Getting Started on CubbyPro: Professional Plan Onboarding for Daycare Owners

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Welcome — what's unlocked on Professional

The Professional plan is built for licensed centres with paid staff, billing, and provincial reporting obligations. It is billed per active student (no hard student limit). In addition to everything in Starter, Professional unlocks:

• Billing, Invoices, Tax Receipts — invoice parents, accept partial payments, generate annual T-receipt PDFs
• Expenses & Tax — track operating expenses with receipts, HST/GST, and CRA-ready exports (including QuickBooks)
• Staff — onboard staff, set roles, assign classrooms, reset passwords and PINs
• Staff Schedule — weekly shifts, time-off, coverage planning
• Timesheets — automatic timekeeping from the kiosk clock-in
• Staff Certifications — RECE, First Aid, CPR, and Vulnerable Sector Check expiry tracking with alerts
• CWELCC Reporting — FTE, fees, workforce, and staffing tabs with CSV export
• Daily Plans and Learning — plan activities per time slot, track learning milestones

This article gets you operational in about a week. Don't try to do it all in one sitting — the order below is designed so each step makes the next one faster.

Before you start

Have these handy:

• Your centre's address, phone, hours, logo, licence number
• A list of your staff with their names, emails, and roles
• Your fee schedule — what you charge per student, per week or month, by program
• Your HST/GST number if applicable
• A list of your classrooms and currently enrolled students

Day 1 — Set up your centre (15 minutes)

Step 1. Centre profile

Settings is organised into tabs: Director Profile, Centre, CWELCC, PIN & Device, Security & Audit, Subscription, and Billing History. You'll touch most of them in this first week.

1. Go to Sidebar → Settings and open the Centre tab.
2. Upload your logo (JPG or PNG — auto-compressed).
3. Set your Centre Timezone.
4. Scroll to Operating Hours, set open and close times and operating days, then click 💾 Save Operating Hours.
5. Switch to the Director Profile tab to upload your photo and set your Kiosk PIN.

Step 2. Create your classrooms

1. Go to Sidebar → Classrooms.
2. Click + Add Class.
3. Fill in name, age range, and capacity.
4. Repeat for every room.

Heads-up: the dashboard stays on its welcome screen until at least one classroom and one enrolled student exist. Creating classrooms alone isn't enough to unlock the live dashboard — do Step 3 next.

Step 3. Enrol your first students

Go to Sidebar → Students → + Enroll Student. Professional is billed per active student — there is no hard student limit. Be thorough with guardians, allergies, and pickup authorizations — these flow through to invoices, messaging, and incident reports later. Once your first student is enrolled, the dashboard switches over to live data.

Day 2 — Bring your staff in (20 minutes)

Step 4. Onboard your staff

1. Go to Sidebar → Staff.
2. Click + Onboard Staff.
3. Enter name, email, and a role:
   • Centre Director / Administrator — full access
   • ECE Teacher / Assistant / Supply Teacher — classroom features
   • Cook / Custodian — time clock only
   • Accountant — billing and finance only
4. Assign which classes they teach (you can also do this later).
5. Click + Onboard Staff. If you entered a valid email, the staff member is automatically sent a login link and a temporary password.

Need to change someone's email or name later? Click their name in the staff list to reopen the profile — Full Name and Email are both editable. Adding an email to a staff record that didn't have one will send them an invite automatically.

Step 5. Add Staff Certifications

1. Go to Sidebar → Staff Certifications.
2. For each staff member, add their RECE registration, First Aid expiry, CPR expiry, and Vulnerable Sector Check date.
3. CubbyPro alerts you well before each expires — no more spreadsheet tracking.

Step 6. Set the PIN policy

1. Go to Sidebar → Settings → PIN & Device.
2. Decide which actions require a PIN (incidents, etc.).
3. Set a lockout threshold for failed attempts.
4. Turn on Force PIN change on first use (recommended).
5. Save.

Each staff member can then set their own PIN from Settings → 🔒 Kiosk PIN the first time they sign in. (As a director, your own PIN lives under Settings → Director Profile.)

Day 3 — Set up billing (about 30 minutes)

This is the longest section, but once it's done you can generate every parent invoice with two clicks.

