A vital part of owning a family child care business is having a budget; a budget provides essential information for operating, managing unexpected challenges, and turning a profit. Child Care Aware® of America created this Child Care Provider Budget Excel Worksheet to help you get started on creating a budget.
It’s impossible to predict the future, you never know when a natural disaster or emergency can occur. While you can’t prevent all emergencies, you can protect the children in your care, your family, and your business by having adequate insurance protection. This resource by Child Care Aware and Tom Copeland summarizes four types of insurance policies and why they are necessary to have.
How Insurance Protects You in an Emergency
An essential factor of operating a business out of your home is the time-space percentage helping determine the business portion of expenses used for business and personal purposes. The time/space percentage is calculated annually by taking the total number of hours you care for children in your home, the total number of hours you spend on business-related activities when children are not present, and the total number of square feet used for your business. This time tracker sheet will help you track your hours, ensuring that all your time (both with and without children) is included in the time-space calculation.
To use this time tracker, simply print out a copy for each month. Every day write down when the first child arrives when the last child leaves, calculating the time when children are present. Then write down the amount of time you worked on the business when children were not present. We have left some of the columns empty for you to add your own tasks/activities; remember, they must be activities for the business and inside your home. After adding the hours for each day, you will get a final number at the end of the month.
In our new Learn, Share, and Grow Series :Budgets and Policies for FCC
Laverne Head explains an essential part of any small business is the budget. In order to better get an understanding of tuition and fees, cost of operation, as well as profitability and sustainability, a budget is a must.
To get started on your own monthly budget, first choose either the Excel template to work digitally or the PDF template for a printable copy. The Excel version has been formatted to include formulas, thus all you do is input the number for each sheet, and it will calculate for you.
Next, calculate gross income. This is the money that comes into the business. You can figure this by listing the children in your program, the cost per day of tuition, and multiplying this by the number of days in the amount they attend the program. After tuition, add other income such as grants or food assistance.
Second, calculate your expenses. This is all the cost associated with running your program. We have listed a few options within the templates but add anything you have purchased in that set month. Please make sure to include your salary here.
Lastly, calculate the net income. This is the amount that your business made in a month, and we drive this by subtracting expenses from gross income. From this you can see if you are profitable or if you need to reduce expenses or raise tuition to have a sustainable business.
