brightwheel
- with investments from Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca. Check out our pitch on youtube to learn more about us!
Brightwheel is everything you need for your school, daycare, after-school program, camp, or Sunday school
- all in one app. Join the thousands of programs across the globe that have fallen in love with brightwheel!
It takes less than 5 minutes to get started and is free for schools, educators, and parents.
Schools & Providers: Manage your classrooms and students, track attendance, share photos, communication with parents, and send paperless invoices + collect tuition and fees right to your bank account. We have worked tirelessly with teachers and administrators to make it all as simple and seamless as possible.
Parents: Get a real-time feed of photos, reminders, and updates about your child's day. Using brightwheel’s digital check-in, you can securely check your child in/out using your personal passcode. You can also invite grandparents, nannies, and friends.
Features of the brightwheel platform include:
• Student Check-In: Parents can sign in on any phone or tablet with a simple tap. You can also enable 4 digit check-in codes, which licensing offices accept as a substitute for a physical parent signature.
• Staff Check-In & Ratios: Manage staff check-in from a single place, and see your ratios across all your rooms in real time.
• Photo Sharing: Snap photos and tag students with one click. Automatically saved to your account and shared with parents (with no extra work!).
• Paperless billing: Seamless electronic billing and payments for tuition and fees. Schools can collect payment via bank transfers and credit cards, parents can easily pay bills and always have digital records.
• Daily Reports: Log naps, meals, bathroom, and meds with one click.
• Assessments: Make note of progress, achievements, and activities. Share with parents or privately amongst teachers.
• Parent Communication: Send notices and call parents right from within the app. And now parents can send preset messages to teachers: running late, picking up early, or not coming in.
• Student Feed: Parents get a personalized feed throughout the day. Save time – no more paper tracking sheets or sending individual photos.
• Seamless Sync: Brightwheel stays up to date across all phones and tablets – so teachers can use their own device or a school device.
• Central Database: Store everything related to kids and families in one secure place.
• Reporting: Detailed reports of every brightwheel feature for billing and licensing requirements.
• Calendar: Share events, holidays, and important dates with both families and staff.
• Web Portal: Easy management and great functionality available on the web too.
And... much more coming! Brightwheel is the early education platform that is committed to innovation with frequent improvements and new features.
Required Permissions:
- Camera: used for quick scan check-in/out.
- Storage: used to improve app speed as well as storing photos (uploads & downloads).
- Other: used to access the Internet.
Category : Education
Reviews (28)
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.
The UI for downloading invoices is not very good and the output is not particularly helpful for submitting as receipts to a DCFSA. You'd think that would be easier to do, given that that's basically the main thing I want from the app
It's really great to recieve notifications from my center, I also get to view pictures and recieve updates about nap and snack time! It's so easy to use and I don't miss anything thanks to the Brightwheel app.
Our child stopped going to the daycare over a month ago, yet the app keeps taking out money with no way for the parent to stop the payments. 5 extra parents were taken out...that's a lot of money we can't afford. The director of the center has been trying to stop the payments, yet they kept coming out. Horrible app.
The App works and generally does what it is supposed to but there NEEDS to be a function to Download all photos and videos in bulk. How is that not a thing? The work around is to sort to Photos only and download 100's of photos 1 by 1... Are you kidding me?
Leaving the app for any reason brings you back to the home screen. This makes it difficult to copy in information. At login, to get a 2FA code from email, the app exits the login process. 2FA codes were requested 4 times and they were the same number which makes me question how secure this app is.
As a parent this app is a lifesaver! We love to be up to date on what our baby is doing during her time in care. I feel at ease getting updates and photos throughout the day. This has made the transition to care so much easier for us!
It is the most tedious set of steps to sign my child in and out. Also the payments never come out properly. If there were any other daycares in our area that had spots available, i would switch just because I hate this app that much.
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.
Please build an API to integrate with the Glow Baby app which would enable automated real-time updates for basic functions like feeding times, diaper times, sleep times, etc.. this would be SUPER helpful to many parents doing dual data entry.
I love this app! It has made the experience of daycare and seeing how my child is doing such a pleasant experience and has removed that anxiety with not having your child near.
