Digital tools for a smarter nursery business

1. What tool should I use to plan shifts in my Early Years setting?

With strict ratio requirements, the Early Years us one place you can't mess about when it comes to shift planning. But who's in when? For how long? And who's covering Sheila while she's on holiday?

Well, with Famly you get an easy overview of required staffing against your booked children and real attended hours. And, you can input your own ratios to make sure you're always correctly staffed across all your rooms.

2. What's the best tool for parent communication?

As well as being an EYFS requirement, parental partnerships support children's wellbeing and inform their care. Plus, parents want to celebrate their child's learning and achievement as much as you love to share it, so why not make it easy? Daily diaries and paper sheets often spend a lot of time going to and from Early Years settings in backpacks and not a lot of time being read. If parents are missing important updates on your notice board, or not reading the emails you send, it's time to try another way.

With Famly you can send daily updates to instant messaging and automatic reminders, all your parent communication in one place. Share observations, invite parents to events, send photos and videos, or just let them know what their child ate for lunch.

3. How do I manage risk assessments in my Early Years setting?

Keeping everyone safe is a full-time job, so spotting issues early can save you hours and help prevent incidents. Tudu helps you stay compliant with digital risk assessments, reporting issues, and keeping records up-to-date.

Looking for something more low key? Try our downloadable risk assessment template here.

4. Which is the best nursery management software?

Systems range hugely in terms of features, price and quality, but most are about ensuring that you have everything you need all in one place. They can help speed up invoicing, registration, observations, occupancy control, optimise enquiries and registration – the list is endless.

So which is the right nursery management tool for you?

Well, Famly can help you with everything you need to run your nursery, all in one place. Join us for a demo and you can see for yourself.

5. What's the best tool for social media for nurseries?

Part of an effective marketing strategy for any nursery is using social media to talk to parents, both prospective and existing. Being able to schedule all of your posts in one, easy-to-use format can help save countless wasted hours. Instead of posting the same thing to different social media platforms, just make one post and share it across the different platforms with a click. You can even schedule posts to go out later, respond to messages, and see how many people have seen your posts.

• HootSuite – With the HootSuite free plan, you can manage up to three different profiles at once. It helps you to schedule content, understand some basic analytics, and even get started with some basic advertising.
• Buffer – It’s simple, and lets you manage up to five accounts, schedule content, and see basic analytics. It even comes integrated with free image creator Pablo.

6. How do I keep my nursery's data secure?

Famly takes data security extremely seriously. The personal data you handle, including that of children & families, is safe, encrypted, and processed in line with GDPR & UK GDPR regulations.

Learn more about cyber security in the Early Years in this free guide, from Active8.

7. What's the best tool for recording child development?

Gone are the days of pages of hand-written EYFS reports, highlighted tracking sheets, and heavy learning journals full of pages and pages of observations. Recording children's learning and achievement digitally makes life easier for your practitioners, and makes sharing with parents more streamlined.

Famly allows you to make on-the-go observations, and instantly update online learning journals. You can view reference material from multiple different frameworks, as well as add your own. You can also create customisable assessments, so you can record learning in the way that works for you.

8. Which tool should I use for accounting in my Early Years setting?

Helps you manage your money. Taxes, receipts, invoicing, accounting, direct debits. If you’re handling money, you’re probably going to want something to help you with it. To keep track of revenue, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. If you want to improve your profitability, it’s going to be key to be on top of everything.

• Wave – This free (yes free) accounting software was made for non-accountants, and is very simple to use. You can do accounting, invoicing and receipt scanning for free, and pay per transaction for money collection. Lacks some of the customisations of more expensive services.
• Quickbooks/SagePay/Xero – These are the three big guns. Used by most nurseries in the UK, take a look at what they offer to find the service that suits what you need from accounting software.

9. Which tools can I use to support my team with spelling and grammar?

Everything from ironing out those common grammar and spelling mistakes, to helping you communicate in simple, readable language. Reports, observations, messaging staff, communicating with parents – it all matters how you write. Keeping your writing clear and free of spelling mistakes is crucial to making your business look professional.

• Grammarly – Probably my favourite tool on the whole list. Add it as an extension to your internet browser, and it’ll automatically spell check all your work, and give you suggestions to improve your grammar. Never make a mistake again.
• Hemingway App – Put any text into this app, and it’ll give you advice on how to make your writing easy to read. It’s that simple.

Famly's very own Sidekick writing assistant fixes spelling, grammar, and tone in every observation, assessment, message, and post. And, with the 'Send for review' option on observations, you can catch any other changes you'd like to make, before those observations go out to parents.