Preparing for a New School Year
Most of a new year's setup is tidying: closing what has ended, moving everyone up, and checking the settings families will meet on day one. Work through the steps in order. Each one links to the page that covers it in detail.
Before You Start
- Decide which children are leaving, which are moving to a new room, and which programs run again this year.
- If your center collects applications through a review queue, check whether any are still open under Enrollments → Applications. Decide on them before you archive last year's rooms, so an approval does not land a child in a room you are about to close.
The Sequence
Archive the children who have left
Archiving keeps a child's records, including attendance and incident history, while taking them off the active list and out of every count. Tick the leavers on the Children list and archive them together. See Archiving several children at once.
If a child was on a fixed-term enrolment, check whether Archive the child when the enrolment ends was on for them; those children may already be archived. See Auto-complete and auto-archive.
Move children up to their new rooms
On the Enrollments page, select the children moving together and use Move to Room from the bulk action bar to place them in their new classroom in one go. See Bulk actions.
Archive last year's classrooms
Once a room is empty, archive it rather than deleting it, so its history stays attached to the children who were in it. A room that still has children enrolled cannot be archived until they are moved. See Archiving a classroom.
Review programs and fees
Open each program and check its details, classrooms and fee rows for the year ahead. If a program is close to last year's, Duplicate it and edit the copy. See Programs.
Check enrolment settings and your application link
Under Settings → Enrollment, confirm whether you want applications to go through a review queue this year, whether families can apply online, and whether declined families are emailed. If you have published your application link on your website, check it still works: renaming the center changes it. See Enrollment Settings.
Send this year's documents to each room
Consent forms and policies that renew each year can be sent to every family in a classroom at once. Open Documents → Requests, start a new request, and choose a classroom as the audience. See Sending to more than one child. Documents set to Annual recurrence are due again regardless of last year's signature.
Invite new families
For each new child, add the child and their guardians, then send the guardian an invitation to the Parent Portal. See Adding a child and Adding a parent. The Welcoming a New Family guide covers this end to end.
Check attendance, kiosk and QR check-in
Under Settings → Attendance, confirm your check-in window, Safe Arrival deadline, health screening questions and signature settings. If you use QR check-in, download the code again and replace any printed copies if the center's name changed over the summer. See Attendance Settings. New guardians will need their kiosk PIN, which is on each parent's profile. See Kiosk PIN.
Refresh the team
Invite new staff and remove anyone who has left, then assign teachers to their new rooms. See Team and the Teachers section of each classroom.
After the First Day
- Open the Attendance page and check that every child expected today has a row. A missing child usually means an enrolment was not made or was left in the wrong program.
- Ask each teacher to open their classroom and confirm the children listed are the ones in the room.
Guides by Situation
Step-by-step paths through KidzLog for the moments in a center's year: a new school year, year end, a licensing visit, and a new family.
Closing Out the Year
A sequenced walk through settling balances, exporting the year's attendance and activity records, archiving departing children, and reviewing incident reports and documents.