As the end of the year approaches, you have a unique opportunity to wrap up important tasks that ensure a smooth transition into the new year. Completing essential end-of-year tasks not only helps your service stay compliant with Ministry of Education requirements but also strengthens relationships with families, provides staff with clarity on upcoming changes and enables accurate financial reporting. From finalising enrolments and updating financial records to preparing child development summaries, each step contributes to a well-organised and prepared environment for both children and teachers.
The end of the year is also the perfect time to review how your service performed over the past year. You can assess what worked, what didn’t work and where improvements can be made. Completing vital end-of-year tasks at your service not only helps ensure you close out the year well. It also helps you set yourself up for success in the new year.
This short guide on end-of-year tasks will help you prepare for a successful year ahead.
Your end-of-year tasks begin with updating your calendars
The Discover student management system (SMS) allows you to update calendars at a service or group level. If your holidays will be the same for all services, doing so at a group level will save you a lot of time. Navigate to Group > Group Calendar (or Centre > Centre Calendar) to enter either individual day closures or a holiday period. When setting up closures, there are several settings related to funding and discounts to meet your needs. When setting up discounts via the Centre/Group calendar, you can offer a percentage discount.
If you wish to set up a dollar-based discount, you can do so under Centre Settings. Regardless of what discount you offer, you can navigate to Bulk Actions > Set Holidays to apply the holiday discount to a group of children quickly and easily. Using this method, you’ll have the option of choosing from all the different discount types you’ve set up under Centre Settings when creating your holiday.
It’s important to remember that if you’ve set up closures/discounts at a group level, any changes you make via your Centre Calendar will override the group settings.
For further information on setting up holiday closures, you can refer to this support article or check out this recorded webinar.
Financial review and billing wrap-up
As the end of the year approaches, take the time to review invoices and outstanding balances. Ensure all family accounts are up-to-date and reach out to families with outstanding balances. You should also take the time to finalise any remaining invoices for the year.
To assist with this, you can utilise the robust reporting features in Discover. These reports may include:
- Year-end financial reports, including income summaries (Reports –> Finance Reports –> Payments Summary Report OR Reports –> Finance Reports –> Financial Transactions)
- Debt reports (Reports –> Finance Reports –> Aged Debtors)
- Any required reconciliations
Depending on your service’s plans, you may need to make adjustments for the new year. You can make these changes by navigating to Centre Setup > Charge Adjustments.
Review staff and roster management
Depending on your expected attendance during the holiday period, you can review your staff rosters and plan accordingly. You can also create preliminary schedules for the new year using your preferred rostering method—copy, quick entry, roster sheet or roster scheduler.
Now is also the time to check staff leave balances and approvals. You should ensure all leave is accurately recorded and balanced, preparing for annual leave commonly taken during December and January.
Enrolment and attendance management
As the calendar year changes, this will inevitably result in new enrolments and departures. Begin by reviewing and finalising enrolment records for children leaving at year’s end, including those transitioning to school. Take the time to confirm start dates for new enrolments and leaving dates for children leaving your service. The Transitions tab is a great way to review your occupancy, enrolments and waitlists. Check out this recorded webinar for top tips and tricks for getting the most out of the Transitions tab in Discover.
Depending on your service’s plans for the holiday season, you may need to set up any changes to attendance patterns or operating hours. This will include updating schedules in the Discover SMS as required.
Review documentation and reporting
The end of the year is the perfect time to update child profiles and contact information. Take the time to verify that all child profiles are accurate, especially emergency contacts and medical information. You can easily do this using the Bulk Communication tab, asking families to review and update their information.
You should complete all incident and learning summaries. Ensure any remaining incident reports have been completed and shared with families. You can use our Playground teacher platform to finalise learning assessments and development summaries. You can then share these with families via the Home family platform. This can include year-end reports for families where you share individual reports for each child that summarise development milestones, learning outcomes and areas of growth over the past year.
Engage with families
The end of the year can be a hectic time for both services and families. It can be beneficial (and appreciated) to share a year-end newsletter with families. You can inform them of any operational updates, holiday closures, or staffing changes for the upcoming year.
The rich text editor in Playground Posts is a great way to craft an eye-catching newsletter. This helps you get your message across to families. With the ability to edit fonts, sizes, styles and more, your message will come through loud and clear. You may wish to inform families of expectations for the new year by providing information on billing schedules, attendance expectations, and any policy changes taking effect in January.
You also have the option of using the Bulk Communications tab in Discover to send out an email with attachments, if you prefer.
