Parenting Time Calendar Questions and Answers

Question: Who should use the Parenting Time Calendar?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar is written specifically for those who have need of a parenting plan that clearly shows child visitation with overnight stays and day visits. It is intended for lawyers who practice family law, mediators, paralegals, legal assistants, judges and parents.

Question: There are probably many Calendar programs available to me. Why should I use PCGreeting's Parenting Time Calendar

Answer: Because the Parenting Time Calendar is highly customized to provide the features you need to quickly and easily develop your parenting plans. Use our lists, patterns, custom lists, and custom patterns to mark your overnight stays and day visits, all with automatic counters and percentages. Using standard lists you can add weekends, alternate weekends, weekdays, alternate weekdays, in just about any combination with only a few clicks of your mouse. Need to add a holiday? A couple of mouse clicks will do it. You can create custom lists, for example school schedules and other holidays, and use them as templates for all your local area schedules. Why should you use the Parenting Time Calendar? Because it will save you hours of time and lots of money.

Question: Help please! I just purchased your ParentingTimeCalendar and I can't figure out how to get started.

Answer: We have made every effort to make our program as easy to use as possible. Still it's often a difficult task getting started when running a new program. After clicking the Parenting Time Calendar icon located on your desktop you will be presented with a startup wizard allowing you to choose between creating a new parenting plan or resuming work on an existing parenting plan. If you choose to create a new parenting plan you will be asked for a plan name and which month and which year you'd like your parenting plan to start on. A "Preferences" form will then allow you to optionally enter parent names, calendar colors, and times (pick up, drop off, sleep time, nap time, etc). If you find you need help you can reference our rigorous help files (included with your installation) or reference our tutorials located on this website. If you are still in need of assistance, please send us an email (see below). We'll answer your questions within one business day and usually respond on the same day.

Question: I see how you mark overnight stays and day visits for the secondary care giver. How do you mark overnight stays and day visits for the primary care giver?

Answer: With the ParentingTimeCalendar all unmarked time goes to the primary care giver (custodial parent). Thus, when you initially create a calendar the primary care giver has all the time and there are no markings on the calendar. As you progressively mark the secondary care givers (non-custodial parent) overnight stays and day visits, the counters are decreased for the primary care giver and increased for the secondary care giver. This makes it very easy to create a calendar schedule and results in a calendar that is very easy to see and understand.

To associate a color with the primary care giver, use our "Preferences" form and set the custodial color to your choice.

Question: How do I mark alternating holidays? For example I want Christmas in year 2006 to go to the primary care giver (the custodial parent) and Christmas in the year 2007 to go to the secondary care giver (the non-custodial parent).

Answer: This question and answer is similar to the previous Q and A. To emphasize, all marks belong to the secondary care giver, so to accomplish your goal, simply mark Christmas 2007 for the secondary care giver and do not mark Christmas in the year 2006. This approach is easy to implement and easy to understand when viewing the calendar.

Question: How many years can be included in one calendar?

Answer: With the one year standard and deluxe programs one complete year of twelve months beginning on the month of your choice. With the 2-year calendar a complete 24 month schedule beginning on the month of your choice. Calendars may be created for any year from 1000 to 2999A.D. You won't need a program update until the year 3000A.D.!

Question: Why would I want a two year Calendar?

Answer: Several of our customers and potential customers have said that they frequently develop two year plans and that it was somewhat difficult to develop two single year plans with patterns and lists flowing smoothly from the first year to the second. Further, they wanted Care Time and Quality Time totals and percentages based on both years rather than a Quality Time summary for each year. Our 2-year calendar program address all of these issues.

Question: What do I do if I have the 2-year program but only want to create a one year schedule?

Answer: All program outputs can be limited to either year which effectively makes the calendar a one year parenting plan. Subsequently, Care Time and Quality Time calculations look for either year having no days marked; if no days are marked the Care Time and Quality Time calculations are based solely on the year that does have days marked.

Question: How many children can be included on a Parenting Time Calendar?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar has been written to provide a single parenting plan. If more than one child is involved and the visitation is the same for them all, then a single calendar will suffice. Otherwise a unique calendar must be created for each child. Different calendars may be easily distinguished by unique titles that may include a child's name. They may be further distinguished by using a different color scheme for each child.

Question: Does the Parenting Time Calendar support pick-up and drop-off times?

Answer: Yes. With the standard version of the Parenting Time Calendar pick-up and drop-off times may optionally be applied to any overnight stay or day visit and will be included on screen as you work and on all outputs (except for the single page full year output). Pick-up and drop-off times do NOT affect the overnight stay or day visit counters or percentages.

The deluxe version of the Parenting Time Calendar uses pick-up and drop-off times in a manner identical to the standard version unless you are computing quality time. For quality time calculations pick-up and drop-off times are required. You may use default values or define global values which will apply to all days, then explicitly enter a pick-up and drop-off times only for those days with requirements that differ from the default or global values. Note that even with the deluxe version of the Parenting Time Calendar you are not required to calculate quality time so, in that sense, pick-up and drop-off times are optional.

