brightwheel

Pros

It is a great hub for all communication from your child's teacher. The teacher can send reminders, updates, and even photos from the day. You can easily view and download the photos onto your own device as well!

Cons

Digitally signing your child in and out works well, however, you are given a four digit code that you have to remember after scanning the QR code. This code doesn't change, however, for a parent who doesn't do the primary drop offs and pickups, I found myself struggling to remember the code at times.

Pros

the simple features inside the app, when checking on my child during the day.

Cons

I wish there were more photo features inside the app.

Pros

The app was easy to work through and navigate

Cons

The app never updated when I needed information about my child

Pros

GREAT communication tool! I love being able to send all daily communication through the app straight to parents.

Cons

Can't think of anything. It has been a great resource for me.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

Every day I get pictures of my pre-schooler in Brightwheel. It's also excellent as a means of communicating with his school.

Cons

The check-in/check-out can be a bit wonky if you don't have great reception.

Pros

All in one tool. Easy to navigate. Clean UI/UIX.

Cons

Tool can be glitchy at times. Some updates will publish/share delayed.

Pros

Brightwheel is an online system that allows daycares to communicate with parents, send photos, and updates. It’s used as an app on your phone and is very conformant to use.

Cons

It can be expensive for schools and daycares to purchase and execute.

Pros

Ease to pay, view and document information for my child

Cons

There is not a way to filter through the information over the full period of time

Pros

Brightwheel has all of our centers needs all in one app!

Cons

That it takes so much to reach a live agent on the phone

Pros

It is an all in one tool! It is a one stop shop for my preschool needs.

Cons

I can't think of any cons at this moment.

Pros

Brightwheel is easy to set up and easy to use. Not only does it save time, it offers wonderful tools to expand and grow your childcare business.

Cons

There are too many departments/people to talk to when trying to get support. It would be nice to have one person assigned to our account that could help navigate questions.

Pros

I love the ease of Bright wheel's messaging side. I love the simplicity of Billing.

Cons

Brightwheel is perfect ! I love everything about this system!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

I love that I can sign into my account, see statements, pay my bill, look through pictures posted, change my sons profile picture.

Cons

It is a great child care/preschool management system. I would say they could update to be allowed to add files versus paper copies of everything.

Pros

It significantly enhances parent-teacher communication.

Cons

Initially, the app appeared very user-friendly and it has room to grow.

Pros

Gives a single source to help manage students/kids and inform parents as well as managing access to the facilities.

Cons

Occasionally the app hangs and can be a little frustrating, but it's not a deal breaker or a common thing.

Pros

Keeping parents informed on students activities and progress throughout the day.

Cons

The least thing is the payment plans that are available.

Pros

Brightwheel is user friendly and easy to use. It allows for information to be shared in a simple, yet thourough way.

Cons

I can not think of any cons at this time.

Pros

Love that I can share moments and learning with families.

Cons

I don't like that They update it at certain times mid-year which makes it very difficult for care providers to try and learn. Although I'm grateful for the updates. Hope there is an option to print portfolio now! It's also a bit difficult to be able to know which features are used from tablet, phone or desktop that can be kind of cumbersome

Pros

Ease of use, User Friendly, Cost effective

Cons

Not as intuitive as we like it to be. We like it to group students by family and to make it easier to find students and Parents together and not have look for them separately

Pros

Ease of use and appealing mobile layout. Easy for my daycare provider to communicate with me throughout the day with updates on my child and send photos. Easy to pay online, eliminating need to use checks.

Cons

No cons so far. Easy to access online and easy to use as a mobile application as well.

Pros

Brightwheel is an easy to use app with all the functions necessary. It allows you to see daily updates on your child to include both video and photos. It allows for a secure place to communicate with your child’s providers and keep informed with things outside of the normal daily updates. Being allowed to also send payments through the app is highly beneficial. Having everything in one app makes things so much easier.

Cons

There isn’t much to dislike about the app. One slightly frustrating feature is the reminder emails regarding autopay. There was a time where I intentionally did not want to use auto pay. The app then would send DAILY notifications prompting me to sign up for autopay which was slightly frustrating.

Pros

Very user friendly, messaging app was quick, photos came through wonderfully. Payment system simple. Nice reporting system for taxes end of the year

Cons

I was very satisfied with Brightwheel and found it be a great daycare communication tool

Pros

I love how easy it is for the parents and teachers to use. Everything is all in one place. I feel that parents read notifications so much more now-instead of notes in a cubby.

Cons

Some parents were put off by the weekly fees to pay through the system.

Pros

Ease of use. App has a single GUI and allows multiple functions.

