Setting Up Your Center in Childcare Owl

Roles: Owner

Setting up a center happens once, when you first sign up, and takes four steps.

The first is choosing your plan. Starter or Pro, both on a 14-day free trial. A card is required to start the trial, but you won't be charged until it ends, and canceling before then means no charge at all. You'll also confirm five short agreements: terms of service, a service-availability disclaimer, trial billing terms, that you're authorized to sign up on your organization's behalf, and that you won't enter identifying information about children into the platform. Childcare Owl is a staff operations tool, not a child records system.

Next comes your center's details: name, address (optional), and timezone. The timezone deserves more attention than it usually gets. It determines what counts as "today" for your daily checklists, when something becomes overdue, and when a missed checklist gets flagged. Pick the one your center actually operates in.

Then you add your first room — a name, and optionally an age group. This step can be skipped entirely and finished later from the Rooms page.

Finish those three and your center exists. What comes after setup matters more than setup itself: see Your First Week Checklist for the order that gets a center actually running, not just created.