Guide · For directors and enrollment staff · 20 minutes

Enrollment and the waitlist

From the first phone call to a child in a classroom. The pipeline has six stages, and most centers lose families at the two nobody watches — the gap after a tour, and the days an offer sits unanswered.

Last updated: September 1, 2026 · Print this guide

1. The pipeline at a glance

Every family moves through the same six stages. A family can skip stages — a sibling of a current child often goes straight to an offer — but nothing moves backwards without someone deciding it should.

2. Capturing an inquiry

An inquiry needs four things: guardian name, an email address, the child's name, and a desired start date. Everything else can be filled in later; without the email you have no way to move them along.

• Take the inquiry into RoundUp while you are still on the phone, not from a sticky note afterwards
• Record the desired start date the family actually said, not the one you have space for
• Note the age the child will be at that start date — it decides which room they queue for
• Put anything unusual in the notes: a sibling already enrolled, a subsidy, a specific teacher they were referred to

3. Booking and running tours

Tours can be in person, virtual, or by phone. Pick per family rather than by policy — a relocating family cannot visit, and a local one will not enroll without seeing the room.

Booking

• Set the date, time, and tour type, and record the party size — two grandparents change how you run it
• Assign a host. An unhosted tour becomes whoever is nearest the door.
• For a virtual tour, add the meeting link when you book, not on the morning

Confirmations and reminders are tracked per booking, so you can see at a glance which families were reminded and which slipped through.

After the tour

• Set the outcome — completed, no-show, cancelled, or rescheduled — the same day
• Write outcome notes while you remember them. "Mum works nights, needs early drop-off" is what wins the family in three weeks.
• Send the follow-up. A tour with no follow-up is a tour you paid for and did not use.

4. The waitlist, and how it orders itself

A waitlist entry sits in one of seven states: Active, Offered, Accepted, Declined, Expired, Withdrawn, or Enrolled. Only Active entries are considered when a seat opens.

Position and priority are different things

Every entry has a position — where it sits in the queue for its age group — and a priority score, which is what actually decides who gets offered a seat. Three flags feed the score:

• Sibling already enrolled — the most common reason a family jumps the queue, and the one families understand
• Staff family — a hiring benefit as much as an enrollment one
• Subsidy eligible — where your funding or your own policy requires reserved capacity

Entries are grouped by age group and by requested classroom, so a seat opening in the toddler room only considers families waiting for it.

Keeping it honest

• Review Active entries monthly — families who found care elsewhere rarely tell you
• Withdraw rather than delete; you want the record of why
• Check requested start dates against reality: an entry asking for last March is not a live lead
• A waitlist you have not pruned quietly inflates every capacity forecast you make from it

5. Sending an offer

An offer carries an expiry date, and this is the part worth getting right. Too short and you lose families who needed to talk to a partner. Too long and a seat sits empty while three other families go elsewhere.

• Three to five business days suits most centers; say the date explicitly, not "within a week"
• State what happens on expiry — that the seat goes to the next family and they keep their place in the queue
• Record the decline reason when one comes back. Reasons cluster, and the cluster tells you something: cost, hours, location, or timing.
• When an offer expires, move to the next family the same day

6. Contract and registration fee

An accepted offer becomes an enrollment contract. Two things have to happen, in this order:

1. The contract is signed

   The family signs in the app with a typed name. The signed contract includes your handbook terms, the photo and video consent choices, and the parent/guardian rights over their child's records.

   Consent choices made here are the ones the classroom then works to, so do not treat this as paperwork to rush — see the family guide for what those choices control.

2. The registration fee is paid

   The fee is charged against the signed contract. Until it clears, treat the seat as reserved rather than filled — a signed contract with an unpaid fee is the most common way a place gets double-promised.

7. Getting them started

• Assign the child to a classroom, with the start date
• Invite every guardian — each gets their own account, so do not invite one and expect them to forward it
• Add emergency contacts and authorized pickups before day one, not during it
• Set the tuition schedule so the first invoice is right the first time (see the billing guide)
• Upload immunization records and anything with an expiry date
• Send the family guide with the invitation

8. Schedule changes and departures

Enrollment does not stop at the start date. Families move to more or fewer days, age up into another room, or leave.

• Schedule a change ahead of time rather than editing on the day it happens — a change with a future effective date bills correctly and does not disturb this month's invoice.
• Room transitions as children age up are worth planning a term ahead: the receiving room's capacity is someone else's waitlist.
• Departures free a seat, which should trigger the next offer. If a departure does not show up on your waitlist review, the seat sits empty.