Em – Compliance & Educator Management Software

Problem
Managing compliance, audits, qualifications and documentation across a growing network of educators operating from their own homes.

Solution
A custom-built, cross-platform educator and compliance management system designed to evolve alongside changing regulations and business needs.

Outcome

• Scaled from a small service to over 50 educators and 4 full-time coordinators
• Compliance visit documentation completed in roughly half the time of comparable services
• Coordinators work primarily in the field rather than the office
• High confidence during audits, with instant access to required records

Starting a Family Day Care Service

When Corinne Pashley set out to start her own family day care service, it wasn’t intended to become a large business.

“My friend and I were running small family day care services from our own homes, looking after four children per day. We were getting frustrated with our FDC scheme. They’d forget to pay educators, or treat us poorly if we ever needed to speak with them. We figured we could set up our own service, just for us.”

Family day care is an approved form of childcare where educators provide education and care from their own homes. While the smaller group sizes and home-based environment offer clear benefits for children, educators must be registered with an approved service in order to operate.

The Compliance Reality

As part of the provider approval process, Corinne quickly became aware of the ongoing compliance burden involved in running a family day care service.

This included:

• Regular compliance visits from authorised officers
• Maintaining current qualifications such as first aid and working with children checks
• Keeping records for educators and their household members
• Ensuring policies, procedures and documentation remained current and auditable

For two educators, this was manageable. But interest in joining a better-run service was growing.

“Just through word of mouth we were starting with seven locations. It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to be an educator anymore. I had a service to manage, and I needed a system to keep everything on track.”

The risk was obvious. Miss a requirement and the consequences aren’t a warning. The Department of Education can shut a service down.

The Toughest Client

John is Corinne’s husband—which made this project both easier and harder.

At the time My Home Your Home Family Day Care was being established, John was working as a software developer building internal systems for businesses in highly regulated industries.

“I’d worked on systems for financial and construction businesses that had strict reporting requirements and staff qualification tracking. The patterns were familiar. Different industry, same underlying problems.”

The first versions of the system were developed after hours to support the new service as it was getting off the ground. That early work laid the foundations for the approach that would later become GEN11. Today, GEN11 provides the ongoing development, maintenance and support of the system.

But working for a spouse means there’s nowhere to hide. The feedback is immediate, unfiltered, and ongoing. A solution that almost works doesn’t survive breakfast.

Most family day care services are run on a collection of Word documents and spreadsheets. It was clear that if they took this route, things would inevitably fall through the cracks:

• Multiple versions of the same spreadsheet and no source of truth.
• No reliable way to track expiry dates without constant manual checking
• Constant worry that something had been missed

“With spreadsheets, you’re always reacting. There’s no way to be proactively alerted when something is about to expire. You’re relying on memory, calendar reminders and hope. That’s not good enough when the stakes are this high.”

The system had to be reliable, intuitive, and able to stand up to real-world scrutiny from regulators. There was no room for fragile workarounds—and no tolerance for them at home either.

The Solution

Rather than trying to bend general-purpose tools into shape, a custom system was built to support how the service actually operated.

At its core, the system needed to:

• Always be audit-ready
  • Maintain a complete register of educators and staff
  • Track qualifications and expiry dates for educators and household members
  • Instantly produce records requested during compliance visits
• Support a field-first team
  • Allow coordinators to complete compliance checklists on-site using iPads
  • Remove the need to travel back to the office to drop off paperwork
  • Keep all records central and up to date in real time
• Proactively manage risk
  • Automatically alert the team and educators when documents are nearing expiry
  • Remove reliance on manual checks and memory
  • Make it obvious what needs attention and when
• Adapt as regulations changed
  • Track changes to policies, procedures and documentation over time
  • Add new compliance checks as requirements evolved
  • Extend the system without disrupting daily operations

As the service grew, the system grew with it. Additional modules have been added over time, including:

• A Quality Improvement Plan module aligned with the National Quality Framework
• A task system for onboarding educators and managing daily operations
• A certificates module for tracking training and issuing internal certifications
• An educator web portal providing access to resources, forms and vacancy updates

Despite the growing feature set, ease of use remained a priority.

“When new team members join, they don’t need much training on the system. It’s intuitive and makes sense straight away.”

Technology Choices

The system was built using FileMaker Pro, an Apple-owned platform that allows applications to run across Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad.

The choice wasn’t about the technology itself. It was about speed of iteration, flexibility and long-term adaptability.

“In the early days, we were still learning what we needed. When an issue came up, we could build it into the system to prevent it happening again. Even years later, when new government requirements appear, we can quickly adapt.”

Outcomes and Validation

Today, My Home Your Home Family Day Care supports over 50 educators, with four full-time coordinators providing training and ongoing support.

During compliance visits, authorised officers have repeatedly commented on the system itself.

“Your system is great. That’s the fastest compliance check we’ve ever completed.”

Because records can be produced instantly and are always current, compliance visits are typically completed in around half the time of comparable services.

More importantly, the system removes the cognitive load of tracking hundreds of documents and expiry dates.

“Em makes sure we’ve collected everything we need and reminds both us and the educator when something is about to expire. We’re never guessing, and we’re never caught out.”

Meet Em

After years of referring to it simply as “the database”, the system earned a name: Em.

Short for Educator Management, the name also reflects its role in the business. A quiet, reliable team member keeping everything on track in the background.

“It lets us focus on what actually matters. Supporting our educators to provide outstanding care and early learning to children.”

Em has since grown beyond a single service. A dedicated website now exists for other family day care services interested in the platform: https://www.em.digital/

Beyond Childcare

This project wasn’t about childcare software specifically. It was about building calm into a complex, regulated business.

GEN11 designs custom systems for organisations where:

• compliance matters
• people work in the field, not behind desks
• processes evolve over time
• spreadsheets and shared folders eventually fail

If your business is held together by workarounds and manual checks, GEN11 can help you build something that actually fits how you operate.

Contact GEN11 to discuss your project →