brightwheel: Childcare App
June 13, 2024
More About brightwheel: Childcare App
Brightwheel lets you manage your center, streamline workflows, and engage with parents, so you can save time and money, make life easier for your staff, and improve satisfaction for your parents.
Join the thousands of preschools, child care, and daycare programs across the globe that have fallen in love with brightwheel!
PRESCHOOLS / CHILD CARE / DAYCARE / CAMPS: Manage your students and classrooms, track attendance and room ratios, share photos and videos, assess learning milestones, communicate with parents, send paperless invoices and payments, review daily sheets, and manage staff. Brightwheel is your all-in-one child care and daycare management app!
PARENTS: Engage in your child’s day with a real-time feed of photos, videos, reminders, and updates. Use brightwheel’s digital check-in to securely sign in and out, pay tuition online, and even invite grandparents, nannies, and friends to join in the fun!
Features include:
• Central Database: Store everything related to kids and families in one secure place.
• Student Check-In: Multiple digital check-in options available including digital signatures, 4 digit check-in codes, and a kiosk mode - all aligned with child care licensing requirements.
• Staff Check-In & Ratios: Make administrative tasks easier by managing staff check-in to see your ratios across all your rooms in real time.
• Attendance: Easily log attendance and absences for your school-age students, infants, and toddlers. Use our attendance tracking system to keep track of your toddlers.
• Photo and video sharing: Snap photos, record videos and tag students with one click. Automatically saved to your account and shared with parents (with no extra work!).
• Daily Sheet Reports: Log naps, meals, bathroom, and other activities. Parents get a feed and daily summary. Daily sheet reports are a breeze with brightwheel.
• Assessment & Observations: Make note of progress, achievements, and activities with pre-loaded state standards and a DRDP tool. Share with parents or privately amongst teachers.
• Student Feed: Parents get a personalized feed throughout the day. Save time – no more paper tracking sheets or sending individual photos.
• Parent Communication: Manage parent communication from one central hub (notices, calls, texts, etc.).
• Calendar: Share events, holidays, and important dates with both families and staff.
• Paperless Billing: Seamless electronic billing and payments for tuition and fees. Use brightwheel for all your child care accounting needs.
• Reporting: Detailed reports of every brightwheel feature for billing and licensing requirements.
• Seamless Sync: Brightwheel stays up to date across all phones and tablets – so teachers can use their own device or a school device.
• Web Portal: Easy management and great functionality available on the web, too.
• Affordable. Both free and premium plans available to fit your needs.
And... much more coming! Brightwheel is the #1 early education platform for preschools, child care, and daycares, and we’re always committed to innovation with frequent improvements and new features.
Latest Version
5.24.1
June 13, 2024
brightwheel
Education
Android
1,972,121
Free
co.kidcasa.app
Report a Problem
User Reviews
Daizha Goodridge
2 years ago
I love being able to have communication with my baby's childcare providers. In addition, I love getting updated on what he's doing throughout the day. The absolute best part is the picture/video feature. LOVE seeing picture updates of my baby playing with his daycare friends, playing outside, learning, or trying new sensory stations!!! The app itself doesn't usually have problems, but on occasion it won't allow me to send messages to the facility. Overall rating is 9/10.
Destiny McKenzie
3 years ago
Almost everytime my coworkers and I try to enter anything we're constantly met with and error saying something went wrong and it couldn't go through. I can't spend 20 minutes trying to sign kids in or spend 10 minutes after each diaper trying to record what happened. I have kids to watch. It always says to check the wifi and yes the wifi is working perfectly fine. The device always says it's connected to wifi yet the app doesn't work.
Stacey Porter
3 years ago
Works great when it actually works, but for whatever reason(s) the app on my phone (Galaxy S21+) only works 50% of the time. Otherwise all I get is blank screen with the loading symbol spinning nonstop before finally giving me an "error" message. As a teacher this is VERY frustrating because if it wasn't for the tablet we get in our classroom, I'd have zero way of communicating with parents. I've tried turning wifi off and on, restarting my phone and even uninstalling and re-installing the app.
Julia Schmitt
2 years ago
Have really enjoyed the ease of sign in and sign out, messaging, and having all school documents in one place. I think the photos could be a bit better if they were stored more like a gallery, and if you could download them as a group rather than individually. Photos in the app seem hard to share. But love other app functionality!
Tim Rowe
3 years ago
I've used this app twice now and it's wonderful. My kids were at a facility that used this app and we loved it. Unfortunately, we moved to a new facility that didn't use it. So, we had to tryout several other systems until the new place adopted brightwheel; those other apps were clunky, confusing, and crashed frequently. However, THIS APP is fast, secure, dependable, and super user-friendly. It makes parent<->teacher &admin communication, as well as sharing files and photos fast, safe, and EASY.
Jason Rehm
2 years ago
Great app but would love more granulated abilities to manage notifications. Specifically getting messages but not pictures, and have an option to notify for pictures once a day and pick a time. Love the pics out provider sends and don't want to discourage them from sending...but at times it's too much but I don't want to turn off notifications and miss an important message.
