Daycare business

I have set up and done weekly data entry for a few daycares.

I just used the basic chart of accounts for a service industry and added/deleted accounts as needed.

The biggest question is. . .are you tracking the customer detail in QuickBooks, or using another system?

If you are not tracking the customer detail, you would just enter income by whatever accounts your client wants. . .Tuition, Registration, and Field Trips are the 3 basic ones. . .if your client wants more detail, you can have as many income accounts as they want.

For the assistance checks, I just added them to the appropriate income account. . .the food program checks would offset the expense account.

Of course, if this is a non-profit, you have other issues to deal with.

Hope this helps you in your thinking process,

Thsis is a for profit corporation. They have some type of daycare software system, but I don't think they are using it to the fullest or even know how or even want to. They track the tuition so by a certain day of the week they will know who still owes, but I think that is how far they go with it.

So are you saying that when the food program checks comes in your would JE a credit to the food expense account instead of recording it as income?

Sounds like you are saying that the only the assistance payments is really income.

Thanks.

I would not use a j/e. I would offset the expense account when I made the deposit to the bank, unless there is something in the agreement with the assistance program where you need to report your gross food expense, in which case, I would set up an income account.

Basically, for your business financials, the expense to the company is the outflow of food purchases, less the inflow of assistance money.

This makes sense to me.

If they are tracking their receivables elsewhere, I would not bother setting up invoices in the system.

Sometimes parents want reports showing child care payments for their taxes. I usually just created a report in Excel for those. I didn't think it was worth the time to track every payment through QuickBooks, since the tracking was done (in this case, by hand) elsewhere.

Think it through, because it is soooo much easier if you set it up with the long term needs in mind.

A lot of these decisions are really about what the client wants to see as far as reporting. You can be as detailed as you want, or not. . .

I have a couple of daycare businesses. One has been audited and basically, the food program reimbursement is income and should be recorded as income on the books in a separate account for "Food Program Reimburesement. Second, Track all food expenses and they will offset each other on the income statement. But Food Reimburesement is taxable. I'm not familiar with the child care assistance program.

I have several daycare clients. All use external systems to track parent payments. The best I've seen is a system by Pro-care. System tracks everything about an enrolled child, grade, shots, billing, etc. Software also allows parents to "log" child in and out when via a key pad placed near enterence. Same keypad also allows for employee timekeeping. Cost is ver resonable for what you get.

for my clients since AR is done externally, all deposits to bank accounts are booked as revenue. Food progrma must be recorded as income in my clients state.