Questions for Noble Minder

[noble76]

Hi all,

I am going to be here every Wednesday starting from next week the 9th March, to answers any questions you may have.

I am keen to answer your questions and for you to know they won’t go unanswered longer than a week. I am sure some weeks I will be able to answer them before the week is up.

So post your questions here over the coming week and I will come online ‘live’ between 9am and 1pm next week to answer them.

I look forward to hearing from you. Have a good week.


Lisa Williams

[Pauline]

Thanks Lisa, I've linked to this thread from Members Information, so if anyone forgets where it is they can go in there for the link.

You don't have to wait until next week to start asking any questions.

[Mouse]

Hello Lisa

Can you just give a brief overview of the service you provide please?

[noble76]

Hello Lisa

Can you just give a brief overview of the service you provide please?

Thank you for your question.

Here is an overview of some of the features included in the package:

Organiser
Which includes a calendar providing an overview of all your items you have entered on the package planning , training, policies and risk assessments reviews, etc. An overview of each child’s schedule. To-do list which you can use to keep track of items such as testing your smoke alarms, daily and weekly risk assessments checks etc. These can then be mark as completed when you have carried them out, you can then produce a log of all of these for your inspector.

Planning
Includes activities, outings, weekly groups and observation and assessments planning.

Risk Assessments
Including reviews, daily and weekly checks.

Training Log
Record your qualifications, continuous training and further development plans.

Observation and Assessment Records
Incorporates the statutory requirements of EYFS within one user friendly document that covers observation; assessment; planning and principles into practise. You can upload up photographs, record and update the children's learning and development and email the finished observation to the child's preschool, nursery and parents. These can then be downloaded to pass on when the child leaves your setting.

Bookkeeping
Includes income, invoices, expenses and year end. The package can keep track of deposits received and redeemed, childcare vouchers and retainer fees.

Policy Writer
Record when you plan to review your polices, write your required statements plus additional statements/policies you wish to have written for your setting. Compile a prospectus for your setting. Use the Noble Minder complaint log to complete the required steps when handling any complaints you may receive.

Printing and Email Everything is printable and items such as invoices, observations and assessments records can be emailed.


Development
We are constantly developing the package we have recently added permission forms and are going to also put up child record forms, medication and accident ones too. We also have a working group looking at how best to add contracts for our members. These will all be printable and included in the monthly fee of £9.95per month.

We have just converted all our print outs into a lovely PDF format which is a great addition to your folders. We are adding a menu planner and this along with your published rates, training and qualifications will appear in your prospectus.

New for March is an attendance log and diaries which you can email and print.

I could keep going but I think this is a good overview of the main features we can provide.

Support
Supporting our members is very important to us. We are available to call members during working hours, evenings and weekends. We even pay for the call! We will take as long as each member needs over as many call or emails to get you up and running. We have spent time inputting children profiles for some members as they have had so many to put on the package.

I would encourage all to use this part of the service.

A free 14 day trial is available to all childminders. The package is then £9.95 per month. This is automatically added to your expenses each month as the Noble Minder fee is a claimable business expense.

If there is anything else I can answer please let me know.

Thanks

Lisa

[Playmate]

Thanks for the over view, we are cetainly looking into your package. A couple of our parents have been asking about having an interactive diary system on line. Do you think this is something you would consider developing in the future?

[onceinabluemoon]

Can you or anybody else in your company read what we write down in obs, development, diaries etc?

[noble76]

Thanks for the over view, we are cetainly looking into your package. A couple of our parents have been asking about having an interactive diary system on line. Do you think this is something you would consider developing in the future?

Thank you for your question.

Yes, we want to end up with a complete parent portal. In the meantime we are developing a diary where you can record everything from the child’s day including pictures and email this straight to the parents. That is planned to go live within the next month.

Eventually there will be a facility to have complete online interaction between all people involved with each child through your Noble Minder account.

The extensive development takes time and we would love to have everything now. But we are committed to ensuring that everything is to a high standard for our members.

Playmate, thanks for your question as I believe I missed your last time, sorry.

[noble76]

Can you or anybody else in your company read what we write down in obs, development, diaries etc?

Hi, good question.

Yes some of us can when we are helping our members with support. We have set up the package so none of your records can be linked to any of the children or families you work with. We monitor activity on accounts accessed here and it always in line with support request's that we receive from our members.

We never share your information with anybody else and we fully comply with the Data protection act. Your information is private and confidential.

All children are represented by icons none of their date of births are entered in full. If members enter the families address to appear on their invoices this is saved to their cookies on their computer and not our server. Only when you can link a record (hospital, school etc) to the person’s personnel details does it become an issue. We are not able to do this.