Cons

If you have your child in more than one school that uses Brightwheel information can "bleed" across and be difficult to change. (billing,pictures,etc)

Pros

Brightwheel works so very well to seamlessly bring together students, families, and staff. It works great for attendance, communication between staff and families.

Cons

Brightwheel had a wonderful billing system until the recent upgrade. The ability to look into a child's account and be able to see and comprehend a paper trail of billing, credits, adjustments, and refunds. However; with the new billing platform this is a luxury of the past. Now it is nearly impossible to decode what has happened in a child's account if there is anything out of the ordinary such as credits, adjustments or refunds. You simply can't see them without some major digging, drilling-down and then research as it kind of "wipes away" the electronic paper-trail in a sense and makes it difficult to get to the bottom of transaction flow in an account.

Pros

It allows me to keep everything in one place!

Cons

Most everything on my wish list has been or is in the process of being added as a feature.

Pros

Brightwheel is a very parent-oriented app. It is extremely user friendly. It has extensive capabilities when it comes to daily reports and updates for the child. It allows parents easy access to staff and to have a in real time picture of the child's day. From a teacher standpoint it is easy and intuitive to use. On the tuition side of things, parents have access to all of their tuition payment records and can schedule payments independently of the school. Posting payments is simple for the administration.

Cons

I would be very helpful if the data could be used for other purposes and easily adapted to such things a roll call list, classroom rosters. emergency lists etc. While you can export the data to excel spread sheets it would be very helpful if they provided pre-configured options for these necessary reports.

Pros

I like that brightwheel does a great job of allowing the staff at my child's preschool to keep me as a parent updated on what is going on throughout the day in many different aspects.

Cons

While not a huge problem, I would like the chat functionality within the App to send push notifications when my wife responds to messages as well. As it is, I will receive a notification if someone from my child's preschool sends a message, but I will not get a notification that my wife sent one as well in response. This would be helpful so that I would know without having to open the App and navigate to find the exact conversation, just to realize that a question has been answered or situation handled.

Pros

I really like that you can save lesson plans from one year to the next. It makes it easier to see where the kids should typically be at at certain times of the year. The communication with the parents is really great too. It's easy to take pictures and attach them to lesson plans and send them to the parents. Messaging can be sent either from the lesson plan, from a photo or video, or from the messaging section, which is nice. And you can send to entire classrooms for announcements like our recent Halloween party.

Cons

The assessment portion is difficult. It doesn't connect to the lesson plans, so when you take a picture of a lesson plan that has developmental goals/milestones on it, it doesn't automatically upload that photo and lesson plan to that kids' portfolio. And you have to input everything separately. Each kid, each photo, each goal, each section, each description (because again, it doesn't pull from the lesson plan descriptions, even when the photo is from a lesson plan that's in Brightwheel), it's just really time consuming. It's not clear how you make a template, or if that would even be helpful. And there aren't any example templates or template tutorials so you can see what that would look like. You can't send them to the parents either. Which kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.

Pros

My days are very busy, the app helps me show parents everything their children has done throughout the day and parents LOVE it! Teachers/Childcare Providers can message, send pictures, share education progress and ideas, and SOOOOO much more.
The app has everything you need in one place.

Cons

The app is only an app. I wish I could use Brightwheel on the computer. Typing would be quicker, and sometimes my phone is not accessible (at this very moment my phone is broken....). :(

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

I like every feature. From attendance, payment options, documents, menus, curriculum options. The ease of use and set up. Customer service was so helpful when getting started, they have great step by step tutorials if you need, or can talk to someone live, and they were so informative and friendly.

Cons

Only thing I can say bad is that I wish I would have had this years ago.

Pros

I love that we are able to communicate with parents on a daily basis. It's so helpful to have a platform so dedicated to helped childcare workers in their daily work life.

Cons

I can't say there is something I don't like about brightwheel.

Pros

The process of adding a child is easy and quick. The daily reports allows the teachers to add a lot of information so the parents know what day their child has had. It creates trust.

Cons

I do not have any cons at the moment. :)

Pros

We love the communication piece with families, billing is easy to do and is paid online, parents can see the daily happenings as they happen. We like the scheduling piece so the [sensitive content hidden] can enter weekly schedules and teachers are able to see the schedules on Brightwheel for each day. We are part of the Expense trial and we are liking it so far - we are able to take each bank transaction and add what they debit or credit was for to seperate each expense or income.

Cons

I don't care for the mulitple screens you need to go through to do billing or scheduling.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

Brightwheel has opened the door of communication with my parents without taking the time away from the kids when I need to inform the parent of something that is happening. One click and I can immediately text a parent or send a picture to show a parent what is happening.

