Release Spotlight - April 13, 2023

On Thursday, April 13, Child Care Seer® will release our latest update to all customers. In this release, you’ll find many exciting new features and updates including CACFP food reporting, immunizations tracking, bus scheduling, FREE summer camp curriculum, and so much more! Keep reading for more information on everything that is included.

Food Reporting

Much anticipated food reporting is now available in Child Care Seer! Designed to support CACFP reporting needs, you’ll find a brand new section on your Reports menu – Food! Whether you want to see details about meals served in your center today or download last month’s summary report to submit for reimbursement, it’s all available in Seer. Be sure to adjust meal times and reimbursement rates for your center, and then start tracking! Please visit our knowledge base for help using your food reports.

Multi-Center Dashboard

Although Child Care Seer is designed by owners and directors for owners and directors, we have been much more focused on directors, until now! Center owners, get ready for lots of exciting new features designed and developed specifically for your unique needs as a child care business owner. New in this release, and only available in Child Care Seer, look for the Multi-Center Dashboard! Now you can see important real-time data for all of your centers all in ONE place! We’ll show you how many emails are waiting for reply in Center Inboxes, how many children and staff are currently in each building, unpaid balances for all locations, all expirations, and we’ll even keep an eye on ratios and other Current Issues. IN ONE PLACE. No need to switch accounts or remember which centers you already checked in on. Find something you need to investigate? Simply click to go directly to the corresponding action area!

Seer Education Tool Box (Curriculum)

Did you know that Child Care Seer can be your solution for curriculum? Powered by CLC Education, the Seer Education Tool Box delivers a Virginia Department of Education approved curriculum (toddler through pre-K) directly to your Activity Planner. As a special preview offer, join the Callahan Explorers in Adventure Land 2023 (summer camp) for FREE! If you would like to sign up for the summer camp offer, or preview our school-year curriculum, please email customer success at seer_support@childcareseer.com or hit the help button and let us know you’re interested in learning more.

Immunizations Tracking

It’s finally here! Now you can track immunizations for every child in Seer! We’ve already loaded the standard immunizations and doses specified by the CDC, but you may add, delete or change these settings in My Center. Look for a new Immunization tab on the child’s profile page which will automatically populate required dosage dates based on the child’s date of birth. Simply click the box to enter the date or record the decision to opt out of an immunization. Seer can track immunizations due soon or overdue center-wide! Simply enable this feature in My Center, and we’ll add a special system tag with due date and dosage details to any child that has at least one immunization due. Immunization tracking is also included in the new Expirations Aging Report and Dashboard Tile (keep reading for more info), as well as the brand-new Child Immunization Expirations available on your Reports menu.

Bus Scheduling

Do you have children that arrive or depart the center via bus? If so, the new Bus schedule is for you! You’ll find this new feature on the Scheduling menu, as well as the child’s profile page. Simply add all bus rides to and from your center, then assign children and staff to the bus as needed. Last minute change? Simply add or remove an assignment – updates are automatically posted to anyone viewing the bus schedule for the day! Our favorite part of this feature: it’s available on mobile!!! Staff can simply take their phone when meeting the bus to see exactly which children are expected to get on or off the bus! For more details on how to set up this amazing new feature, visit our Knowledge Base article.

Expirations Tile and Aging Report

Check out the new Expirations tile on your Dashboard! We’ll help you keep track of all things expiring or expiring soon automatically in Child Care Seer! Simply click the highlighted number to see more details of which documents, tags or immunizations are due soon or overdue. Click again to get a full aging report of every child, adult, or staff with expired items, expiration dates, child contacts, and more!

Sensitive Tags

We’ve updated tags for staff and children to include new “sensitive” tags. Sensitive staff tags can only be seen by staff with Sensitive permission, while sensitive child tags can only be seen by staff with Family Manager permission. We’ve changed Private staff tags so they are now only visible to Staff Managers. In addition, you may now set the visibility level for a tag category in the Tag Manager, or allow your staff to select the permission when the tag is created. Visit My Center settings to check it out!

