List of Topics Covered in This Guide

Children grow older and leave your programs. You must replace them to stay in business. ChildCareCRM makes keeping your classes and wait lists full both easy and routine.

Any parent or guardian with a child that might get enrolled is a “lead”.

There are six active statuses, shown below. Moving leads through them gets them closer to enrollment.

Most statuses are intuitive, but let’s define two:

   Engaged: you’ve given and received communication with the lead.

   Registered: the child is scheduled to begin class.

Keep your CRM clean and don’t waste time—if a lead ghosts you, mark them as “Lost Opportunity”.

Leads enter ChildCareCRM in two ways: 

Automated leads are occasionally spam; they start as pending leads until you screen them.

Look at the lead’s name. Mouse over their row to see their phone and email.

Enter every legit lead into ChildCareCRM. 

Entering leads is a two-step process. 

Fill out as much as possible.

In the beginning, child info is nice-to-have, not need-to-have. When done entering lead info, click “Save + Add Child” if you have child info. Click “Save” otherwise.

Leads will appear on the Home tab under “Tasks” when tasks associated with them become due. But sometimes you’ll need to find a lead or their child. There are a couple ways to do this:

Once found, you will be able to edit their information, add a child, assign tasks and add events.
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Tasks are things you need to do with a lead. Events (a.k.a. Activities) are things that happened. 

For example, to call a lead tomorrow, create a “call lead” task today. Tomorrow you’ll get a reminder to call the lead. If you call and get voice mail, you’ll complete the task by creating a “called-left message” event. (And you’d maybe create another “call lead” task for the next day.)

All tasks should eventually end up with events. You can have events without tasks, however. For example, you could create an “email received” event if a lead emails you unexpectedly.

With any lead, goal #1 is to give them a tour, and goal #2 is to get them registered or waitlisted. Schedule tasks to make those goals happen ASAP. Here’s how:

Step 1: Find the Lead in ChildCareCRM.  

Step 2: If creating a new task, click “+ Add Task”. If creating a new event, click the “Activities” tab and then click “+ Add Event”. 

Step 3: Select the “Task Type” or “Event Result”. Then fill out the rest of the form. The system can send reminders to leads or staff for upcoming tasks if you want.

Step 4: If adding a task, click “SAVE”. If adding an event, click “SAVE + NEW TASK” and return to step 3 above.

Tasks needing completion appear on the “Tasks” tab under the pipeline chart. Red due dates are past due.

To see/edit a task, click on it.

To complete a task, click the green checkmark.

Then pick a “Result Type”. Add a “Result Description” if you want to, update the “Status” if you need to, and then click “SAVE + GO TO LEAD”. (This step automatically creates an event.)

Finally, if the lead is still active and isn’t waitlisted or registered yet, make sure they have at least one assigned task. If they don’t, add a new task.

ChildCareCRM automates many tasks. See for yourself: create a new lead, assign it a "tour" task for today's date, and then mark the tour complete.  Then find the lead, and note that the status automagically updated to “tour completed”.

This happens because a Business Rule says whenever a tour event is completed, change the status to “Tour Completed.” Completing tour events trigger the business rule, and status updates are the result. 

See your business rules by clicking Settings > System Settings > Business Rules . Save time: create your own whenever you find yourself doing repetitive tasks.

ChildCareCRM produces several reports; explore the “Reports” tab to discover which reports have information you’re interested in. While exploring, you might consider these six: 

http://educate.childcarecrm.com/en/articles/777993-6-reports-for-director-success.

Find the lead.  If needed, add a child. Click the child, edit the child, and change the status to “rejected”. This archives the child. Archiving all children archives the lead.

(The above information is available in the printable one-page quick reference guide.)

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