Daxko recently announced the acquisition of Alaris, a childcare compliance and management software. Alaris is purpose-built for fitness and wellness operators offering childcare for camps, after-school programs, Kids Club, Child Watch, group exercise and preschool programs.
Licensed childcare is one of the most heavily regulated services a health club, YMCA, JCC, or Boys & Girls Club offers, requiring staff to track ratios, meals, attendance and medications, often across separate systems from the ones used to manage the rest of the facility. This acquisition brings childcare compliance and management into the same environment operators already use to run their business, regardless of which platform that is today.
“Childcare is one of the most trusted responsibilities a health club, YMCA, JCC, or Boys & Girls Club can take on, and staff deserve tools that match that responsibility,” said Jeff VanDixhorn, the CEO of Daxko, in a press release. “Bringing the Alaris team into Daxko means our customers can spend less time on manual compliance and more time focusing on their most important priority: the safety, health and happiness of the kids in their care.”
Alaris will continue to operate as a standalone product for operators using third-party member management systems, integrated with those platforms as it is today, now backed by Daxko’s product, engineering, and support teams.
Further Information
For operators on a Daxko platform, the acquisition adds childcare management natively into Daxko Operations, Daxko Core, Daxko Club Automation, and Daxko FitnessForce, connecting childcare data directly with operational insights, program data, and member and donor records already in one place, without a separate system or manual data entry.
Across both paths, members and families will be able to check their children in and out, monitor meals and diaper changes, stay up to date on lessons and medications, and receive real-time updates about their child’s experience.
“We built Alaris because childcare staff needed software that understood the weight and complexity of what they do every day: keeping kids safe and accounted for, balancing staff-to-child ratios, and tracking meals. This enables staff to spend more time with the kids and less time in software,” said Jeremy Kelstrom the CEO of Alaris. “Joining Daxko lets us focus on what we do best — childcare management — while gaining a partner who can accelerate our product growth. Together, we can bring stronger childcare tools to more nonprofits and health businesses working hard every day to care for their members.”
By integrating Alaris childcare management with a member management solution, operators can simplify childcare operations and improve member engagement by enabling:
- Staff-to-child ratio enforcement — required by all state licensing agencies.
- Child and adult care food program (CACFP) meal and snack tracking — required for federally-funded food programs.
- Meal, diaper change and lesson plan logs — required for licensed infant/preschool programs.
- State agency attendance submission — required for licensed before and afterschool programs in 35-plus states.
- Child security sticker printing — required by licensing in Tier 1 regulatory states.
- Language selection — critical for urban YMCAs with multilingual members.
- Flexible, real-time parent notification of child activities.
