Switching From Procare to Playground: An Honest Review From a Multi-Site Preschool Owner

Switching From Procare to Playground: An Honest Review From a Multi-Site Preschool Owner If you're a childcare owner or director sitting on the fence about switching your management software, this post is for you. I own and operate Raising Arizona Preschools, a group of childcare centers in the greater Phoenix area. Last year we made the jump from Procare to Playground, and I've now lived with the new system across multiple locations long enough to tell you the truth — not the demo-day version, the real version. There's a lot of glossy marketing out there and not a lot of honest, owner-operator reporting. So here's mine: the highs, the lows, the stuff nobody warns you about, and who I think should (and shouldn't) make the switch. TL;DR: Playground's biggest win is consolidation — billing, enrollment/CRM, attendance, your sales pipeline, and payroll all under one roof. The trade-off is that a few of those modules are "good enough" rather than best-in-class. Payroll in particular has real limitations (we couldn't set up Arizona wage garnishments the way we needed), and some of the slick automations — like parent forms that auto-fill everywhere — work most of the time, not all of the time. For us, the consolidation was worth it. But go in with your eyes open. Why we left Procare in the first place Procare has been around forever, and there's a reason a lot of centers use it. It's capable. But for a multi-site operator, we kept running into the same frustrations: we were stitching together different tools for different jobs, paying for several of them, and asking our directors to log in and out of multiple systems just to run a single location. Every new tool was another login, another bill, another thing to train staff on, and another place for data to live out of sync. When you run one center, you can tolerate a messy stack. When you run several, every bit of friction gets multiplied by the number of locations. A small annoyance at one site becomes a real operational tax across all of them. So the dream was simple: one system that does most of it. That's what pulled us toward Playground. The part nobody talks about: the actual pain of switching Let me say this plainly, because the sales process won't: migrating childcare software is genuinely painful, no matter who you switch to. You're moving years of family records, billing history, enrollment data, and staff information from one platform to another. Things don't map over cleanly. Fields don't match. Some history doesn't come across the way you expect. You'll find yourself double-checking balances and re-entering details that were supposed to transfer automatically. Then there's the human side. Your directors and teachers already had Procare muscle memory, and now you're asking them to relearn how to do tasks they could previously do in their sleep. For a week or two, things are slower, not faster — and you have to brace your team for that dip before the payoff. We underestimated how much hand-holding the front desk would need in the first month. None of this is unique to Playground — it's the cost of switching anything. But if you're budgeting time and morale for a migration, double whatever the salesperson tells you. The platform is only half the project; getting your people comfortable is the other half. The highs: one system to (almost) rule them all Here's where Playground earns its keep. Everything in one place. This is the headline, and it's real. We now have payroll, our CRM, attendance, billing, and our sales/enrollment pipeline living in a single platform. For a multi-location operator, that consolidation is huge. Directors aren't bouncing between tools. Data isn't scattered. When I want a read on what's happening across the company, I'm not exporting from four systems and reconciling them in a spreadsheet at 9 p.m. The enrollment and sales pipeline is genuinely useful. Tracking tours, leads, and families moving through the funnel in the same place we manage current families closes a gap that used to require a separate CRM. For a growing group of centers, being able to see your pipeline by location is a real advantage. The interface is modern. Compared to a lot of legacy childcare software, Playground feels like it was built this decade. Staff who are intimidated by clunky enterprise tools tend to find it more approachable once they're past the learning curve. Fewer vendors, fewer bills, fewer logins. Consolidation isn't just convenient — it's cheaper and simpler to administer. One relationship to manage instead of five. When the all-in-one promise works, it really works. The problem is that "all-in-one" and "best at everything" are not the same thing. The lows: jack of all trades, master of some Here's the honest counterweight. When one platform tries to do everything, each individual module tends to be a little weaker than a dedicated, best-in-class tool would be. That's the fundamental trade-off, and you feel it in the details. Payroll: the garnishment problem (and why Arizona matters) This is my biggest gripe, so I'll spend the most time on it. Playground's payroll runs on a third-party payroll engine (Check) under the hood. That's common for software companies — they don't build payroll compliance from scratch, they plug into a provider. The downside is that Playground has limited control over what that engine can and can't do, which means you have limited control too. The concrete pain for us: we couldn't set up wage garnishments to come out of paychecks the way Arizona requires. Garnishments are a legal obligation — when they apply, they have to come out of the employee's check correctly, every cycle. With our setup, that wasn't something we could cleanly configure inside the system, which forced extra manual steps and workarounds. For something as compliance-sensitive as payroll, "we'll handle it manually on the side" is exactly the kind of thing you switched software to avoid. If you operate in a state with specific payroll wrinkles — and Arizona has a few — do not take payroll capability for granted on a demo. Bring your actual, messiest payroll scenarios to the sales call: garnishments, multi-rate employees, anyone who works across two locations, your specific state tax situations. Ask them to show you, live, that it works. If they can't, you now know what your workaround will cost you in time every pay period. The "fill it once, it goes everywhere" forms One of the features that helped sell us was the idea that parent-facing forms could be smart: a family fills in their information once — their name, their child's details — and it populates everywhere it's