Enrollment listings are the front door of your center inside Playground. The choices you make when you set one up shape everything that follows: when families are billed, what paperwork they fill out, how returning families re-enroll, and how cleanly your classrooms fill up. This article walks through the best practices we recommend before you publish a listing, so families have a smooth experience and you don't end up troubleshooting billing or paperwork issues later.

A few minutes of thinking before you click + New Listing sets up everything that follows. Walking through these questions up front gives you a clear picture of what the listing should do:
​

a. Who is this listing for? A specific group of kids (like Fall 2026 Toddlers), open-ended rolling enrollment, a returning group of families, or a waitlist?
​

b. When does the session start and end? This is the date range care will run for the families who apply. You'll set this in Step 1 under Basics.
​

c. Which pricing plan type fits? Simple plans work best for full-time programs, Specific Dates for camps, and Pick Days for before-and-after school care. More on this below.
​

d. Are families returning or new? If you have both, you'll likely want two listings (one for each), since paperwork settings can't be different inside the same listing.
​

In Step 1: Center Details, under Basics, you'll see a Start date and End date pair. These are your session dates: the range care will run for families who apply.

Below the dates, you'll see a Date settings link. Inside, there's a toggle called "Default start date to session start when accepting." When this toggle is on:

​
​

​

a. The student's start date gets pre-filled with the session start date when you accept them.
​

b. Any billing plan or schedule assigned to the student uses that same start date.

That's the link that ties billing to your session start date.
​
​

Here's a situation to plan for. Say your session runs from January 1 to November 30, and your listing stays open the whole time. A family applies in October. With the toggle on, their start date is auto-filled as January 1 (the session start), and the billing plan follows that same date.
​

If you accept them as-is, the billing plan starts from January 1, not from October. For families on autopay, those charges post automatically. The toggle is doing what it's set up to do. Your listing setup just needs to match how your center actually enrolls so the auto-fill works in your favor.

You have a few ways to keep this from happening. Most centers use one or a mix of these:
​

a. Set Registration opens and Registration closes dates. These fields sit right below your Start and End dates. They control when families can actually apply, even if your session runs longer than the registration window. Once registration closes, families can no longer apply through this listing.
​
​

​

b. Create a fresh listing each year and archive the old one. Best for centers with steady yearly enrollment. When the cycle ends, archive the old listing so families can't access it anymore, and build a new one for next session. Use the Duplicate feature so you don't have to start from scratch.
​
​

​

c. Turn off "Default start date to session start when accepting." With the toggle off, you'll pick each student's start date by hand when you accept them. That's one or two extra clicks per acceptance. Good fit for rolling enrollment where start dates vary by family.
​

​

d. Keep the toggle on and edit during acceptance. The auto-fill is a default, not a lock. You can always change the start date in the acceptance window when the dates don't line up. This works as long as you remember to check before clicking accept.
​
​

e. Year-round programs: Set the start date to today and the end date to one year from today. Then update the day enrollment session dates on a yearly basis.

Step 2: Paperwork is where you decide what families fill out when they apply, and what they finish after they're accepted. Setting this up carefully now saves your team a ton of follow-up work later.
​

The application form is the main thing families fill out to apply. It's the only form Playground requires on every listing.
​

A few practices that work well:
​

a. Make the form as long or as short as makes sense for your center. Some centers keep their application short and gather extra info after acceptance. Others build longer forms that capture more details up front. Both approaches work. If a family closes their browser partway through, Playground saves their progress so they can come back and finish later. Their progress only gets lost if they clear their browser cache or fill out the form in an incognito window.
​

b. Connect form fields to student profiles. When you build custom fields on the form, you can link them directly to fields on the student profile. When you accept the family, their info auto-fills into the profile so you don't have to re-enter it.
​

c. Reuse an existing form across listings when it fits. If you already have a form that captures the right info, click Use Existing Form instead of starting from scratch. You'll pick up the same connected fields and avoid having two slightly different versions of the form floating around.
​

For each document you attach in Step 2, you'll pick one of three statuses. Each one behaves differently and supports different document types:

For any document you attach to your listing, you'll set it as either Required during application or Required after application:
​

Some guidelines for picking:
​

a. Use Required during application carefully. Every document required at submit time is one more step before a family can apply. Save this for documents you really need to make an acceptance decision.
​

b. Use Required after application for most things. Most paperwork (immunization records, signed handbooks, dietary forms) doesn't have to be done before submitting. Asking for it after means families can apply quickly and finish on their own time.

​

Three types of documents can live in your listing. Picking the right one up front saves headaches later.
​

a. Forms are best for collecting info that fills in fields on student profiles (medical history, dietary needs).
​

b. Fillable PDFs are best for documents that need to look a specific way or be signed (consent forms, registration agreements, custody documents).
​

c. File Requests are best when you need families to upload something they already have (immunization records, court documents, records from a prior school).
​

Forms keep your data clean. Fillable PDFs handle paperwork that has to look official. File Requests handle anything you can't generate inside Playground itself.