Your end-of-year tasks should include backing up data and performing system maintenance
While Discover is a cloud-based system, additional precautions are never a bad idea. Backing up your data ensures you have a copy of important information. Ensure you securely back up all records, including child attendance, billing, and reports. You may also wish to conduct a system cleanup. Archive any old data and organise the Discover dashboard for a fresh start in the new year.
Whether you decide to adjust your fees at the start of the year or a funding period, we recommend that you contact support for help with fee restructures.
Prepare for compliance requirements
The end of the year is a great time to confirm that staff certifications are current and documented in the system to meet regulatory standards. You may wish to invest in staff training to understand and implement the updated frameworks, including supporting te reo Māori use and cultural competencies.
This is also a great time to ensure that premises, facilities and health and safety procedures meet the standards set by the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008. This includes maintaining child-safe environments, preventing infections and having emergency procedures for earthquakes, fires or other risks.
Save time (and space) with digital archiving
New Zealand childcare centres must retain records for specific durations to meet regulatory compliance requirements. These durations ensure that centres can provide evidence for audits and meet obligations under various laws. Here’s a breakdown:
- Attendance records—at least 7 years
- Financial records—7 years
- Health and safety records—At least 7 years from the date of the last entry
- Enrolment and subsidy records—7 years
- Employee records—6 years after employment ends
- Child Development Records—no statutory minimum, but retaining these for the duration of the child’s enrolment is considered best practice
All these records can take up a lot of space if you store them physically. Storing them digitally does more than drastically reduce the amount of space required. Secure cloud backups eliminate the chances of fire/water damage. They also provide much quicker retrieval when you need them in the future.
How can Discover help with your end-of-year tasks?
Early learning services can use the Discover Student Management System (SMS) for digital archiving by leveraging its features for managing and storing historical records, reports, and compliance-related documentation. Here are some of the ways Discover by Xplor supports digital archiving effectively.
Automated Record Storage
The Discover SMS automatically stores student records, including enrolment data, attendance and billing history. These archived records can be categorised by date, child profiles or specific events, making retrieval easy.
Discover by Xplor takes data security seriously with our cloud-based system hosted with Microsoft Azure. Discover SMS adheres to strict privacy and security standards, ensuring archived data complies with the Privacy Act 2020 and is secure against unauthorised access. Our software engineering team regularly takes steps to ensure our platform is safe and your data is protected. Discover SMS integrates with cloud storage solutions to back up archived data securely. This ensures data is protected against hardware failures or accidental deletions.
Securely storing your records with Discover ensures they are not only safe but accessible for audits or Ministry of Education requirements. With robust filtering and search tools, archived records can be retrieved based on criteria such as name, date range or record type, streamlining administrative tasks.
Your data, your way
You not only have the ability to generate custom reports, including attendance, staff qualifications and financial summaries. You can also export and store these reports digitally for future reference. Reports can even be scheduled for automatic generation and storage at set intervals (e.g., end-of-year summaries).
Discover also allows services to upload external files (e.g., signed consent forms, child health records) directly to student profiles, consolidating all records in one place.
Going paperless is good for your service and the environment
By using the Discover SMS, your service can minimise paper usage by digitising processes such as attendance tracking, billing and staff rosters. This method of archival storage is both eco-friendly and efficient. Digital tracking of processes like attendance and billing is also less likely to be subject to human error.
Tips for effective digital archiving
Regularly reviewing and updating archiving practices is an excellent idea to ensure records meet current regulatory standards. Take time to train staff on using Discover’s archival and retrieval features effectively.
Establish a schedule to periodically clean up redundant or outdated records to optimise storage and system performance.
Utilising these features helps your service stay compliant, save time and ensure the long-term security and accessibility of critical records. By maintaining records for specified durations, early learning services ensure compliance with New Zealand regulations while supporting efficient administration and accountability.
The end of the year is a great time to reassess your needs
Completing your end-of-year tasks can help ensure a smooth transition into the new year and support compliance with regulatory requirements, financial accuracy and effective family communication.
It’s also the perfect time to take stock of how well your current student management system is meeting your needs. If you decide it’s time for a more robust childcare platform with fully integrated teacher, family and payments platforms supported by a unified support team, you may want to consider Discover by Xplor. To see how our early learning management ecosystem streamlines admin and saves you time, please get in touch for a personalised demo. We’d be happy to discuss how Discover by Xplor can meet the unique needs of your service.
Dean Comeau
Marketing Team Lead
