systems offer the ability to take payments quickly and easily, manage registers, and perform other tasks automatically. The implementation of automation in child care systems, as with many industries, means a streamlined, cost-effective cutting down of administrative burdens and more time to focus on the real heart of the business: the children.

As the number of working parents grows — according to Catalyst, in 2013 more than 70% of all women with children under 18 were working — child care businesses will continue to spring up. In fact, US day care and child care businesses are predicted to have among the fastest employment growth of all industries through 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The use of automation solutions will greatly enhance the service offerings of these growing businesses, ensuring greater focus on the care aspect and less distraction by the administrative requirements.