Tuition is a childcare center's lifeblood, and unlike most businesses it's billed up front, on a recurring schedule, to families — which makes a late or partial payment an immediate cash-flow problem, not a deferred one. This dashboard makes the whole collection picture visible: what was billed, what came in, what's outstanding, and how dangerously old the unpaid balances are getting.
What this dashboard answers
What share of billed tuition are we actually collecting, and how does that vary by center? How much is sitting in receivables, and how much of it is aged past 60 days — the bucket that tends never to get paid? How many families are past due? The collection page tracks billed against collected with collection rate by site and by billing month; the AR aging page breaks the outstanding balance into Current / 1–30 / 31–60 / 61–90 / 90+ buckets, ranks AR-over-60 by site, and counts past-due families.
The metrics that matter
Collection rate is the headline — a center billing strongly but collecting 85% has a real cash problem hiding behind healthy revenue. Outstanding AR is the cash not yet in the bank; AR over 60 days is the early-warning line, because the longer a family balance ages, the less likely it ever clears. Past-due family count turns dollars into a worklist — the specific accounts to call. Payment method matters too: auto-pay/ACH accounts rarely age, so a center heavy on check and cash usually carries more AR.
Why the data is trapped
Billing and payments live in Procare, Brightwheel, or Sandbox, and each shows its own center's ledger. Rolling collection rate and an aging schedule across every site — with the over-60 bucket isolated and past-due families counted — means exporting each center's receivables and rebuilding the aging logic in a spreadsheet that's stale the moment a payment posts. The cross-site cash view that an owner actually needs is the one no per-center billing report produces.
How to read it
Lead with collection rate by site and find the laggard, then jump to AR aging to see whether the gap is recent (1–30 days, likely a timing blip) or aged past 60 (a real collection problem). Work the past-due family list from the largest, oldest balances down — that's where the recoverable cash is. If one center carries disproportionate aged AR, check its payment-method mix; pushing families to auto-pay is usually the durable fix. The sample uses fully synthetic, anonymized accounts — no real payment records.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tuition Billed | Tuition invoiced to families in the period. |
| Tuition Collected | Payments received against billed tuition. |
| Collection Rate | Collected ÷ billed — the share of billed tuition actually collected; the truest measure of cash-flow health. |
| Outstanding AR Balance | Total receivables outstanding — billed minus collected. |
| AR Over 60 Days | Receivables in the 61–90 and 90+ day buckets — the dollars most at risk of write-off. |
| Past-Due Family Count | Family accounts carrying a positive outstanding balance. |
Used by: Owner/operators and billing administrators
Frequently asked questions
What is a good tuition collection rate for a childcare center?
Healthy centers collect the large majority of billed tuition — often in the low-to-mid 90s percent — because tuition is billed up front on a recurring schedule. A rate dragging well below that signals families falling behind, and because the balance ages quickly, it's worth catching early. Collection rate is a better health measure than billed revenue because it reflects cash that actually lands.
Why does AR over 60 days matter in childcare?
Once a family's balance ages past 60 days, the odds of collecting it drop sharply — families often withdraw rather than clear a large back-balance. Isolating the 61–90 and 90+ buckets lets a billing administrator work the most at-risk dollars before they become write-offs.
Can I build this on my own tuition data?
Yes. Export your tuition billing and payment ledger from Procare, Brightwheel, or Sandbox and use this as a template — we model it into a Power BI report you open in Power BI Desktop. The sample uses synthetic data, so there's no real financial or family 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 →