Case Study: CUSTOM SOFTWARE/MARTECH
Scheduling for a 13-Room Daycare & Pre-School, Solved
- Client: MN-Based Daycare Center
- Timeline: Prototype in 1hr. Final Deliverable in 2 weeks.
less time spent on scheduling
of overtime/wk. prevented
to confirm a schedule that's already set
checks against real-world edge cases
The Challenge
A Minnesota daycare center serving roughly 40 staff across 13 classrooms was building its daily employee schedules by hand.
Every schedule had to account for state-mandated ratios, paid breaks, unpaid lunches, and certification restrictions on who could work which room, all while staying flexible enough to handle quick, same-day changes.
The manual process created recurring problems
- Time cost. A full manual schedule took about 30 minutes for the center’s most experienced staff, and up to 45 minutes for everyone else, with a higher margin for error on coverage and same-day changes.
- Payroll leakage. The old process was generating daily overtime, amounting to several hours per week spent building and adjusting schedules by hand.
- Constant changes. Same-day changes, like a sick call or a coverage gap, meant reworking parts of the day’s schedule on the fly, often under time pressure.
The Approach
Get Ahead of Edge Cases
Rather than an AI-generated schedule, Klok Labs built a complete tool that checks for specific scheduling complexities the staff was running into day-to-day. Staff-to-student ratios, break deadlines, certification rules, and coverage are calculated the same way every time the schedule runs, removing the subjective, memory, or experience-dependent guesswork that caused errors before.
Human in the Loop
Licensing judgment calls and day-of flexibility still sit with the facility director, as they should, but the objective parts of the schedule are fully automated.
Complement the Existing Workflow
The tool reads the center’s existing staff roster and room counts, and outputs a schedule in the same format the team already used on paper, plus a float coverage sheet and a print view. No new process to learn, no time lost to training or onboarding new software.
Ease of Use & Efficiency
Delivered as a single, lightweight file with no install, no server, and no account required. It runs in any browser and saves locally. Confirming attendance and entering day-of changes now takes a fraction of the time it used to, and if a schedule is already set and just needs an okay? That takes less than 60 seconds.
The Iterations
The first version was tested directly against real classroom conditions, and the director caught edge cases that most off-the-shelf scheduling software would miss: a float double-booked over her own lunch, a teacher counted as “covered” during gym time while actually alone with her class, and a nap-time relief gap that briefly left one teacher alone with 13+ kids.
Each adjustment was targeted and informed by real-world experience, with later rounds of feedback adding even deeper checks.
Every issue the director surfaced became a permanent automated test. The full list grew from 9 checks after the first round of changes to 36 by the third, covering hyper-specific situations and ensuring a fix made once can’t regress later.
The Results
- 50% less time spent confirming attendance and entering day-of changes, down from up to 45 minutes to about half that
- Under 1 minute to confirm a schedule that’s already set and ready to go
- ~3 hours/week of overtime addressed at the source, by cutting the time spent building and adjusting schedules
- 36 automated tests, each one tracing back to a real scenario the director flagged
- ~40 staff and 13 rooms organized consistently, every time, freeing the director to focus judgment calls on the exceptions that actually need it rather than the routine math
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