Question: What is quality time?

Answer: Think of quality time as being the time when a parent may be in the actual, conscience, company of the child to share ideas and activities. Sleep time, school time, time at day care centers, etc. subtract from quality time. The result is that Quality time gives a more meaningful indication as to how much time each parent actually has in the company of the child. Think about this: If one parent has the care of the child all of the time, after subtracting 8 hours of sleep per night and 6 hours of time in school, the parent actually has the company of the child only 56% of the time!

Question: My state doesn't require quality time. Why should I want it?

Answer: If your state doesn't require quality time you technically do not need it however the results shown by quality time are often very enlightening and might be useful for obtaining agreements.

Question: I would be using the Parenting Time Calendar in Canada. How do I enter my holidays?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar explicitly supports holidays for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. (Click here to view examples). We have no plans on adding any other holidays at this time however note you can support any desired holidays, vacation schedules, or break periods, with our "Custom Lists". (View our tutorials for further information. If you'd rather not make a custom list you can still mark any day however you want so you can manually enter any holiday desired.

Question: Must I use the parental titles "custodial" and "non-custodial" which are considered to be politically incorrect? I'd like to use the parents names such as Mrs. Martha Angstrom and Mr. John Angstrom or maybe just Mother and Father.

Answer: With our "Preferences" form you can use any one of several built-in titles or you can simply enter any title or name you like. With the "Preferences" form you can also define global values for pick up and drop off times, sleep times, nap times and other values which will flow to other forms and save you a lot of data entry.

Question: What kinds of outputs are provided by the Parenting Time Calendar?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar yields single/two page calendars, 12/24 page calendars, care time reports, quality time reports, care time pie charts, quality time pie charts, hourly distribution reports, and more. You can print all of your outputs to either a black and white or a color printer or save them as images for easy emailing. (Your printer must be Windows graphics capable).

Question: Is the Parenting Time Calendar compatible with my word processor?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar is a stand-alone program. Compatibility with other programs is not an issue. And note that all outputs can be saved to files in the industry standard bitmap or jpeg file formats so they can be directly imported to nearly all other graphic capable programs such as Microsoft Word(TM) and Word Perfect.

In addition, you can now write your calendar to .csv (comma separated values) formatted files which can then be imported into other database programs (like MicroSoft Excel(tm)) and word processing programs which you can then use for creating other graphs or performing economic calculations.

Question: Does the Parenting Time Calendar come with a booklet that includes operating instructions?

Answer: No. Frankly the program is so easy to use that we feel a booklet is not necessary and would only add to the program costs. In lieu of a booklet we include a complete help facility, with tutorials, that provides all the information you will need to quickly get started using the Parenting Time Calendar. We recommend that all new users of the Parenting Time Calendar spend five or ten minutes exploring the help facilities prior to starting their first parenting plan with overnight stays and day visits.

Question: Will the Parenting Time Calendar run on my Mac?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar requires an I.B.M. compatible P.C. running Windows(TM) 95, 98, 2000, NT, ME or XP. It will run under Windows on a MAC if the MAC has an Intel chip set and can be booted to run Windows. We have no plans on porting the program to run on the MAC.

Question: If I order the Parenting Time Calendar can I download it from your site?

Answer: Yes! You can use PayPal to order the Calendar and proceed immediately to download it. Note that installation is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Just download the file, then run it by double-clicking on it with your browser. To select a download please visit our "How to Order" web page.

Question: There are several people in my office that create custodial schedules. Do I need to purchase the Parenting Time Calendar for each of them?

Answer: Perhaps. Our straight forward software license agreement stipulates that there must be a purchased copy of the Parenting Time Calendar for each computer that MIGHT be running the program at the same time. Please contact us regarding multi-copy discounts.

Question: If I purchase your program, what do I do if I have a question or think I've found a bug with your software?

Answer: Most questions can be answered by reading the Help files included with the Calendar program. You might also choose to view our tutorials located on this web site. If you have a question you can't find the answer to, or think you have discovered a program bug, send contact us and we make every attempt to answer your question and/or solve your problem within 1 business day (24 hours) or less.

Question: Is there anyway I can try the Parenting Time Calendar before I purchase it?

Answer: We offer a fully functional demonstration version of the Parenting Time Calendar that you can download and test. The demonstration program will remain active for ten days from the day you install it and you may develop as many parenting plans as you wish during that time. To download the demonstration version of the Parenting Time Program, click here. For the greatest benefits we suggest you view our tutorials before downloading and running the demo.

Question: How can I get additional information regarding the Parenting Time Calendar?

Answer: Please email for your sales, marketing, and other user oriented questions.

Direct your emails to if they are of a technical nature or for other user oriented questions.

We will try to respond to your inquiries within 24 hours (1 business day)

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