Step 7. Add your tax rates

1. Go to Sidebar → Billing and click the Tax tab.
2. Click + Add Tax.
3. Add HST (Ontario) — 13% or whatever applies to your jurisdiction. The page has preset buttons for HST Ontario, GST Federal, QST Quebec, PST BC, and PST Saskatchewan.
4. Set Applies to — "Taxable items only" is the safest default.

Step 8. Create your fee templates

A fee template is one priced service (e.g. "Toddler — Full Day" at $1,200/month).

1. In Sidebar → Billing, click the Fees tab.
2. Click + Add Fee.
3. Fill in service name, amount, frequency (monthly/weekly/daily/one-time/annual), category (tuition, meals, after care, etc.), and whether it's taxable.
4. Save.
5. Repeat for every program, age group, and add-on you offer.

Step 9. Configure business details for invoices

1. In Billing → Tax tab, find Business Registration.
2. Enter your HST/GST number, business address, business phone, billing email, and default invoice notes.
3. Save Settings — these print on every PDF invoice.

Step 10. Assign services to students

Tell CubbyPro which fees apply to which student.

1. In Billing, click the Services tab.
2. Pick a student from the dropdown.
3. Check the services that apply (e.g. "Toddler — Full Day" + "Hot Lunch Add-on").
4. Click Save Services.
5. Repeat for every student.

Step 11. Generate your first invoice batch

1. Go to Sidebar → Invoices and switch to the Generate Invoices tab.
2. Pick the Month and Year.
3. Click 👁️ Preview first to verify the amounts.
4. When satisfied, click 🚀 Generate & Send. Invoices are created and (optionally) emailed to parents automatically.

You can also create one-off invoices via + Create Manual Invoice.

Day 4 — CWELCC reporting (Ontario funded centres only, 10 minutes)

If your centre is enrolled in CWELCC:

1. Go to Sidebar → Settings → CWELCC. Review the government rates — daily fee cap, fee reduction percent, wage floors, ratios. Defaults match the current Ontario values; update them when the province announces changes.
2. Then go to Sidebar → CWELCC Reporting.
3. Walk through the FTE, Fees, Workforce, and Staffing tabs.
4. Each student enrolled in your roster automatically rolls into FTE calculations.
5. Use Export CSV to download the report you need for your CMSM submission.

If you're not on CWELCC, skip this section.

Day 5 — Schedules, timesheets, daily plans (15 minutes)

Step 12. Build the staff schedule

1. Go to Sidebar → Staff Schedule.
2. Create the recurring weekly shift pattern for each staff member.
3. Save — staff see their shifts in their My Schedule view.

Step 13. Time Off review

Staff request time off from their own dashboard. As director you'll see incoming requests at Sidebar → Time Off Requests.

Step 14. Build your first daily plan

1. Go to Sidebar → Daily Plans.
2. Pick a date and a class.
3. Click + Create Plan — or use 🤖 AI Generate to draft one in seconds.
4. Add activities to each time block (circle time, outdoor play, lunch, etc.).
5. Save and publish.

Step 15. Track learning progress

Each student has milestones you can track over time.

1. Go to Sidebar → Learning.
2. Pick a student.
3. Update milestones as you observe them.

Ongoing — what to do every week

• Daily: check students in and out, log activities, share photos, respond to parent messages.
• Weekly: review attendance, post your menu (Menu Builder), publish daily plans for the week.
• Monthly: generate invoices, log a fire drill, review staff certification expiries, run CWELCC report if applicable.
• Yearly: generate Tax Receipts from paid invoices for every parent, export expenses for your accountant.

Compliance checklist for your first 30 days

• ☐ All students have immunization records started
• ☐ All staff have current First Aid, CPR, and VSC dates entered
• ☐ At least one fire drill logged
• ☐ PIN policy configured
• ☐ Daily activities being logged consistently
• ☐ At least one daily plan created per classroom
• ☐ First parent invoices generated and sent
• ☐ At least one full attendance day exported as a report

Tick all of those and you're running a fully digital, audit-ready centre.

Where to get help

• Click the yellow ?Help button at the top of any page in the app for the built-in assistant.
• Click the Contact Support tab in the help panel to message our team.
• Email support@cubbypro.com.

Welcome aboard. You're ready.