Home · Solutions · Operations & quality
Solution · Operations & qualityThe month closes with one click, not three evenings over the attendance notebook
Attendance and billing at the preschool
A robot collects attendance from a tap at the door, computes tuition, meals and extra hours by your fee rules, emails parents their bills, matches payments and reminds politely about arrears. In the morning it orders catering from actual attendance, not from a fixed list.
Executive summary
Attendance lives in a notebook, the computations in a spreadsheet, and the month’s end in the head’s evenings; absence deductions and extra hours are counted by hand, so mistakes and parent discussions are a ritual.
A tap at the door creates the attendance register; the computations run by the fee rules, bills go to parents by email, payments match from the statement, and catering is ordered from the morning’s attendance.
Closing the month shrinks to a review and a click, billing mistakes vanish, arrears get polite reminders, and the kitchen stops cooking for the absent.
the attendance register (a hallway tablet); the fee rules; bills and payments; catering orders; a report in Microsoft Teams
Business problem
A notebook, a spreadsheet and the head’s three evenings
A private preschool looks like a simple model: tuition plus meals plus extra hours. The simplicity ends at first contact with reality: one deduction for an absence reported by 8:00, another for an unreported one, a sibling rate, hours beyond the package counted to the quarter hour, the municipal subsidy with rules of its own. All of it computed from an attendance notebook, by hand, a hundred times over.
So the month’s close looks the same every month: the head, notebook and spreadsheet, assembling the computations over three evenings and then writing or printing bills for parents. With a hundred children and a dozen rules, mistakes are a statistical certainty, and every mistake is an awkward parent conversation plus a correction that also upsets the subsidy bookkeeping.
Payments arrive as transfers titled “for Stan” with amounts rounded each parent’s own way; somebody must match them, explain differences and chase arrears, which in a parent relationship tends to be the hardest conversation of the month. In parallel, every morning, the kitchen or caterer receives an order from a fixed list, not from actual attendance: in infection season the preschool pays for a dozen daily lunches nobody eats.
And in all this, the time for what the place exists for, work with children and parents, disappears. Billing administration educates nobody, and over a year it swallows more than a month of the head’s work.
How it works today
Below is what the work looks like before anything is automated.
- PersonAttendance ticked in the group notebook; leave times noted inconsistently
- PersonComputations assembled by hand in a spreadsheet: deductions, packages, siblings, subsidy
- Risk of errorWith a hundred children and a dozen rules, mistakes are a certainty; corrections a ritual
- WaitingTransfers “for Stan” wait for manual matching and difference-explaining
- PersonArrears conversations postponed, being the month’s hardest
- Risk of errorCatering ordered from a fixed list; in infection season, lunches without eaters
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The bill that never shows up in a budget.
- Three of the head’s evenings a month is, over a year, more than a month of work handed to a spreadsheet.
- Every billing mistake costs more than its amount: a parent’s trust and a correction in the books.
- Lunches ordered for the absent are pure cost; in infection season it can be a dozen portions a day.
- Arrears without systematic reminders grow, and the conversation about them strains the very relationship the place stands on.
Cost of inaction
The first row is the head’s and the admin person’s time across the full cycle: attendance, computations, bills, payments. In two-hundred-child settings it tends to double, because complexity grows faster than the headcount.
The second row is easy to check at home: compare ordered portions with attendance for one winter month. The result usually settles the case by itself.
A model organisation with realistic proportions – the numbers exist so you can run the same maths on your own data; they are not a client result.
A private preschool: 100 children in five groups, tuition with an hours package, catered meals, a municipal subsidy, the head plus one admin person, Microsoft 365.
Attendance in group notebooks; computations in a spreadsheet over three evenings; bills emailed by hand.
A few corrections after mistakes every month; payments matched by hand; arrears reminded irregularly.
Catering ordered a day ahead from a fixed list; in infection season a dozen portions a day binned.
A parent taps the child in and out on a hallway tablet; an absence is reported in the app or by text before 8:00; the robot computes the month by the fee rules, sends bills, matches payments from the statement and reminds about arrears; at 8:15 the catering order goes out from actual attendance.
In the modelled case the month’s close falls from three evenings to an hour of review, corrections all but vanish, and the meals cost drops by several percent. Model numbers, not the setting’s records.
Proposed solution
We start with your fee rules: rates, packages, deductions, reporting cut-offs, sibling discounts, how the subsidy is accounted. We write them into rules once; from then on every bill computes identically, and a change of policy is a change of rule, not a new spreadsheet.
Attendance registers itself at the door: the parent taps the child in on the hallway tablet, out the same way; absences are reported in the app or by text, and the robot qualifies them against the cut-off from your rules. At 8:15 the catering order goes out from actual attendance, not from last week’s list. Teachers keep no notebooks; they see their group on a tablet.
On the month’s last day the computations are ready: the head reviews the summary, approves with a click, and the bills go to parents by email with an itemised breakdown. Payments match from the statement, differences and arrears get polite reminders in the setting’s tone, and only the cases that truly need one reach a personal conversation. The accountant’s and subsidy statements generate from the same data.