Planning ahead when you first set up paperwork makes re-enrollment much smoother the next year. Returning families don't want to fill out the same paperwork they already completed last year, and getting your setup right the first time gives you two clean ways to handle them.
​

Both options work. Pick the one that fits how your center runs.
​

Create a second listing made just for returning families and share it only with them.

Every listing has to have an application form (there's no way around that). For a returning-family listing, you can keep that form bare-bones with just the essentials:
​

a. Student's name
​

b. Student's birthday
​

c. Guardian's name
​

d. Guardian's relationship with the student
​

e. Guardian's email
​

f. Parent's phone number
​

You can also choose not to attach any paperwork to this listing, since those families already completed it the first time around. Returning families fill out a short form, you accept them, and they're set.
​

If you'd rather keep things to one listing, the trick is using the Required after application setting on documents that returning families have already filled out.

For Fillable PDFs that returning families have already filled out, set them to Required after application instead of Required during application. When the returning family logs in after applying, Playground will show their previously filled out document as already done. They won't have to redo it.
​

The trade-off: setting a PDF to Required after application works the same way for everyone in that listing. So new families also won't have to fill it out before submitting. They'll see it after they apply, just like the returning families. If you really need new families to complete that PDF at submit time, this option isn't a fit.

Step 3 is where pricing lives. Each plan you create can be one of three types. Picking the right one matters because once a family picks a plan and gets accepted, Playground auto-creates a billing plan from it.
​

a. Be descriptive with plan names. "Toddler 3-Day" or "Full-Time Infant" makes it easier for families to pick the right one.
​

b. Set a Default classroom under Advanced Settings when it always applies. This auto-assigns accepted students to a specific classroom and saves you a manual step. Skip it if students on this plan can land in different classrooms.
​

c. Use the Plan schedule field under Advanced Settings to pre-fill the student's schedule. Big time-saver if all students on a plan share the same hours.
​

d. Each plan should be different from the others by price or student type. Keep plans clear so families don't get stuck picking between them.

Additional Charges in Step 3 let you collect money for things outside tuition. There are three types, and they each behave differently:
​

Additional charges apply to everyone who applies through this listing. Families can't pick which fees they pay. Whatever you set up here gets charged to every family who applies. (Programs and billing plans work differently: families pick from those when they apply. More on programs below.)

If you want to skip a fee for certain families, you have two options depending on the fee type. For application fees, create a discount code and share it only with those families. For acceptance fees, you can edit or remove the fee manually when you accept the student.

a. Any additional charge will require families to add a payment method on the application. This applies as long as any fee is set up on the listing.
​

b. If you don't want families to have to add a payment method on the application, you have to do two things: remove all the additional charges from your listing, and toggle off the credit card requirement in Fee settings. Removing the charges alone won't turn the requirement off.
​
​

​

​

c. Discount codes only work on application fees. If you want a promotional code for families to use, it can only be applied on an application fee.
​

d. The "Hold as deposit" toggle is about bookkeeping, not about when you get the money. The funds are charged and collected as soon as you accept the family, no matter what. The toggle decides whether the deposit is held credit on the family's account (so you can apply it to a specific debit later) or gets applied right away. A common practice is to hold the deposit and apply it to the family's last month of tuition when you have reached the billing cycle of that debit.
​

e. Decide who pays the credit card processing fees. Your Billing Settings let you set whether your center or the family covers the processing fees. That setting carries over to acceptance fees and tuition deposits. The one exception is application fees: your center always pays the processing fee on those. Parents have to pay the application fee just to apply, completely bypassing the center and the billing settings for that center. If you'd rather have families cover the processing fee, charge it as an acceptance fee instead.
​

The bottom of Step 3 has an Add-ons section where you can attach extra programs that families can choose to opt into when applying. Common examples are hot lunch, aftercare, or a bus program.
​

You can pick programs have to exist in your account before you can add them to a listing. Create them first under My School > Programs. Or on on the listing page, you can click + Add Program to create it.
​

To add a program to your listing:

A few things to know:
​

a. Add-ons are optional for families. Families pick which ones they want during the application. Unlike additional charges, they aren't forced on every family.

b. Programs charge based on their fee type, which can be per check-in, per check-out, time-based (like per minute), or a one-time fee. This is set when you create the program. The fee type is what makes programs different from recurring billing plans.
​

c. Use the program description to spell out how the fee works. Especially for per check-in or time-based fees, the description is your chance to tell families exactly what they're agreeing to (like "$1 per check-in, charged each day your child stays for aftercare"). Clear descriptions head off confusion later.
​

d. A program you createl can be attached to as many listings as you want. Edit the program once and the changes apply everywhere it's used.
​

For each new school year, you don't need to start from scratch. Use the Duplicate feature so you can carry over what worked last time.
​

The fastest way to catch a mistake is to walk through the listing as a family would see it. While editing your listing, click the Save and Preview button in the top right corner. From there you can:
​

Before clicking Publish Listing, run through this list:
​

The questions below come up most often.
​

Once your listing is published, see Manage the Enrollment Funnel and Accept Students for what happens when applications come in, or Create Billing Plans to learn more about how billing works after acceptance.