In SmartCentral children Rooms are used to group children together whether they are in physically separate rooms or just in logical groupings.

In either event rooms can be set up in a variety of ways so that:

  • its easier to distinguish children on the roll (age groups)

  • manage staff time sheets (ratio calculator)

  • group together children under taking the same activity (VAC care)

Room Settings

There are several settings for a Room.

They would normally only be set as the room is first created.

New Room

Name

Choose a name for this room. Generally short names (under 10 chartacters or so) are best as the will display better in reports and dashboards.

If you are operating an OSHC its useful to set up separate rooms for ASC , BSC and VAC. If you have mutiple rooms in each then prefixing the room name with ASC/BSC/VAC works well.

eg ASC Blue etc

Colour

This is the colour code for the room diaplayed on the main service screen.

Capacity

The normal limit to number of children in this room.

Age Range

The range of ages normally in this room. If you arent grouping children by ages just set the age range as big as possible. The range is specified with a ‘From’ and ‘To Under’ settings.

For example From : 0 months To Under: 6 months

On the daily roll the child’s age and the Room’s age range are compared and children are ‘traffic lighted’ according to how their age matches the room’s age range for that session.

Red : More than 1 month outside the range Amber : from 1 month inside the range to 1 month outside the range Green : more than 1 month inside the range

Room Type

Relevant for staff timesheets. Staff signed in to non-contact and unpaid break ‘rooms’ are not counted towards NQF ‘across the service’ calculations.

Educator to Child Ratio

For Ratio Calculator. This is the your desired ration of staff to children in this room. SmartCentral calculates room level ratios based on your settings and also uses the NQF ratio formula for ‘across the service’ calculations.

Inactive

Marking a Room inactive hides it from all menus so it cant be selected. Use this if you want to stop using a room already set up.