2026-06-19 | Reading time: 5 minute(s)
For subsidized daycares and CPEs in Quebec, employee compensation is anything but straightforward. The Ministry of Family publishes detailed wage scales where each employee's hourly rate depends on their salary grade — itself determined by total hours worked. Managing this manually means extra work, risk of error, and stress at every pay cycle.
Good news: MyDaycare Plus now automates this process from start to finish.
The Ministry of Family sets official wage scales for qualified and non-qualified educators, support staff, and other positions in subsidized childcare services. These scales include up to 10 grades, and progression from one grade to the next is based on accumulated hours worked.
For example, for the period from April 2026 to March 2027, a qualified educator can earn between $28.93/hour at grade 6 and $34.44/hour at grade 10 (with one year at that level). Each step up must be triggered at the right time, based on hours actually worked — and properly documented.
For a director managing multiple employees with different statuses, schedules, and start dates, keeping track of all this without the right tool is a real headache.
With the new salary grade management feature, MyDaycare Plus continuously tracks cumulative hours worked for each employee and automatically applies the correct grade at the right time.
Here's what changes in your day-to-day:
No more manual calculations. The software accumulates hours from entered timesheets and determines the applicable grade based on Ministry rules — no action required on your part to trigger a progression.
Hourly rates update automatically. As soon as an employee reaches a new grade threshold, their rate is updated in the payroll module — without you having to change anything.
A clear, auditable history. You can see, for each employee, their current grade, when they reached it, and how many hours they've accumulated. Useful for answering staff questions, and essential if you're ever audited.
Stronger compliance. By applying the right rates at the right time, you significantly reduce the risk of payroll errors that could lead to retroactive corrections or difficult conversations with your team.
In a sector where staff retention is one of the biggest challenges, every detail counts. A delayed grade progression means an employee notices their pay hasn't kept up — and starts looking elsewhere.
On the flip side, transparent and automated compensation management sends a clear signal to your team: you're a serious organization that keeps its commitments. It's a retention factor that costs little but carries a lot of weight.
And with the Ministry of Family updating its wage scales regularly, staying current without a dedicated tool means constantly checking government PDFs with each new agreement. MyDaycare Plus keeps its salary tables aligned with the current national agreements — so you don't have to.
Salary grade management fits naturally into everything else MyDaycare Plus offers for human resources: timesheets, payroll module, employee files, and automatic salary calculations. Everything is connected, everything updates consistently.
That's the difference between software that automates one isolated task and a platform that genuinely simplifies running a childcare service.