Project Summary
Childcare coordinators in San Francisco spent significant time on manual spreadsheet lookups to determine provider capacity and verify legal staff-to-child ratio compliance before enrollment decisions — a slow, error-prone process with real legal and child-safety consequences. We built a Power Apps Capacity Calculator enabling coordinators to select a provider, input placement numbers by child category, and instantly receive hourly capacity breakdowns, ratio compliance flags, alternative provider suggestions by zip code, and on-demand formal capacity report generation and emailing.
Challenge
Enrollment decisions depended on outdated manual lookups that could not verify legal staff-to-child ratio compliance in real time — creating placement delays, compliance exposure, and risk of illegal enrollments for a nonprofit serving vulnerable families under regulatory oversight.
Key Outcomes
- Real-time childcare provider capacity verification with hourly breakdowns by child category — eliminating all manual spreadsheet lookup work
- Instant legal staff-to-child ratio compliance flagging confirming or blocking new enrollment at the point of decision-making
- Automated alternative provider suggestion by zip code when a primary provider is at capacity, accelerating family placement timelines
- On-demand generation and emailing of formal capacity reports eliminating manual report preparation for coordinators and supervisors
- Faster, more informed enrollment decisions reducing placement errors and improving legal compliance for childcare placements organization-wide
- Reduced manual effort in routine reporting, freeing coordinator capacity for direct family and provider support work