brightwheel

Vorteile

It significantly enhances parent-teacher communication.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

It allows me to keep everything in one place!

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

Its ability to bill parents for credit card, debit card or ACH fees directly

Nachteile

The cost of the software. The more parents the more it cost

Vorteile

Very user friendly and they keep giving updates to make it better. I'm excited to see the direction they go as they continue to grow.

Nachteile

Nothing yet. They respond well to requests.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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....). :(

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Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

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Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

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Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

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Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The billing was a fairly seemless process

Nachteile

customer service was lacking when the company got bigger

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Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

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Vorteile

I like the ability for parents to be able to check their child in and out as a backup to our teachers doing it in the classroom.

Nachteile

It doesn't print attendance sheets in the event you have an internet issue.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Checking in and out our child at daycare

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

Children's Attendance Record
Staff Time Cards
Parent Communication
Online Payment Option

Nachteile

Nothing that I can think of, I love everything about Brightwheel!

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

The cost was a little higher than similar products.

Vorteile

able to keep parents informed on what their children are doing

Nachteile

I haven't found anything yet that I don't like

Vorteile

Love that I can share moments and learning with families.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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!

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

easy of making reports, and communication between home and program

Nachteile

The new adminstration feature. The prior feature allowed me to delete documents from a family list if it was not applicable or if they were unable to complete online but instead in person. The families are having difficutly moving throught the enrollment process, the way it is set up now. I would love for Bright Wheel to give providers some power to delete and or go back to the previous feature of adminsitaion that was based on forms

Another con is the ablity to make reports based on enrollment start and end dates, this would better assist my program in pulling reports based on dates, for our funders. I currently have to pull everyone from active and inactive to a spread sheet only to delete what I do not need based on enrollment and end dates. This is time consuming for me

Vorteile

Brightwheel's setup was incredibly easy. Our staff picked it up right away, and we love that parents can easily keep up with what their kids are doing and learning each day. Check-in is a breeze and we love being alerted on the front end if a child is sick.

Nachteile

We do wish it had an api or at least a low code connection to Zapier. We use Salesforce as our primary data source of truth and don't love having to do by hand imports and exports to keep both updated.

We also aren't using Brightwheel curriculum. If there was an easier way to import what we are using, that would be amazing.

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Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

I love the ease of using the app and all the detail that I am able to share with the users. Brightwheel provides a lot of specific options so that daily logs are concise and organized.

Nachteile

I wish that there were specific categories that I could select when writing a note. (Just because I like things to have a specific label).

Vorteile

I love that everything is in one single app. Communicating with parents via email is hard since families get so much email that mine would sometimes get lost. The same with text messages. This just streamlines it so that families know they can go look in the BW app to find anything related to our preschool.
Also, I have NEVER had a problem in regards to a response to a questions or problem I've had. You all are very quick to respond and always have a well explained answer that is easy to understand.

Nachteile

I can't really think of anything right now. I'm looking to see if there's a way to sort out income sources for our benefit. For example, I'd like to be able to calculate how much of our income is "tuition" or "field trip fees" or "registration fees" or "early drop off fees" etc. There may be a feature for this but I haven't even had time to dig to find out. :-)

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

The ease of parent, communication and the integration with payroll

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

BILLING TO THE PARENTS IS EASY AND GETTING PAYMENTS DOCUMENTED IS GREAT. I ALSO LIKE THE COMMUNICATION TO AND FROM PARENTS

Nachteile

HAVENT LEARNED EVERYTHING THAT BRIGHTWHEEL HAS TO OFFER

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Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

The communication with the parents!! I love that they can see pictures of their child throughout the day. It is user friendly and easy for parents as well.

Nachteile

I can' think of anything that I don't care for. I don't like that I cant delete a child from my Brightwheel all the way. I usually put them as inactive.

Vorteile

The useful features and that the application is very user-friendly.

Nachteile

Customer Service, not being able to get a REAL person on the phone. I feel like text or email are fine for small issues, but bigger issues may get lost in translation via email or text. Also, texting and emailing are time-consuming, especially for someone in a preschool who has to constantly be moving.

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Vorteile

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

Nachteile

I find setting up forms to be difficult.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

I like that users can manage their accounts and balances.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Streamlined billing, attendance, records.

Nachteile

It did take some practice to learn how to use all of the features, but the representatives and online tutorials were helpful.

Vorteile

Its nice to have communication w the staff during day so you can get updates on your kid.

Nachteile

It would be nice if it was integrated with invoices so you could have all in one spot.

Vorteile

I like how easy to use Brightwheel is and how you can message between parents.

Nachteile

I don't use the learning or paperwork tool so I would say that would be what I least like since it is not utilized.

Vorteile

The thing I liked most about brightwheel is that for the most part, it’s an all in one system.

Nachteile

The thing I liked least was that I couldn’t schedule my newsletters and I was restricted to only using pics from the app

Vorteile

I like the option to like photos and see real time updates with ease. Especially the part of seeing notes related to their meals.

Nachteile

There isn’t anything in particular that I don’t like about this app as yet. I’ve been on it since July 2024, and so far it’s meeting my expectations.

Vorteile

parents being able to check in and check out

Nachteile

I wish that when you post pictures to the feed, they posted in a cluster(ex. 1 of 10) instead of posting each picture separately.