Acorn Day Nursery
Loved by childcare centres worldwide!
We are a 52-place nursery which opened in 1991, we are based in an old grain barn on a farm steading. The nursery has two rooms, one under 3 years old (seeds) and a pre-school room (oaks).
While we have a nursery building and garden courtyard, one of our core values is outdoors with the nursery spending most of the day on the estate and in our own dedicated woodland space or exploring in the fields.
The owner has her family home on site and that forms the basis of our values that we are a nursery that is a home from home with a nurturing approach as part of our daily routine. We are a cuddly nursery, with cuddles always on offer.
We don’t talk about a child joining our nursery, we talk about their family joining the nursery and try and have as much family learning opportunities as possible.
We are a very sought after nursery having had year on year improvements in our care inspectorate grades, recently being awarded 5’s across all areas assessed.
Our nursery has waiting lists that run to the end of 2025, with daily enquiries for places on these lists.
When I arrived at Acorn Day Nursery fees were still collected manually with invoices created through word and emailed across to parents.
This was during the shift from 600 hours to 1140 hours. In my discussions with my admin member of staff I wanted to streamline this as it was taking up so much of her time.
I tasked her with looking around at options to bring on board a company that could assist us.
One of the conditions I set when looking for a company was one that was based in Scotland and that understood the Scottish system from Care Inspectorate, SSSC and the implementation of Early Learning and Childcare (1140 hours).
Through our discussions with Cheqdin and our account manager it was clear that she had a great understanding of how a nursery works having been an Early Years Officer in the past.
This is why we chose Cheqdin as well as the simplicity of the processes the package gives us to create invoices, send diaries and run attendance reports.
It has freed up so much time for the management side of the nursery as far as invoicing is concerned, the girls in the under 3’s room love it as it makes completing daily diaries so much easier for them.
Whenever we have issues or don’t understand something the tech support is always on hand to offer advice and support. We feel listened to be Cheqdin staff, we feel it is almost more of a partnership between their company and our nursery.
We are often on the phone batting back and forward ideas and suggestions and you feel these are listened to and taken on board.
While I don’t know the size of their company, you get the impression that is large enough to cope but small enough to care about every setting.
Our account manager runs ideas back and forward with us and I get the understanding that they learn from us too.
When we do have issues or I forget how to do something, the team are always very patient with me and give me all the time I need to go through things and understand what they are saying. No question seems to be a silly one.
