brightwheel Reviews - Page 4

It helps me stay in touch with parents and keep them informed about all we accomplish in the day and allows after hours communication if needed

It is a little expensive for the full version I cant spend the extra money to get the full it doesn't fit in my budget but the free version is worth it

It's FREE. In a business that is non-profit there typically isn't money in the budget for something like this. I love that parents feel more connected to their child during the day. They can check it to see if they are taking a nap (and possibly mentally prepare for a cranky kiddo if they don't nap!) Parents actually take time to read it every day. Paper notes were often just tossed in the garbage without being read. I could really go on and on.

That you can't delete sent or read messages.

It is by far the easiest way for myself (center director) and my teachers to communicate with parents. I don't have to call parents for every little question throughout the day and our phone isn't ringing off the hook with parents calling about everything.

Sometimes, after it goes "off line" and has system updates, it doesn't work correctly for us for the next few days. I guess this should be expected with technology but it makes our life a little more complicated because the parents are expecting it to work perfectly all the time.

It is easy to navigate through once you run a demo or two. Allows staff to report on childrens activities throughout the day and instantly message them important information. Parents can choose to have information qued to their phone as soon as it becomes available from the teacher or check a daily report for quick review. They know when their child last ate, how much, what was offered, diaper changes and toileting, pictures and videos can be shared, and incident reports are shared immediately with parents.

Nothing so far! I have been using it for 7 months. One suggestion would be that calendar events pop up as reminders, sort of like an alarm on a cell phone when you have a calendar event, and staff can help select reminder times so families are well prepared for the event.

Parents being able to see real time what is going on with their child, the ability for the teachers and parents to message each other, not having to use a paper daily sheet for children, tracking the CACFP program, the pictures and videos capturing moments like first steps that you can send to parents, the billing side of it! There are so many wonderful things this software helps you be able to do! And they are always updating and adding new features! Our parents absolutely love it!!

While they are always adding/updating the program, we are still waiting for the lesson plan/learning standards portion to come so that we can start utilizing it immediately as sure that feature will be awesome as well. Another con is while most of the time I love their updates, they have updated the billing a couple times and have taken some features that I really liked and added some that I personally don't care for. However, their billing side is still a great tool!

That you can share the child's day/activities immediately instead of waiting until the end of the day. I also love that you can access important information immediately instead of having to go through paperwork looking for it.

That the option of taking a picture while messaging all parents in all rooms isn't available.

It is easy to use. Training with staff is easy. Parents enjoy the ease of use as well. From an administrative standpoint, entering new children and staff is a quick process. Entering all daily information can be done in the click of a button.

When adding a child for a family that already has children at our center, the app does not allow me to only enter first name and email address to add this child's parent. I have to go on a computer to do this. We have several teachers at our center that also have their own children here. There is no way for our teachers to receive notifications both as teachers and parents.

I absolutely love how easy the app is to use but also how detailed it can get when it comes to my daycare providers communication with me. I have had zero issues with the app so far.

I have not run into any issues yet and have nothing negative to say about the app at this time. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I love how easy the program is to use. I am able to update within seconds and in realtime. Gone are the days of tracking on paper! I love that I can snap a photo of my kiddos busy learning and at play, add a cute caption about the learning taking place, and send, all within seconds. The parents love knowing their child’s schedule and what they have for meals, naps, diapering and education. I have...

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At first I had a difficult time linking parents of multiple children in my care. However the BrightWheel staff answered in a timely manner and was incredibly helpful, even checking back later to see if my issues were resolved and if i had further questions.

This software is very user friendly. My staff can easily talk to parents through the messaging feature, we use it for our staff time cards as well as keeping track of student attendance, and parents are able to easily see pictures or updates about their child throughout the day. I pay based on the number of kids I have and they are generous with waiting to increase the price. Customer service is wonderful! They quickly respond to any issues I have and take suggestions to improve their software.

My biggest frustrations come from the staff side of the software. Staff can clock each other in and out so if you have untrustworthy staff then they can really mess up some time cards. Also the administrator cannot create a time card so it takes some extra steps in order to create a time card if someone forgot to clock in or out. The staff cannot see their hours within their own accounts and have no...

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I like how use friendly the app is, with all the features and how quick and easy it is to enter information and access when need through out the day.

I would like the app to add/ improve some features. Such as have an edit all feature and be able to do multiple edits at the same time. Instead of having to do it one by one. Also, the app can stop working random times through out the day and takes longer to reload/ refresh. Would be nice to have a safe feature that saves any information, pictures or videos in case the app crashes or stops working. It would be nice if you could take longer videos. Be able to upload documents without having to take a picture of it before posting.

