Daycare billing, check-in and parent messaging for small Houston programs

The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to November 30, and every Houston provider has a closure plan of some kind. Software cannot keep anyone safe, and DCare is not an emergency alert system. What it can do is make the administrative side of a closure tidy.

Before the season, write down your tuition policy for weather closures and share it with families. DCare does not automatically credit or prorate invoices when you close, so the policy is yours to decide. When a closure happens, a message from DCare reaches every family in the parent portal, and the attendance record for that day stays empty, which matches what you told parents.

Because DCare is web software, your records are not stored on a tablet in the building. If the program is closed for several days, you can still see balances, draft the next invoice run and answer parents' questions from any device with an internet connection and a modern browser. If your internet is down, so is access; plan for that too.

Imagine a home-based provider in the southeast of the city whose families work rotating shifts at refineries and the medical center. The schedule changes every two weeks. Some children arrive at 5:45 a.m.; others come mid-morning. Tuition is weekly because it matches how families are paid.

1. 1
   Weekly rates that match each family's plan. Each child carries the weekly rate the provider agreed with that family; DCare drafts one invoice per family each Monday
2. 2
   Early arrivals on the record. The kiosk records exact arrival times, which helps when a family asks why a child was marked as present before opening hours
3. 3
   Grandparent pickups. Adults the parent has named on the family record can sign the child out, and every sign-out is time-stamped
4. 4
   Extra hours as one-off charges. If the provider charges for hours outside the agreed schedule, each occasion becomes a dated line with a clear description

Start, at $49 per month for up to 25 enrolled children, fits a home program like this one. The point of the example is not the specific schedule, but that irregular hours are easier to bill when the record of who was there is exact.

Consider a small center in a suburban strip of the city with fifty enrolled children, open from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monthly tuition is due on the 1st. The director spends Sunday evenings reconciling a spreadsheet with bank transfers.

With DCare, the director sets the billing day to the 1st and lets the system draft every family invoice. Parents see their invoices in the portal. If the center has a configured, eligible Stripe account, parents can pay by card through Stripe Checkout, and those payments mark invoices paid without manual matching. Transfers and checks are recorded by staff. The dashboard shows outstanding and overdue balances, which is usually what the Sunday spreadsheet was trying to answer.

Standard, at $99 per month, covers up to 60 enrolled children. DCare does not process child care subsidy payments and does not report to any agency, so a center that serves subsidized families should keep its existing process for those.

Summer changes the shape of many Houston programs. School-age siblings join for a few weeks, field trips move indoors, and families who travel take a week or two off. In DCare, a school-age child can be added with a weekly summer rate and marked inactive when school resumes, keeping their history intact. Field trips and activity fees become one-off charges with their own due dates.

If your policy holds a place for a family on vacation at a reduced rate, change the child's rate for those weeks and change it back afterwards. Past invoices are never rewritten, so the record of what you charged stays honest.

Houston is one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the country, and many small programs serve families who speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese or another language at home. DCare's interface, including the parent portal, is available in English and German only. Messages you write are delivered as you write them, so a bilingual provider can write in any language, but the portal's own buttons and labels will not be translated.

We would rather you know that before you start than discover it after inviting families. If written communication in a family's first language matters to your program, test the portal with one or two families during the trial.

A careful start for a hypothetical Houston provider: create the account with the United States region, which fixes billing to USD and uses month-first dates and a 12-hour clock. Add families and children, set rates and the billing day, and place the tablet where parents actually walk in.

Keep your current sign-in method running for a few days, then switch when the kiosk records match. Draft invoices and check them before parents can see them. The 14-day trial requires no card and never authorizes a charge, and a paid subscription only begins after you confirm it in Stripe Checkout.

Small Houston programs commonly charge a registration fee at enrollment, an annual supply fee and occasional activity fees. In DCare each one is a one-off charge on the family with its own description and due date, visible in the parent portal as soon as you add it.

If a fee is refundable in some circumstances, write that into your enrollment agreement; DCare does not track refund conditions. Hypothetically, the southeast-side home provider above might add a registration fee when a family signs up in July, a supply fee due in August, and then let the weekly rate begin on the child's first Monday.

Families sometimes need a statement of what they paid, for a dependent care account at work or for their own records. With every invoice and recorded payment in one account, an owner can export the data as CSV or JSON and prepare a statement without searching through a phone's banking app. DCare does not prepare tax forms and does not give tax advice.

Keep your own copies of anything you are required to keep. DCare is a convenient place to hold administrative records, not a guarantee that you meet any retention requirement.

A twelve-hour day means at least two people see the front door. The kiosk record is the same for every authorized user, so the person closing at 6:30 p.m. can see who is still signed in without calling the person who opened at 6:30 a.m. DCare does not calculate staff ratios or alert you about them; it simply makes presence information easier to share.

For a home program with one adult, the same record answers a different question: when a parent texts to ask what time their child arrived, the answer is on the screen rather than in someone's memory.

Check each child's rate and whether they are billed weekly or monthly, set the billing day, enter your closing time and late fee, and confirm the account time zone is Central. Write your weather-closure tuition policy into the handbook before the season starts rather than during a storm.

Place the tablet where parents actually enter, with power nearby, and print QR cards for families who prefer scanning. Draft the first invoices and read them before you invite anyone. If you plan to accept card payments, confirm your Stripe account is configured and eligible first; otherwise, plan to record transfers and checks yourself.

Last, send families a short message explaining what will change: where they sign in, where invoices appear, and who to ask if a line looks wrong. That one message tends to save a week of questions at pickup.

It is also worth deciding, before launch, who in your program is allowed to add one-off charges and record payments. In a small home program that is usually just the owner. In a center with a director and an assistant director, agree on who does what, so that a late fee is not added twice and a check is not recorded by two people on the same afternoon. A short written note on the office wall is enough.

US accounts are billed in dollars at list prices, not converted from euro: Start is $49 per month for up to 25 enrolled children and Standard is $99 per month for up to 60, excluding applicable taxes. Both begin with a 14-day trial that needs no card. Your account region and currency are fixed when you sign up; reading this Houston page does not change an existing account.

DCare is deliberately narrow. It covers families, tuition invoices, attendance and parent access for one setting. It does not do lesson plans, photo sharing, multi-site management or subsidy claims, and it does not interpret Texas or local rules.