Rose Fong
1 year ago
I am a teacher and a new mom, and this app is great if you are one or the other, not both. I basically have to choose my job or my child; there's not an easy way to toggle between my teaching profile and my parent profile. I have to log all the way out of one to log all the way back in to the other. It's either that or carry two devices. UPDATE: The new "switch accounts" toggle is GREAT! Thank you so much for responding to my initial review and for this amazing new feature.
Gabriel Rivera-Vazquez
2 years ago
Well built, user friendly app that makes it easy to receive photos and communicate with the staff taking care of your kids while you are at work. The only thing I wish would be fixed is a small issue with push notifications. They won't go away unless I manually clear them, even after tapping them to open the app. My spouse has had the same issue as well as other parents I've spoken to. Maybe it's actually a feature so parents don't accidentally miss notification. 🤷♂️
Peyton H
2 years ago
The idea is good but functionality is bad. Frequently, I'll have to heart a photo/video multiple times. Refreshing the page too quickly or closing the app too soon and it won't register you liking the photo. It doesnt always register check-ins/outs so I've accidentally checked out of daycare in the morning or checked in when picking up. The payment option for all current invoices doesnt work. I have to use individual invoices and select all to pay in full. Other issues but out of characters
James Burnett
2 years ago
I could write endlessly about what I like and dislike about this app. But one thing that stands out most of all is the number of taps it takes to compete even the most mundane actions. Many tasks and pages violate the 3-click rule. The date/time interface needs to be updated. Teachers need to be able to copy and paste lesson plans on mobile. I read the original case study for the design and much of the testing seems to be in calm settings. In the heat of the classroom, every second counts.
Marcin Żukowski
4 years ago
The app is decent at covering the main functionality. But it has a few annoying limitations. 1. The photos added by the teachers are not automatically downloaded, so we have to click download many times often. 2. The conversation functionality is limited, e.g. today we wanted to send a photo of a missing toy, no way to do that. 3. Hard to find out remotely if q kid has been checked in - have to scroll through the notifications. Why can't i just see it on the home page? So. Good, but not great.
J E
1 year ago
Great to check in, communicate with my kid's care provider, and we love the pictures they can post. The update to include ACH/credit card payments is nice, but please turn of the constant notification dot to do that. We aren't going to do that because we don't want to pay fees. Seeing a dot like there's something wrong in general, then seeing it's a payment, but there's nothing wrong with that either is disconcerting, then annoying.
A Google user
5 years ago
The idea of this app is awesome. IF IT WORKS!!!!! Still Missing push notifications. It often missing notifications like check ins and photos. The time on the notification is off too. Checked with the daycare center and they have all notification on time but it's the app that not delivered it to us. It would skip some item and send out next item push notifications randomly. The note was entered 10:30 am but the app notification didn't receive until 2pm. My phone was on WiFi at work all day.
Kristen Young
1 year ago
EDIT: The support staff team have been great to work with as we had to troubleshoot the issue. The issue was quickly resolved! Thank you again! Since the app update, I have been unable to access my account. The app stalls at the first screen. I've tried reinstalling the app numerous times, as well as updating and restarting my phone. The app continues to be faulty. I've tried emailing support services, but I have received no response or assistance.
Honesty Mitchell
3 years ago
This app been on my phone for over 6 months. It's great to know my son's progress while at daycare. But, for the past week, or so when I open the app, it lags and then errors out saying "error check your connection " It was working fine until the last update. Now, I have to restart my phone every time I get a message from the school hoping that it works just so I can check the message. I am not having any issues with any other apps on my phone just this one. Giving 1 star until it's fixed.
Ian Kleinfeld
2 years ago
This makes having my child in preschool so much easier, and less worrisome. The ability to communicate with the teachers on a regular basis, and get updates, as well as sign in and out and all the awesome features of this app really make my life easier. Thank you guys. My only request would be to make tables be better designed, perhaps The columns could be collapsible. Because when I'm on my mobile and I'm looking at billing it's very hard to see the totals. It seems like I have to scroll a lot
Theresa Turner
1 year ago
UPDATE... Went to 5 stars! Thank you for the update. It fixed it and I LOVE this app so much and so do my parents!!!! I am trying to add photos to the app and since the February 2024 update, it keeps saying No Media selected, which I have, and then closes the app. Not sure what is happening, but there aren't any other updates to do. I typically love using this app to communicate with parents and share photos of their kiddos doing activities during the day.
des Citak
1 year ago
App worked great until the Feb. 8,2024 update. *If* I get a notification (rare) I click on it and nothing happens. Now it never loads. It may say I have no internet connection (I do) or it might just spin until I close it down. I've tried reinstalling. Before the update I would have given it 5 stars. Something is buggy. Please fix it.
Sunny Neon Raye
1 year ago
Great support team, responsive to feedback. Very straightforward app for communicating with daycare staff. Visually appealing, well organized, responsive & functional. Love the push notifications for check in/out; means I dont have to scramble to text hubby that we're on our way home while getting everything in the car. Has chats with general staff and management, and built in specific chats for late or early pickup. Check in kiosks, payment reminders, & receipts for flex account mgmt.
Rhonda Rhoads
1 year ago
This is a great app! It's easy to keep track of payments and your account. You can do autopay, too. I also love how the teachers can input updates like meals and nap time. They can even post pictures! The only issue I have had is I do not get any notifications from the app. They are turned on, but I miss messages bc it doesn't notify me. Other than that this is a wonderful app!