I really like how easy it is to use the software. I like how you can add a student and all their information so all you need is the app to access every students information. I love being able to track my employee’s hours. My favorite part is giving my families the option to pay online.

The one thing I do not like about the software is not being able to customize my invoices as much as I am able to my original way. It has gotten a lot easier to be able to input what I want, but it would be nice to have a few more options on customizing them. Another thing would be to send automated invoice reminders if parents don’t pay by a certain day and time.

I like that parents and teachers can communicate easily with each other.

The billing functionality lacks some features I'd really like to see.

Brightwheel provides us with a tool for better communication between the teachers, parents and administrators. We do not have to interrupt classroom activities to find out information because the majority of the information that we, as administrators, need to know is located in brightwheel. Parents love the ease of communicating, the photo sharing capability and the invoicing feature - receive and pay for invoices online. Brightwheel offers many features that are key to childcare and the administration of it. Brightwheel has cut down on all the paperwork that is associated with childcare and it's documentation.

The only downside to brightwheel is that the app only works with internet connection. If the internet connection is running slow or goes out, then we do not have access to very important information about the children.

This app is extremely user friendly. Staff and parents are typically able to use it without any instruction. It has saved us to much time and energy in our classrooms. We also rely on the safety features to assist with the new protocol in place since reopening during the pandemic.

Occasionally it will lag and we will need to wait to post/input content. But the Brightwheel team will get it fixed very quickly.

I felt my grandson was safe at school when I had to care for him after a family emergency. It was easy to use and set up.

Ability to turn off and on text messages would be a great bonus for this software. I have no other ideas because it was such an awesome app

I like the ease of use - it is easy to quickly add what I need to so I can get back to playing with the students. It's easy to share photos and notes throughout the day as well.

I dislike that you cannot transfer a student without checking them out and then back in. I wish that the notification sent to parents was a "transfer" rather than out/in. It would save concern and confusion. Another issue is when a staff member works at multiple locations, they are unable to clock themselves in or out with the timeclock.

There is so many things that I and my parents love about the software that it is hard to just pick one. Since it's the most like reason, I would have to say it's keeping of the records.

The one con I don't like is when updates are done, I never see them. like the one update where if there was a group of children in one family the children would be put altogether for clocking in and out and the parent only has to enter their code once instead of going to each kid to do a clock in and out. I still have not seen this update and we have a lot of families who have more than one kid to check in and out.

The app works really well for our large preschool of approximately 150 students. We experience very little lag when entering information or posting pictures/videos. It's easy for our teachers to use (even those that are "technology challenged". Our parents say it's easy to use and they love that they're able to download the pictures from the app to their personal devices. The customer service is excellent as we always get a quick and professional response and we've seen improvements made to the application based off of our concerns.

We wish that brightwheel had an assessment/formal evaluation portion so that we're able to have all inclusive software. It also would be really helpful if administrators on the account had more control over certain features like resetting employee information, and disabling messaging.

It is easy to use! I am the person who trains staff and parents alike how to use the app and nine times out of ten, people pick it up very easily. It is intuitive and very user friendly. I even have to use it on multiple platforms and OS devices and feel very comfortable switching back and forth.

There are many times where I find myself wishing there were more features and things that might benefit a program our size. I've shared my feedback with the Brightwheel team and the answer seems to be that they are working on it, but aren't quite there yet.

Ease of communication with parents. Billing features are amazing! Customer service is great and design team is always listening to input to make things better.

Alignment with State Standards is not user friendly. Would love to have the ability to communicate with staff only via message feature. Would love to attach files via message feature. Would love to be able to upload menu. Would love to have options of daily report (visually appealing) to be emailed to parents to give an overview of the day.

I love that I get to give a great idea of how their child's day went. When a drop off is hard, we can share a picture 5 minutes later to ease the parent's mind. We share the learning that happens, as well as other important things that parents want to know (i.e. meal items and potty outcomes). It allows me to easily track check-in/out times, and also makes billing an automatic feature for parents.

It can be cumbersome to use at times, especially using it for billing and other back-end things. The user experience is not as easy as I'd like, but it's generally easy to log all the activities for the kids during the day.

It's relatively easy to upload pictures and videos (and other information) to let parents know what is happening at school. I have also used it as a parent for my kids' daycare and I felt like I was missing out when they began elementary school (where it wasn't used).

With the increase in cost, my children's daycare had to start charging parents just to continue to use it. With this additional cost, I would like them to find a new tool. Also, it's frustrating how it does not show the messages my wife sends to teachers (I only see the reply from the teacher).