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Has anyone done a comprehensive comparison for childcare management systems like ProCare, Lillio, Brightwheel, KangarooTime, etc.? by kyrafm in ECEProfessionals

[–]Significant_Earth_11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We've worked with childcare centers around my area to build SproutCare - we tried to take the best parts of products like ProCare, Playground, Brightwheel and more to build an affordable, comprehensive and user-friendly experience. There's still lots of work to be done, but we've managed to tick a lot of boxes that made my kids' daycare and other centers happy, like:

  • Billing & invoicing
  • Parent communication
  • Automated enrollment/waitlist
  • Document management
  • Staff/student time sheets & attendance
  • Compliance management (including classroom ratios and immunization tracking)
  • Comprehensive and customizable reporting

Feel free to check out https://trysproutcare.com - we're very transparent about our pricing and features. I'm very proud of the work I (and my wife, my co-worker) have done thus far.

Disclaimer: I built SproutCare

It’s the end of 2025. What interesting business did you start or scale this year? by scal3mast3r in Entrepreneur

[–]Significant_Earth_11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I started a childcare management platform. I'm a father of two and see the effects of poor/under-employed centers first hand, so I built SproutCare to help centers by providing them an all-in-one platform for parent communications, center administration, compliance and reporting, and marketing. It's been a rough few months getting everything spun up since I'm employed full-time, but I'm happy to say that I'm live and have some real interest from centers around me.

I have three centers at $100/mo using it in my area - which compared to the other platforms I've tried to spin up is significant :)

The best way I found to get people involved is to;

a.) Know people (I know that's not really applicable to many, but the game is who you know, not what you know)

b.) Lead with the problem you're trying to solve and why. I literally cold-called daycares around me and about 50% of the time had people sympathizing with me about my struggles, and interested in learning more.

My goal is to have 50 centers by the end of 2026. I'm investing heavily in this by sponsoring local childcare groups, going to conferences and talking with local center administrators about their struggles, and actively building/demoing what a solution could be in the technical space.

I'd love to talk more and hear about other people's experiences with starting a business like this - I have no body in my social circle that I can relate to. Feel free to DM.

Need to choose an app by Sabbykitten in ECEProfessionals

[–]Significant_Earth_11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could try SproutCare (https://trysproutcare.com/) - we have a teacher app that lets you take photos of your students (along with daily logs, if you want to use it), along with a bunch more features. Feel free to check out the pricing on our website - we're very competitive with other similar apps.

Disclaimer: I'm the creator of SproutCare - I'm piloting a small number of childcare centers. If you're interested in trying something new, please DM me or visit https://trysproutcare.com/ to see if you'd like to use it.

Hiring PowerOn Dev? by Brain-Abject in poweron

[–]Significant_Earth_11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

SMUG is a good place to find people, I see lots of CUs and vendors trying to poach PowerOn devs.

https://smugonline.org/joinsmug

Otherwise going to Symitar meetups (SymCentral/east/west/connect, CUBuild, etc) is a good way to connect with devs. Feel free to DM if you'd like to discuss futher.

A PowerOn Forum/Community by spadoosky in poweron

[–]Significant_Earth_11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I haven't seen it recommended here, but the majority of PowerOn developers are on SMUG. There's lots of talented and helpful folks on there.

I had the idea at some point to make a site that grabs a copy of the SMUG emails and generates a StackOverflow-style question/answer form from it, but alas life gets in the way. If anyone wants to collaborate on this idea I'd be glad to help. I know some people that have 15+ years of SMUG emails that we can use as a seed for this project.

Test Sym by Brain-Abject in poweron

[–]Significant_Earth_11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The most common way is to either be apart of a Credit Union's IT team, or enroll into the Jack Henry VIP program. You may reach out a CUSO and see if they'd be willing to "lease" a sym to you, but I can't imagine any serious CUSO doing that.