Signature on Check-in/out

Starting in this release, you may choose to require a parent signature for drop-off and pick-up via the Child Care Seer kiosk. Visit My Center devices & kiosk settings to enable this new feature! When enabled, signatures are recorded and visible on the Attendance Log report, as well as in Happenings. Please note that if an attendance record is edited by a staff member, the corresponding parent signature will be removed.

Class Alerts to Admin

We've worked very hard to reduce your need for sticky notes, and now we’re taking away the need for radios as well! Your staff will love how easy it is to request help, or a break, or just ask admin to visit the classroom. Using the class device, simply click “Create”, scroll to the “Contact Center” section, and select the appropriate alert button. Admin staff will see alerts at the top of all Seer screens until they are resolved.

Coming Soon...

Introducing Management Seer & Seer Insights

As mentioned above, there are big things coming soon for center owners! If you’ve seen our presentation at a recent trade show, you might have heard that we’ve been hard at work on Management Seer – using your data recorded in Child Care Seer to give you unprecedented visibility into your center’s efficiency, profitability by staff and child, predictive scheduling and more!

Check out new Seer Insights – timely, actionable suggestions and insights powered by Management Seer, coming soon to your Child Care Seer owner experience!

Certifications Tracking

We can’t wait to show you Staff Certifications tracking in our next release! Like Immunizations, we’ll track all your required staff certifications and remind you when they are coming due. We just know you’ll want to be sure to use this fantastic upcoming feature to help your center avoid this common licensing violation!

Review Child Care Seer and get a $10 gift card

It’s not too late! There are still a few gift cards remaining from our review campaign announced in the previous release. It would help us reach more center owners and directors if you would be willing to write an honest review about your Seer software experience. In coordination with Gartner Digital Markets, the first 40 users to write a review will receive a $10 gift card of your choice when your review is accepted by Gartner. Please follow this link for this special offer.

Other things you’ll notice...

Start/Disenroll Dates on Child Profile

We’ve added a place to record start and disenroll dates for a child on their profile page. Coming soon, look for a report that shows enrollment changes in any selected time period based on these new child details.

Split ACH/CC Fees

Previously, we brought you the ability to transfer responsibility for credit card and ACH convenience fees to payers at your center. New in this release, centers may elect to split processing fees between the center and payers. Please reach out to customer success via the help button to initiate this change.

ACH & Payout Updates Pass Beta Testing

After extensive beta testing, Child Care Seer is happy to announce the release of our updated ACH processing to all new customers. If you are an existing Seer customer, please reach out to customer success to turn on the “new” ACH in your center. Update processing replaces the Plaid interface for account verification, removes the balance checker feature, and provides quicker turnaround for payments to reach your bank account. Detailed payout reporting is also now available for all centers.

Owner Role

Look for the new Owner role! If you are a center owner, you’ll want to update your Seer profile with this new role so that you have access to all our new owner features over the next several releases!

Open a Class Device or Kiosk Pop-Up from the Dashboard

There’s a new option to open any Class Device or Kiosk as a pop-up window from your dashboard. This window will behave exactly like the selected device without requiring you to leave your desk! Clicking the device icon next to the classroom or in the scheduled area to get started. Please note, this feature is also available on mobile but will open a new tab rather than a pop-up window.

Filter Details on Exported Reports

To help with clarity of reports, you’ll find the filters used in creating the report at the bottom of exported documents. Please note that extended filters will be noted on each page but fully reported on the final page of the document.

Tuition Assistance Copays Collected Automatically

Tuition Assistance mandated copays linked to an enrollment with custom autopay enabled will now be collected automatically when they are due. Please note that any such custom autopay will be used prior to a payment method enabled for our Universal Autopay feature. Please visit the Knowledge Base for further information.

Center Manager notifications of all failed payments

Center managers will now receive Seer notifications of all declined or failed payments, including both service payments and wallet loads, as well as payments attempted using Universal Autopay.

New Reports

In addition to food reporting, look for the new Planned vs. Attended report in this release. This report will show you how many children were scheduled and how many actually attended over any specified period.

Mobile Updates

We continue to migrate our most popular desktop features to our mobile app. In this release, look for the ability to edit homeclass, notes, and tags on children and staff. Center managers can also access the Live Classroom feature by simply clicking on the class on their mobile dashboard. Child Care Seer helps you manage your center even when you aren’t at your desk!