Rolling out KidCheck children's check-in software is a straightforward process, and with a little planning you can ensure roll out goes smoothly. Here you can find KidCheck's suggested roll out steps and timeline, the Quick Start Guide, and the 10 most common mistakes to avoid during roll out.   Create a Plan   Set Up Your KidCheck Stations   10 Common Mistakes to Avoid      Create a plan   Whether you're providing care for…

We receive many questions about whether it is better to have a wired or wireless network. There are pros and cons to each and determining the best option often depends on what you are using the network for.  However, when it comes to children’s check-in, we recommend a wired network. While KidCheck will run on a wireless or wired network, wired networks typically give you more reliable, faster and more secure connections. For check-in to…

Smiling Parents and Safe Kids... Seems Easy Doesn’t It? Sally is head of the Children's Area for a midsize organization in a middle class suburb of your average American city. She is responsible for the safety of 200 to 300 children depending on the day and takes her job very seriously. She is the mother of two grown children and loves working with children.     She remembers when she started in her current position,…

KidCheck’s unique parent created and maintained accounts provide many benefits for you and parents, including drastically reducing your workload with account set up and maintenance.Click here for benefits of parent created accounts.  We also understand the benefits are only as good as getting the parents to participate.  It’s important they buy in to the idea and process and set up the accounts, which means communication from you on the reasons, benefits and policies to keep…

There’s nothing quite as frustrating as having an internet outage right in the midst of a busy check-in.  While web based check-in solutions have a ton of advantages, they are sometimes at the mercy of your internet connection.  So what should you do if the internet goes down – do you have a back-up plan?  Here are some suggestions from us, and we’d love to hear additional ideas of how you handle the situation! Reports/Manual…

The best approach any time you are checking children in is to follow standard procedures.  Have each child associated with a parent/guardian account, have the parents/guardians create their accounts, and have the parents/guardians be the ones checking in the children.  However, in some situations when guardians may not be highly involved, for example when running a bus ministry, this may not always be possible. Here are some suggestions from KidCheck on how to approach this…

Cleaning Your Label Printer A clean label printer is a happy label printer.  Well, maybe we can’t speak to its actual happiness, but periodically cleaning your printer will ensure it stays in tip-top shape and reliable working order and that helps keep you happy.  We suggest you clean the printer at least monthly.  If the printer jams, clean it immediately!  Since the labels can’t be in the printer when you clean it, perform the cleaning…

You want visitors to feel welcome, you want them to feel confident their children will be in safe hands and you want to capture enough information to follow up with them but you don’t want them to feel overwhelmed or that you are trying to learn too much about them too soon. Our suggestion to best balance this is to only capture basic, pertinent information from visitors checking their children in such as name, phone, email,…

It’s important to know when visitors and guest families come to your organization.  They are checking you out to see it there is a fit, and you want to both make them feel welcome and proactively follow up so they are more likely to return.     To easily track visiting and new families use the “First Time Check-in Report” in KidCheck’s comprehensive report library.  It will show you the children and guardians that have…

We all know how important it is to be keenly aware of allergies or medical conditions for the children in your care.  With KidCheck it ss easy to tell if children have a medical or allergy condition that needs special attention.  Their name tag is highlighted with reverse type, meaning it is printed using white lettering on a black background instead of the standard black letters on a white background.  The allergy or medical condition…

We receive a lot of questions on how to easily designate different children’s groups or rooms on the child check-in labels.  This is especially handy for times when the children are all brought together and then later need to be quickly separated again into their specific group or room.  We have found a couple of methods that work well in this scenario.  The first one is to put a different colored sticker on the label…

With all the recent news of influenza, schools have been giving unprecedented attention to keeping classrooms clean and germ free. While much of the attention is directed at schools, churches, daycares, and pre-schools should also be thinking about how to maintain a clean and safe environment through what could be a notable season of sneezing, coughing, and runny noses. Keeping a healthy environment in your children's organization is obviously important for children and their families, but…

Everyone knows that internet security is an important issue.  Between hackers, viruses, malware, and the vast amount of inappropriate material available online, it’s not something that can simply be ignored.  However, figuring out how to decrease risk without having to purchase expensive software and configure custom servers can be difficult.  Thankfully, there is a simple and powerful tool that small businesses, churches, and homes may find helpful: OpenDNS.   Overview OpenDNS is a service that…

International Assembly Dramatically Improves Security & Speed of Children’s Check-in With KidCheck Set Up, Training and Implementation Completed Within Just a Few Days   In 2012, for their International Assembly held in Louisville, Kentucky, The Church of God of Prophecy (COGOP) made the decision to utilize an electronic children’s check-in solution instead of their traditional pen and paper method.  They chose KidCheck as the provider and found the benefits and positive results far exceeded even…

While wireless internet networks are extremely handy, there are certain situations where they can prove to be less than ideal.  Some churches, daycares and athletic facilities have found that during their busiest times, smart phones and other forms of network interference can cause issues with the reliability and performance of their wireless networks.  The natural next step is to switch from a wireless to a wired network. If your KidCheck stations are located near the router,…

KidCheck utilizes a unique design with parent created and maintained accounts, which provides many benefits for both organizations and parents. Click here for information on the benefits.  It’s tempting to set up the parent accounts for check-in yourself.  After all, if you just do it you’ll know it’s done, it’s correct and it’s easier for both you and them - Right? Well, actually… no.  Aside from creating a great deal of unnecessary work for yourself, you…

Organizations know background checks help reduce risk, maintain a safe environment and minimize liability.  Yet it can be a challenging topic of discussion and often brings up questions such as when, how often, for whom, how important is it really, and what happens if we don’t do background checks.  This article will address some of those questions and provide some general guidelines and information to get the conversation started. Start by Creating a Policy The…