With new update, won't allow me to check children in and it notify parents. I turn it on, but it doesn't stay on. Other than that, works pretty well.
It works when it wants too but overall ok. I have trouble seeing my childs profile. It says error loading your child at least 2 to 3 times a week. And thats not including as I try to check it throughout the day. It's a great app if it worked. I guess the mass upload of information from lots of kids can slow down the app.
I want to amend my previous review. It was not a fault of brightwheel that I had an issue with uploading pictures. It had to do with my phone not being on network with our school's internet service. I apologize for the previous review!
So far I love this App. Being able to communicate with the school is wonderful for me. I Enjoy getting updates on my child's productivity and I absolutely love the pictures. Knowing what he's eating is also a bonus. I absolutely recommend this App.
BEWARE I was fraudulently charged hundreds of dollars through this app from a school in another state that I've never heard of. No way to contact company except through email and they do not respond. Meanwhile financial information is exposed.
The app is generally ok with one large caveat. Our preschool is Spanish speaking and while I am learning it is tough to communicate. All messages are written in Spanish and I have to use Google translate to read and respond. On both the iOS and the Android apps there is no copy paste ability in the app so I am forced to either type it out or hold the phone to another phone for translation. Allowing of copy paste of the txt data in the app should be easy. Direct translation would be better. Thx
Complete trash. First it just auto generates bills, which doesn't reflect when my child is actually at daycare. Then when I make a payment that does accurately reflect when my child is there my invoice isn't affected and then I get late fees? I should be able to select when my child is attending and get accurate invoices and when payments are made, it should automatically be credited to these invoices. If this is an issue due to how my provider is using the app then you need to train them better on how to use them
lots wrong and missing from this app. We used another app that worked great. It needs to show what kids should be scheduled for each day not the whole class. Its very frustrating when doing progress reports to have to do them from the app and not on the computer its self. having to switch from my phone app to the online web is frustrating. There should be away to pre schedule kids vacations/ days off in advance instead of doing it day by day. This app may be great for administration stand point but not from a teachers! the lesson plans for infants does not fit well. No real explanation on how to use them. Lesson plans are geared towards todds and preschool. Thank you.
My child's daycare provider just switched to this app .I downloaded it and now my phone's shuts off and restarts Everytime I get on it..so frustrating to be on a call..and call ends b/c my phone restarts.
Brightwheel is great. We get updates on the events going on or if there is a sickness going around and reviews on your child specifically. The preschool teachers can post pics if the students.
I wish I had more administrative functions available inside the mobile app. It would also help if we could send pictures and videos in our teacher group without having a child in the group. Better ways to communicate with teachers would be amazing. There should be a teachers corner where we can add resources (pdf, documents, photos, videos, etc.). We want to share pictures, learning videos, and notes with our teachers through Brightwheel instead of needing to switch to email to do so.
It's a great app love it's functionality and easiness to use and communications with the daycare. But lately last week and still goin onn this week seems to be having issues with the app its not loading and says there is a error try again later and also it has been giving the teachers updates late or not at all.
I will have to say that this is the best and most safest system, that I've seen yet. I love the fact that they have a ready plan in action, so it will not be any mistakes to whom have picked up your family member and/or child!
The only issue I have with the app is the fact that there's a percentage attached to payments. Otherwise, it's great and I love the convenience of check in/checkout. I also love the safety feature
Since the 11/30 update, I no longer can get notifications. I've deleted and reinstalled the app twice, logged out and back in 3 times and still nothing. I love this app, how can we fix this?
Notifications for the same thing keep coming up for days on end after you've opened them. Today I opened it and my name had replaced one of my child's under the My Children section. It changed my default payment method to one I had not selected. A real s*@! app.
I really liked this app when I first got it. I am a small home based centre so do not need premium and it had everything I did need. Except now they keep taking features away and making them premium features only. If I had a larger centre it might be worth paying for premium but as a small provider it's not worth the money and I don't need many of the features I'd be paying for. At the rate they're going soon I won't be able to use the app at all. It's highly disappointing.