Daycare Start up Budget Sample

Having an accurate and thorough budget is an extremely useful document to help you make financial decisions for your startup daycare facility. Creating this budget can be difficult for new business owners because it involves predicting and planning for expenses that haven’t happened yet.

The main sections of your budget for your daycare are:

Childcare expenses
Marketing Expenses
Furniture, equipment, and improvements
Administrative expenses

We will go over each of these sections, what they are made up of, and what factors can influence your budget amount.

Depending on this size, type, and quality of your daycare center, you are going to have different budget numbers. For our examples, we will be assuming this is a standard, privately-owned daycare facility that takes care of roughly 50 children per day.

Table of Contents

Childcare expenses

The first category on your budget is for things specifically involved in the care of the children at your facility. In this section, you have a bit more flexibility in how much you spend compared to others, but how much you spend will also have an impact on the quality of your facility.

Educational supplies and equipment

Depending on the type of daycare center you are running, you will have different needs when it comes to educational supplies and equipment. In general, you will need:

Books
Board games
Activities
Toys
Art supplies

If you have a specialty school or are just wanting to have a well-equipped daycare center, you can add things like:

Tablets (great for educational apps to supplement learning)
Headphones
Foreign language books and resources
Sensory toys and games

For educational supplies, you should expect between $5,000-$10,000.

Food

If you are providing 1-3 meals for the children at your facility, your food costs are going to be much more than if you are just providing snacks.

The easiest way to figure out your food budget is to identify some typical meals that you will be providing (PB & J’s, chicken nuggets, chicken noodle soup, etc.) then figure out how much each of those meals costs per kid.

For example, PB & J’s:

Loaf of bread (12 slices) – $3
Jar of peanut butter – $4
Jar of jelly – $2

Since you are able to make 6 sandwiches for $9, you know it costs about $1.50 per kid for PB & J’s. So if you have 50 kids at your facility, it’d cost about $75 for that day.

When you break it down into smaller units, you can get a better understanding of what things cost on a larger scale.

For food costs, you should expect between $1,000-$2,000

First-aid supplies

Young children have a knack for getting bumps and bruises throughout the day. You need to have an assortment of first-aid supplies for these small occurrences, but also for more serious injuries, if they were to occur.

Some basic first-aid supplies you should have at your daycare:

Band-aids
Antibiotic cream
Alcohol wipes
Gauze
Latex gloves
Large bandages
Ice packs
Eye rinse or eyewash station
Thermometer
Tweezers
Small splints
Insect bite remedies

Some items you will hopefully never have to use, but you would be surprised how often you end up using some of these items. It is much better to be overprepared than underprepared in this category.

For first-aid supplies, you can expect $250-$1000

Employee salaries

This is a pretty straightforward category. Take how many employees you have, their hourly rate, and how many hours you expect them to work and you have your budget number.

Typical hourly rates for childcare employees is from $15-$25 per hour.

Marketing costs

In general, small businesses spend anywhere from 5%-10% of their revenue on marketing, but yours may be smaller than this if you are a home-based daycare.

Marketing doesn’t have to be a large part of your start-up costs. There’s plenty of things you can do to get the word out there without breaking the bank. There are 3 main categories when it comes to your marketing budget.

Printed marketing material

This is typically the largest marketing expense, but once you have obtained these materials, most of them can be re-used, or at least used for a while before you need to reorder.

Printed marketing material includes:

Business cards
Signage
Flyers/brochures
Logos
Apparel

Printed marketing material will usually be about $1000 upfront, and $100-$200 monthly.

Website and digital marketing material

Most people don’t realize how affordable most digital marketing items are. Thanks to advancements in technology, you can either build your own website, or have someone build it for you, either way, it is pretty cheap.

If you are wanting to build your own website, you can use sites like Wix and SquareSpace, which are both user friendly and cost about $20/month depending on the package you purchase.

Hiring a freelancer to build your website will cost you a little bit more, around $100 to build a professional-looking website.

Along with your website, you should have some other digital marketing material made to supplement your website. This can be things like:

Social media profiles
Logos
Letterhead
Newsletter template
Videos
Email marketing
Blog

Your website and digital marketing materials will usually be between $250-$1,000

Advertisements

Daycare centers typically don’t need to spend a lot of money on advertisements. If they do, it is usually something small such as social media, SEO advertising, or newspaper ads.

How much or how little you spend is entirely up to you, but most daycare centers don’t spend more than $250.

Furniture, equipment, and improvements

This section usually is your largest expense when you are starting up your daycare center. Luckily, a lot of these are only one time expenses that will last a long time.

Indoor furniture and equipment

This is the materials you need to furnish the inside of your facility to make it a comfortable and fun environment. This includes things such as:

Sleeping mats
Cribs
Chairs
Desks
Television
Smoke detectors
Fire extinguisher
Indoor play equipment

Your indoor equipment will usually run you around $10,000-$20,000

Outdoor equipment

Depending on your facility, you may have to purchase some playground equipment and outdoor activities to entertain the children.

Along with this, you might need to make some upgrades to things like fencing, lawn, and the parking lot.

Your outdoor equipment will usually be about $15,000-$25,000

Kitchen equipment

Similar to your food budget, this depends on how much and what kind of food you will be serving your children.

Most medium to large-sized daycare facilities will at least have a range, sink, microwave, and prep station.

If you are doing any sort of cooking, you can expect at least $4,000 in kitchen equipment.

Cleaning supplies

Purchasing cleaning supplies is pretty straightforward, but it adds up enough to where you want to include it in your budget. Some cleaning supplies you need are:

Vacuum
Mop
Towels
Wet wipes
Disinfecting solutions
Washer and dryer

Your cleaning supplies will usually be between $400-$800

Office furniture & supplies

Your office furniture and supplies will be everything you use to do your administrative tasks, and not things associated with caring for the children. Things like:

Office computer
Desk
Chair
Printer
Phone

Your office supplies is usually around $1,500-$5,000

Administrative expenses

Lastly, are your admin expenses. These are usually the easiest to budget for because a lot of these items you already know the price of. These include:

Rent/mortgage
Utilities deposit
Licensing fees
Insurance
Legal/accounting expenses
Employee/professional training

Working capital

Your working capital is how much money you have available for day-to-day operations. You can budget this money for 6 month to 1 year, but make sure you plan accordingly.

For 8 months, your working capital should be between $35,000 and $50,000

Contingency

You put a contingency amount in your budget as a safety net. This is meant to cover any unexpected or overlooked expenses.

A good rule of thumb is to have a 15% contingency for the sum total of your budget.

Sample daycare startup budget sample

Now that we have gone through each section in detail, see below for a sample budget with each category and amount. You can add or subtract categories based on your daycares unique situation.

Expense Item

Cost

Child Care CostsEducational supplies/equipment (toys, books, etc.)

Food

First-aid supplies

Employee salaries (first month)

$6,000

$1,000

$500

$4,000

Marketing CostsPrinted marketing material

Website and digital marketing material