UiPath Orchestrator: computation and reminder schedules, the bill queue, retries and an audit trail; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365
Fee rules with versions, the attendance register, itemised bills, payment matching, reminders in the setting’s tone and catering orders from the morning’s attendance
A hallway tablet with a simple tap; absence reports in the app or by text; the bank statement via export or API; statements for the accountant and the subsidy
How the automated process works
- PersonThe parent taps the child in and out; absences are reported before the rules’ cut-off
- AutomationAt 8:15 the catering order goes out from actual attendance
- AutomationComputations run continuously by the rules: deductions, packages, siblings
- PersonThe head reviews the month’s summary and approves with a click
- AutomationBills go by email; payments match from the statement; arrears get polite reminders
- SystemThe accountant’s and subsidy statements generate from the same data
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- The attendance register, rule-based computations and itemised bills
- Payment matching, arrears reminders and the catering orders
- Statements for the accountant, the subsidy and the monthly report
People decide
- The fee rules: rates, deductions, cut-offs; the robot applies them, the head changes them
- Approving the month’s computations and deciding individual cases
- Parent conversations where a conversation, not a message, is needed
Before and after
Systems and integrations
The stack is short on purpose: one engine, one execution layer, one place where a person decides.
Inputs
- tablet taps and absence reports
- the fee rules
- the bank statement
- the setting’s calendar and days off
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- parents’ itemised bills
- matched payments and reminders
- catering orders and statements in Microsoft Teams
Human touchpoints: month approval with a click; individual cases in Microsoft Teams; a fee rules review once a year
Technologies used
computation schedules, the bill queue, retries, a record of every line
Abills by email, reminders, cases, reports
Athe attendance register, the fee rules and the computation history
Aa simple in-and-out tap; runs in a browser
Babsence reports and reminders; we work with your gateway
BIllustrative economic model
Numbers you can check against your own data.
The model assumes fee rules written down and taps at the door; both are part of the implementation. Rates and volumes belong to the scenario; your own numbers go into the calculator alongside.
Run the maths on your data
An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. It models freed capacity, not promised savings.
Business benefits
- The month’s close is a review and a click, not three evenings
- Bills compute identically for everyone; mistakes and corrections vanish
- Payments match themselves, and arrears get polite, regular reminders
- Catering cooks for the present; the bin stops being a budget line
- The head returns to children and parents, not to the spreadsheet
The management view
- Billing stops depending on one person’s memory and evenings
- Every bill line has a source in attendance and a rule; parent discussions end on data
- A second site is a copy of the rules, not a second notebook and another three evenings
Board-level KPIs
time to close the month · bill corrections · portions ordered versus attendance · arrears past due · the head’s administration time
Security and governance
The automation has exactly the permissions it needs. Not one more.
- Children’s data limited to the necessary: name, group, attendance, billing; access by role
- A parent sees only their own child and their own bills
- Every computation has a source: a tap, a report, a rule; the history is complete
- Parent communication in the setting’s tone, approved by the head
- Data stays in your Microsoft 365 tenant; the robots run in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
Why now
Parents increasingly pay by transfer and expect itemised bills, as from any other service.
Meal costs have risen; portions for the absent stopped being negligible.
Competition between settings grows, and the head’s spreadsheet hours are taken from what parents actually choose: the work with children.
Relevant executive roles
Closes the month in an hour and returns to the work she opened the place for
Handles exceptions instead of retyping notebooks into a spreadsheet
Gets a clear, itemised bill and a reminder before an arrear turns awkward
Common questions and objections
The tap is one touch in the hallway, quicker than a notebook entry, and parents adopt it within a week because they see their own interest: a bill computed from actual hours, with no rounding against them. For the forgetful there is a simple rule, written into the fee rules: a missing out-tap counts as the group’s closing time.
That is the norm in this sector, and exactly why rules get written down: an individual exception is a field on the child’s record, not a slip in a notebook. The robot computes by rules and exceptions, and whatever falls outside them reaches the head as a case before the bill goes out.
And it stays: the billing attendance register can read from it where it has an export, or run alongside as the source of hours for the computations. We do not replace the pedagogical records; we take off them the billing they were never meant for.
When this is not the right solution
- A setting of a dozen children on a flat rate with no deductions: a spreadsheet suffices
- No agreement to any electronic attendance capture: the computations have no source
- Expecting the automation to settle parent disputes: it provides the data, the conversation stays human
A question for the next management meeting
How many hours a month does it cost us to compute what a system would compute by itself, and how many lunches did the bin eat meanwhile?
Implementation approach
Scope without ambiguity, before anything is signed.
We deliver
- The fee rules written down, versioned
- The attendance register with a hallway tablet and absence reports
- Automatic computations, itemised bills and payment matching
- Arrears reminders in the setting’s tone
- Catering orders from attendance, accountant statements and two weeks of parallel running
We need from you
- The fee policy and the list of individual exceptions, to write into rules
- A hallway tablet and access to statements (export or API)
- Parents’ consents for email and SMS communication on billing
Stages
Discovery
The fee policy, exceptions, the current billing cycle, the scale of corrections and the bin
Rules
Rates, deductions, cut-offs and exceptions written into rules; bill templates
Build
The attendance register, computations, bills, payments, catering, statements
Parallel run
One full month: the system computes beside the spreadsheet, compared to the cent
Go-live
Billing moves to the system; a fee rules review after the quarter
A departmental project: it covers attendance, computations, payments and catering, so it needs a month of parallel computing; the technology runs on the Microsoft 365 you already have.
The month’s last Tuesday, 9:40 p.m.: the head with the Butterflies’ notebook, computing November’s deductions. Tomorrow, the same with the Ladybirds.
Send us your fee policy and the number of children. We return a draft of the computation rules and the arithmetic of the hours and portions the setting recovers in the first year.
Count your billing eveningsThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
Sick leave at 6:40, patients from 8:00, and the manager hunts for cover down a phone chain.
See the solution Finance & accountingCost invoices to the accountant without the binderOn the fifth the accountant asks about missing invoices. The inbox hunt begins.
See the solution Finance & accountingInvoices chased before they turn difficultThe client pays after 40 days because nobody reminded after 14. The cash sits with others.
See the solutionIndustries where we deploy this most oftenSmall business & services