Many childcare centers run on a blend of private-pay tuition and government subsidy — CCDF, county programs, Head Start, employer-sponsored — and each subsidy stream pays on its own schedule, at its own rate, and not always in full. This dashboard reconciles what was billed to each program against what was actually paid, so under-reimbursed claims get chased instead of quietly written off, and the owner knows exactly how dependent the business is on subsidy funding.
What this dashboard answers
What share of our revenue is private-pay versus subsidy, and how does that mix vary by center? How much subsidy did we bill, how much came back, and where's the shortfall? The revenue-mix page splits tuition revenue by funding type per site and shows subsidy revenue share; the reconciliation page lines up subsidy billed against reimbursed by funding type, ranks the shortfall by site, and details billed/reimbursed/shortfall in a funding-type matrix.
The metrics that matter
Subsidy reimbursement rate is the headline of the reconciliation — anything well under fully paid means claims are being short-paid or denied, and that's recoverable money. Subsidy shortfall is the dollar figure that quantifies it. Subsidy revenue share is the risk number: a center where most revenue comes from one subsidy program is exposed to a single rate change or eligibility ruling. Reading private-pay against subsidy by site shows which centers carry concentration risk and which have margin headroom.
Why the data is trapped
Subsidy billing and remittances live in Procare, Sandbox, Kangarootime, or Famly, but reconciling them is genuinely hard: the amount billed to a program and the amount it pays back arrive on different dates, in different files, sometimes coded differently. Matching billed to reimbursed by funding type and site — and surfacing the shortfall — is a manual spreadsheet chore that most operators do late, if at all. The under-reimbursement that erodes margin hides in exactly that gap between two systems' records.
How to read it
Start with subsidy reimbursement rate and the shortfall by site — a low rate at one center is a worklist of claims to appeal, not an accounting footnote. Read subsidy revenue share next as a risk gauge: heavy dependence on one program means a rate cut or eligibility change hits hard. Use the revenue-mix split to compare centers — a private-pay-heavy site is higher-margin and lower-risk than a subsidy-heavy one. The sample uses fully synthetic, anonymized funding data — no real financial records.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total Tuition Revenue | All tuition revenue recognized in the period — private-pay plus subsidy. |
| Subsidy Billed | Tuition amounts billed to state and county subsidy programs. |
| Subsidy Reimbursed | Subsidy payments actually received from those programs. |
| Subsidy Reimbursement Rate | Reimbursed ÷ billed — the share of subsidy claims that are paid. |
| Subsidy Revenue Share | Subsidy reimbursed ÷ total revenue — how dependent the business is on subsidy funding. |
| Subsidy Shortfall | Subsidy billed minus reimbursed — unpaid or under-reimbursed subsidy dollars. |
Used by: Owner/operators and billing administrators
Frequently asked questions
What is childcare subsidy reconciliation?
It's matching the tuition you billed to a subsidy program (CCDF, a county program, Head Start) against the payment the program actually sent, to find under-reimbursed or denied claims. Because billed and reimbursed amounts arrive separately and are often coded differently, the shortfall is easy to miss — which is why a report that lines them up by funding type and site recovers real money.
Why does subsidy revenue share matter?
It measures how much of the center's revenue depends on subsidy funding. A center where most revenue comes from one subsidy program is exposed: a rate cut, a budget delay, or an eligibility change can swing the business. Tracking subsidy revenue share is how an operator sees and manages that concentration risk.
Can I build this on my own subsidy data?
Yes. Export your subsidy billing and remittance data by funding type from Procare, Sandbox, Kangarootime, or Famly and use this as a template — we model it into a Power BI report. The sample uses synthetic data, so there's no real financial information here.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Childcare centers template — describe it and we’ll generate sample data so you can try it free, or upload your own export. You get a fully modeled, branded Power BI project that opens in Power BI Desktop.
Use this as a template →