How to Accept Registrations Through Your Daycare Website

When a provider searches for how to accept registrations on a daycare website, she usually isn’t picturing a specific widget. She’s picturing three outcomes. Fewer phone calls that start with “so, do you have openings?” No more retyping a family’s answers from an email into her own records. And signed paperwork she can actually put her hands on later, instead of a promise made over text.

Those three outcomes are the real job. And the good news is you can get all three without turning your public website into an open enrollment desk, which, as we’ll get to, is a thing you genuinely do not want.

What accepting registrations on a daycare website really means

Here’s the version of this that works, and it has two parts.

Part one: your public site captures interest. A contact form and a waitlist sign-up live on your website, where any parent can find them at 9 pm after the kids are down. In CubbyBook, both of those feed one place, the Enquiries inbox. You get an email notification when a new enquiry arrives, spam protection keeps the bots out, and every enquiry sits in one list instead of scattering across voicemail, Facebook messages, and a napkin by the phone.

Part two: enrollment happens through a private link you send. Once you’ve talked with a family and confirmed you have a spot, you send them your enrollment form through a private link that’s valid for seven days. They complete it at their own pace (progress saves between sittings), sign electronically, and submit. You review it, request a revision if something’s missing, and confirm. Confirming is the payoff: it creates the child’s record from the family’s own answers.

That’s the whole registration story. The site captures the enquiry. You send the enrollment link. The family e-signs. Interest is public; enrollment is by invitation.

Why an open public enrollment form is the wrong tool

The tempting shortcut is to skip the two-part structure and just put the full enrollment form on the website for anyone to fill out. It feels efficient. It backfires four ways.

Strangers can enroll. An open form doesn’t know whether the person filling it out has toured your home, met you, or lives within 500 kilometres of you. You’d be collecting birth dates and emergency contacts from people you’ve never spoken to, for spots you may not have.

Spam finds forms. Any form on the open internet gets probed by bots eventually. A spam contact enquiry is a two-second delete. A spam “enrollment” that pretends to be a child is a mess sitting in the middle of your real records.

Half-filled records pile up. Curious parents start long forms and abandon them. Now you have a stack of partial applications from families who were only ever browsing, and you can’t tell them apart from families who genuinely stalled and need a nudge.

There’s no signature ceremony. Enrollment is an agreement between two people who have decided to work together. When the form arrives by private invitation after a conversation, the e-signature at the end means something: this family read your policies and agreed to them. An anonymous public form flattens that into just another web submission.

Keeping enquiries public and enrollment private isn’t a workaround. It’s how the process should be shaped.

How the CubbyBook version works, start to finish

Here’s the walkthrough with the actual mechanics.

Step 1: Put a contact form and waitlist sign-up on your public site

Your CubbyBook website comes with both. A parent who wants to ask about your hours uses the contact form; a parent who wants a future spot joins your waitlist. Either way, what lands on your side is an enquiry in the Enquiries inbox, never a child record. You get an email notification so nothing sits unseen, and spam protection filters the junk before it reaches you.

Step 2: Reply to the enquiry and decide together

This step is deliberately human. You answer questions, talk schedules, and offer a tour if that’s part of how you work. Some enquiries end here, and that’s the system working: a family whose needs don’t fit your program found that out without either of you doing paperwork.

Step 3: Send the private enrollment link

When a family says yes and you say yes back, invite them to enroll. CubbyBook emails the parent a private link to your enrollment form. The link is valid for seven days, so it doesn’t float around indefinitely, and if it lapses before they open it you simply invite them again. The Free plan includes one enrollment form, which covers most solo programs; Pro removes the limit ($15/month or $149/year) if you enroll different groups with different forms.

Step 4: Let the family complete the form with an e-signature

The parent opens the link in any browser. No app, no printing. Progress saves as they go, so half on a lunch break and half after bedtime works fine. They finish by signing electronically and submitting, and you’re notified when they do.

Step 5: Review, request revisions, and confirm

Read the submitted application. Spot a missing emergency contact or a birth date that can’t be right? Request a revision with a note, and the family gets an email, fixes the field, and resubmits. When it all checks out, confirm. Confirming creates the child’s record, links the parent, and fills in the details from the family’s own typed answers. Nothing gets retyped, which means nothing gets mistyped.

What about registration fees?

Honest answer: CubbyBook doesn’t process payments, and your website won’t collect a registration fee for you. There’s no card form to bolt on and no fee feature hiding in a menu.

In practice, this matters less than it sounds. Most home daycare providers already have a payment routine that works, whether that’s e-transfer, cheque, or cash at drop-off, and families are used to it. Keep that routine. If you charge a registration or deposit fee, state it clearly on your website and in your reply to the enquiry, then collect it the way you collect everything else. The paperwork goes digital; the money keeps moving the way it already does.

The shape to remember

Public site for interest, private link for enrollment, e-signature at the end. That structure gives you the three outcomes you actually wanted: enquiries arrive in writing instead of by phone, confirmed applications become records without retyping, and every enrolled family has signed your form where you can find it.

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