needed, then gets emailed out automatically. No more asking parents to write their kid's name on fifteen separate sheets. In practice? It sort of works and sort of doesn't. When it works, it's great. But it's not reliable enough that I trust it to "just happen" without someone checking. Forms that are supposed to email out automatically don't always go where I expect, and the auto-fill magic is inconsistent across different form types. So the time savings are real but partial — you still need a human watching the process, which dilutes the whole point of automation. The pattern behind the lows Notice the theme: the concept of each feature is right, but the execution is "good enough" rather than airtight. That's the all-in-one tax. A standalone payroll company lives and dies by payroll. A standalone forms tool obsesses over forms. When one platform owns all of it, no single module gets that obsessive focus — and you, the operator, absorb the gaps. So… was switching from Procare to Playground worth it? For us, yes — with caveats. The consolidation genuinely simplified how we run multiple centers, and that simplification is worth a lot when you're managing across locations. I'd make the switch again. But I went in thinking the new system would be better at everything, and the reality is it's better at some things and merely adequate at others. If I'd understood that going in, I'd have budgeted differently for the workarounds and set my team's expectations more honestly. The right frame isn't "which platform is perfect" — none are. It's "which set of trade-offs can I live with?" I'd rather have one slightly-imperfect system than five disconnected great ones. You might feel differently, especially if one specific function (payroll compliance, say) is mission-critical and non-negotiable for you. Who Playground is a great fit for Multi-site operators drowning in disconnected tools who value consolidation over best-in-class depth. Growing centers that want a real enrollment/sales pipeline alongside daily operations. Owners who want a modern interface their staff will actually adopt. Who should think twice Centers with complex or compliance-heavy payroll needs (garnishments, unusual state rules, multi-location employees). Stress-test payroll hard before committing, or be prepared to keep a dedicated payroll provider. Operators who need a specific feature to work flawlessly, not just mostly. If you can't tolerate "sort of works," dig into that exact feature during the trial. Single-site centers that are happy with their current tools — the consolidation upside is smaller when you're not multiplying friction across locations. What I'd tell my past self before switching childcare software Demo your nightmares, not the happy path. Bring your weirdest payroll case, your messiest family billing situation, your most complicated enrollment scenario. Make them show you it works live. Double your migration timeline and triple the training budget. The software switch is the easy part. Getting your people fluent is the real project. Assign a migration owner per location. Someone accountable for checking that data came over correctly and that the team is actually using the new tool. Keep your old system accessible during the transition. You'll need to reference historical data more than you think. Decide your non-negotiables in advance. Know which features you absolutely cannot compromise on, and which you can live with being "good enough." Then judge any platform against that list, not against the demo. The one gap no all-in-one platform solves: your teachers Here's something I learned running centers, not from any software: management platforms manage your operations, but none of them actually develop your teachers. Playground tracks your families, your billing, and your pipeline beautifully. What it doesn't do — what none of the all-in-one childcare platforms really do well — is onboard a brand-new teacher, train them on your specific procedures, track their professional development hours for state licensing, and keep them engaged enough to actually stay. In early childhood, teacher turnover is the silent killer, and operations software wasn't built to fix it. That gap is exactly why I ended up building MentorMe — a learning management system made specifically for preschool and daycare teachers. Structured onboarding every new hire completes the same way, automatic tracking of professional development hours for licensing, and gamified training (points, streaks, certificates) that keeps teachers actually engaged. It's the piece your management platform leaves on the table. If teacher onboarding and retention are pain points for you too, it's worth a look — there's a free trial, no credit card needed. But that's a topic for another post. For now: if you're weighing a switch from Procare to Playground, go in clear-eyed. The consolidation is real. So are the trade-offs. Know which ones you can live with, and you'll make the right call for your centers. Frequently asked questions about switching from Procare to Playground Is Playground better than Procare? It depends on what you need. Playground's strength is consolidation — billing, enrollment/CRM, attendance, and payroll in one modern system — which is especially valuable for multi-site operators. Procare is a capable, long-established platform. "Better" comes down to whether you'd rather have one unified-but-imperfect system or specialized tools for each job. How hard is it to switch childcare management software? Harder than the sales process suggests. Expect data-migration headaches, a real learning curve for staff, and a temporary dip in speed during the first few weeks. Budget extra time for training and assign someone to verify your data transferred correctly. Does Playground handle payroll well? Playground's payroll runs on a third-party engine (Check). It works for standard situations, but we ran into real limitations with Arizona wage garnishments and had limited control over the underlying payroll provider. If you have complex or state-specific payroll needs, test those exact scenarios before committing. Can Playground send parent forms automatically? It's designed to let families fill in their information once and have it populate and email out across forms. In our experience it works inconsistently — useful, but not reliable enough to run unsupervised. Verify the specific forms you depend on during your trial. What's the biggest mistake centers make when switching childcare software? Assuming the new platform will be better at everything. Every all-in-one system trades some depth for breadth. Decide your non-negotiable features in advance and stress-test them live before you sign.