Cons

I would really like a document hub that the parents can access so I didn't have to send the same document over and over.

Pros

The font are good. Not too many random information appear on the screen.

Cons

It could be more visually attractive to users if developer could add more colorful design because we use it for tracking kid's activities.

Pros

Bright colors and overall easy to use. It was very appealing to families and provided that connection to their child.

Cons

Didn't like the reports and the format in how they looked. Also had some issues with the time clocking in and out feature and reports from that.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

The billing feature. Auto pay, Billing plans, Reports, and Library of charges. All these features are built in to keep up with invoices and charges that need applied and change from week to week.

Cons

The schedule feature is difficult to keep up with as we offer drop in, part time and full time care. It just doesnt give the flexibility we need to schedule our students and staff. We need more of a click and drop feature.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

I love the way Brightwheel helps with communication and invoicing. It saves time and effort for families and staff.

Cons

I find setting up forms to be difficult.

Pros

Brightwheel is a comprehensive and easy-to-use tool that allows users to manage all school-related tasks quickly and easily. With features like real-time communication, student progress tracking, and payment management, this platform simplifies the day-to-day life of teachers and administrators.

Cons

There is nothing not to like about this excellent platform. Everything it offers is very useful and makes it easy to use for people of all ages and skill levels. Plus, thanks to its instant communication features, parents can stay up to date with their children's news and activities at all times.

Pros

The ease of parent, communication and the integration with payroll

Cons

Some things that are easily done on the computer are not as easily done on the app and most of the time I’m on my phone

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

What I like the most is streamlining communication between the management team and childcare parents. Features like attendance tracking, parent engagement tools, and learning assessments empower educators to focus more on teaching and less on administrative tasks, making it easy for teachers and parents to stay connected. Bright Wheel is a beautiful tool for informing parents and improving the classroom experience. Embrace the opportunity to simplify your workload and strengthen relationships with families today!

Cons

Once you make a mistake in Brightwheel, you can't go back and edit the entire group. This can be frustrating if you want to correct something for everyone at once.

Pros

I love that we can communicate with families in real time.

Cons

Nothing that I can think of so far. We love this program.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to brightwheel

Pros

Checking in and out our child at daycare

Cons

From time to time the system logs you out and it takes a while to log in again, when checking your child in or out

Pros

It offers me a way to keep track of my children and all their information.It gives us a quick way to inform parents about classroom information. It gives me an accurate accurate of tuition.

Cons

There wasn't anything I didn't like about the many options.available for me in order to keep track of my students and my finances.

Pros

I like that users can manage their accounts and balances.

Cons

There is no way to contact my daughter's after-school program through the platform.

Pros

Brightwheel is absolutely amazing for those parents who like to keep things in order and or staying connected with my childcare provider

Cons

I do not believe I have any cons about brightwheel. Nothing notable

Pros

Honestly-Nothing! As a parent who uses this app daily I find it to be awful!

Cons

This software does not allow you to see multiple kids at once on a feed without going back and forth. Going back and forth between children is a pain!! Then when I select a child the default is Profile view, I am the parent I don't care about the profile I want to go right to my child's feed. It would be nice if there was a quick view to check in and just see a quick update of all my children on the home screen. There are times when I only have a minute or two to look quick and I just can't with all the back and forth clicking between kids and not being able to see their feeds without some more clicking. I also hate that when a nap is ended it doesn't show the time napped. I only get that at the end of the day when I get a summary after my kids are checked out. I know I can look and see when they started and then when it ended and figured it out, but the starts are not always logged and visible. A summary on their feed would be nice. I also know there are other glitches with this app especially with the pay and checking in and out of kids. My daycare center does not like this app either, but they don't have a choice. The app that was used before this was called Daily Connect and it was absolutely wonderful. You could leave notes, see feeds or multiple kids for quick glances. Yes, there was not payment option on that to keep things simple, but bright wheel doesn't keep things simple now. As a parent & daily user of this app w/ multiple kids , it is TERRIBLE!

Pros

When choosing a childcare engagement app, I was looking for something that was user friendly. The last app we used was not user friendly and parents were not getting the items we needed to communicate to them. Brightwheel not only allows us to get electronic daily reports to parents, but parents/staff can communicate directly about their child's day. Once I realized that Brightwheel also handled billing so much easier than Procare I was sold on the app!

Cons

My least like about Brightwheel when we signed up was they did not process payroll. Now that they include payroll in their system we are switching fully from our previous childcare managment software!

Pros

It was easy to set up and use! The parents and staff in our center also found it easy to use and enjoyed sharing information in this way!

Cons

The cost was a little higher than similar products.