I hope that has answered your question, if you would like me to elaborate any further on something please let me know.

Thanks

Lisa

[noble76]

Hi Everyone,

I will be here tomorrow between 9am and 1pm this week. Looking forward to it. Next week it will be back to Wednesday.

See you then.

[noble76]

Morning all,

I hope you have had a good start to the day. Had any pancakes yet?

I am here until 1pm so get in touch with any questions you may have.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Lisa

[Mouse]

Hello Lisa.

Thanks for your reply last week.

I'm thinking of signing up for the trial. If I then decided not to go ahead with the subscription, or cancelled the subscription at some time in the future, what happens to all the information I've submitted?

Also, is the info stored on my laptop, or in an account (there's probably a technical way of saying it!). If my laptop crashed, would the info be lost, or is it stored online somewhere so I could still get to it?

Thank you

[barbarella68]

Hello Lisa,
There needs to be a system where you can change the children's time's weekly. I have a child where she is with me 20 hrs per week in term time but 46hrs in holidays the only way I can see to do this is where you go into alternative hours and add on the extra days which then gives the parents a long list on the invoice of the extra hours the child is with you, because it does it daily and not weekly. This is very confusing for the parent.Unless I am doing it wrong.
I have also asked is there anyway of taking the invoice number off but nobody has got back to me yet. A few teething problems but it is a good package.

[noble76]

Hello Lisa.

Thanks for your reply last week.

I'm thinking of signing up for the trial. If I then decided not to go ahead with the subscription, or cancelled the subscription at some time in the future, what happens to all the information I've submitted?

Also, is the info stored on my laptop, or in an account (there's probably a technical way of saying it!). If my laptop crashed, would the info be lost, or is it stored online somewhere so I could still get to it?

Thank you

Morning,

Thank you for your question. Glad you are considering trialing the package. If you decide not to go ahead your data is stored on your account in case you to choose to come back. A lot of our features are printable and members print these as the go for their folders such as Observations and assessment records, risk assessments, planning, and so on. You can also download observations and assessment records to a disk.

You will see when you go in that a lot of information you add is to so you can make it do what you want it to do.

Most of the information is on our server so if your computer crashed it won't affect any of your items entered into Noble Minder. We back up our server every hour and then that is backed up every 24 hours to another one at another location to ensure that no more than 24 hours of information is every lost if the worst happen like a fire.

There are two pieces of information that is saved to your cookies (his is your web browsers memory) and that is name and address on invoices and children’s names. We have not saved this information on our server as to ensure that certain records are not classed as sensitive. So if your computer lost this from its cookies you would need to put it in again.

I hope that answers your questions if you have any more please ask. And have fun with your trial.

Enjoy your day.

Lisa

[noble76]

Hello Lisa,
There needs to be a system where you can change the children's time's weekly. I have a child where she is with me 20 hrs per week in term time but 46hrs in holidays the only way I can see to do this is where you go into alternative hours and add on the extra days which then gives the parents a long list on the invoice of the extra hours the child is with you, because it does it daily and not weekly. This is very confusing for the parent.Unless I am doing it wrong.
I have also asked is there anyway of taking the invoice number off but nobody has got back to me yet. A few teething problems but it is a good package.

Morning Alyson,

Sorry to hear we didn’t get back to you. I thought I had written the email myself abour invoice numbers being a requirement. Sorry you didn't get it. It's unlike us. Let's talk this over we will take it off but I want you to be aware of the requirements for producing invoices.

When can I call you to talk over the holiday hours? We can get the sorted no problem for the information you have just posted. I think replacing with a complete alternative rate so using section one will tidy up the invoice and make less work for you too.

Thanks for getting in touch Alyson. Please accept my full apologises.

Take care

Lisa

[barbarella68]

Home now until 14.45pm.x

[noble76]

Home now until 14.45pm.x

Ok will call you, thanks Alyson.

[noble76]

Ok will call you, thanks Alyson.

Good to talk to you and and glad you are all set up with the childs billing.

Get in touch if you need anything else.

Speak soon

Lisa

[noble76]

It's that time busy time of day for you all. My tummy is rumbling, pancakes me thinks.

Last hour to chat for this week.

[noble76]

See you all next week.

Take care

Lisa

[noble76]

Hi All,

Just to let you guys know I will be here tomorrow from 9am to 1pm. Post any questions you may have about Noble Minder or childminding. I will do my best answers them all for you.

For those of you from the CMF that are trialing the package. I hope you are enjoying using Noble Minder. Make sure you take full advantage of our free support. This is available from 9am to 11pm 7 days a week.

For those of who at CMF who are Noble Minder members please take the time to encourage those who are new to the package.

Talk some more tomorrow

Lisa