Sproutary Daycare Management App

[Michael]

As many of you know, I'm never willy nilly when it comes to advertisers. I turn down most if I do not believe the product is advantageous to our businesses.

I accepted Sproutary for their Daycare management software options. Take a look and see if their product is a something that may help you. https://www.sproutary.com/

[Blackcat31]

It looks fairly easy to use..
I have a few questions that I messaged the about but it looks easy enough to use so I might give it a try!

[Michael]

Would be interesting to get your take on it. Many here respect your opinion. I noticed that there is an email address for questions and also a chat box. It would be interesting to see if they actually chat on New Years Day. ::

[erichelgeson]

Thanks for accepting us as an advertiser! I'm the founder and happy to answer any questions.

I actually just missed someone on live chat as I was doing the dishes Happy new year!

[Alwaysgreener]

@erichelgeson

One of my biggest things with apps is not being family home care friendly but based on center or preschool needs. How family home friendly is this?

Example one app that I tested wanted me to create class for each age group and assign a teacher.

Another question is privacy, how much info can other families see about each other?

Example another app I tried allowed parents to see other parents info, photos and when they were no longer connected to the app.

[Blackcat31]

Would be interesting to get your take on it. Many here respect your opinion. I noticed that there is an email address for questions and also a chat box. It would be interesting to see if they actually chat on New Years Day. ::

I’ll try them out and I will definitely give a review!

[erichelgeson]

Hi @284878

I'll say in general you're right - most industry daycare apps are focused on the daycare centers market. That being said we do have a few home daycares and work with them to make sure it fits their specific needs. Our smallest customer has 7 "sprouts" (what we call kids in our system) and our largest has 26 locations they manage with over 2000.

In general we allow you to manage your families, classrooms, etc however you want. It's your business, so the layout should meet your needs.

I'm a pretty big privacy buff - and I carry that into the design of Sproutary. Families only see their data, but you can of course share updates, photos, etc to the entire location too. As a parent of four - I'd not want other families to see photos of my child after they're no longer at our location.

If you're curious I'd encourage you to sign up for the trial and check it out! Even if it's not for you right now I'd love to get your perspective. We are customer driven - we listen and take their needs seriously.

[Pandaluver21]

I'm currently using Daily Connect, and I do like it, however there's a couple things I miss from when I was using Brightwheel.
1)The ability to have employees clock in and manage the app as well.
2) Being able to upload more than one picture at a time.

I see that it allows employee clock in (yay!) but does it allow more than one picture uploaded at a time?

[erichelgeson]

Hi Pandaluver21

Employee time cards was one of the first features we added. Our center was using manual paper punch clock/cards for employees and children and it was such a hassle.
Now she just runs a report and sends it to her accountant each week.

Multiple photo uploads? Currently no, but we'll add it in this week (and I'll report back here when it's done).

We're here to get your feedback make it the easiest and most useful for you.

[Blackcat31]

Is there any type of option to track yearly training requirements for the provider, director and or staff?
I didn’t see any info on the site unless I just missed it.

I know each state is different but tracking training is one thing I struggle with every year so just curious.

[Alwaysgreener]

@Eric

I like it so far, it has a clean look, easy to use...

I created a child care account and a parent account to see the difference.

1. Love the allergy list and vaccines, easy to use but your allergy list needs more items, or at least SOY added and a other box (I have a kid that can not have beans, peas, and lentils along with soy and nuts), and a check all box for the vaccines would be nice when entering a new child.

2. I love that instead of deleting a family I could achieve them, but the delete option did not tell how to achieve or where to go to do that. Will achieving the child remove the parent from logging in and can you achieve a child as they age out? (or in my case the foster kids unenroll but the bio child stays)

3. I would like to personalize the message to the families for them to sign up. (I do not do pictures at all unless it is for my records, so I would not want parents to expect them) but that is not a deal-breaker.

4. I like that I can have each child scheduled at a different time. All my kids have different schedules.

5. Chatbox is great but since I do not see an app in the app store. My tablet is a kindle fire, is this kindle friendly?

6. Easy check-in and out but no check-in on parents screen, this might be common but currently... My covid policy is that they text me (pick up or drop off) from outside to check in the kids, so I need something they can use from their phone.

7. I could not enter an employee, I got an error 500. I tried a few times.

8. Love the variety of reports. I was able to test most of them.

9. Would you consider adding a note section for each child that only the employees/owner can see? Like anecdotal notes? Or maybe a calendar that we could add notes too. (X was sent home sick today, M was a no show, T will be absent on x day, P had a temp of xx at snack, H slept longer than normal, W had a bruise on his check at arrival, Z pushed S down, K is teething, J threw a fight at circle time...) Having a way to add notes will be a selling point for me.

10. Would you consider adding a weekly schedule/calendar? (theme, letter, color, shape... of the week.)

11. I could not find a way to assign a pin to the family, I even in the parent account. Am I missing something?

12. I see the cost for this app is $1 per kid for the month. I currently have 6 kids, all part-time and 1 starting soon. So my cost would be $6/7 a month? What would be the cost of using the payment option?

13. Like I said I have never found an app that fits my needs. My church uses a program called Breeze (I was part of the team that voted to us it) and if they did a child care app, I would be first in line. One feature that they have that I love is being able to create forms. Any thoughts on adding that to your app? I would love to be able to have a covid check-in form that would have to be completed in order to check-in.

14. If there is an issue with the network on your end or mine, is there a way to correct a child's check-in or out time?

15. Do the parents have to create an account to receive messages that I would send out like the daily reports?

In closing, I would recommend this App for its features and ease of use.

[erichelgeson]

Is there any type of option to track yearly training requirements for the provider, director and or staff?
I didn’t see any info on the site unless I just missed it.

I know each state is different but tracking training is one thing I struggle with every year so just curious.

This fall we added Employee documents - this allows you to upload certifications, document, and set reminders when their trainings are due. Our next step is to allow you to add in categories you require for each staff so you can track them across your entire organizations.

We are currently making videos for each section and documenting all the new features we added last year, so there are still a few gaps in our marketing material vs the live features, we'll be closing that gap soon!

[Blackcat31]

This fall we added Employee documents - this allows you to upload certifications, document, and set reminders when their trainings are due. Our next step is to allow you to add in categories you require for each staff so you can track them across your entire organizations.

We are currently making videos for each section and documenting all the new features we added last year, so there are still a few gaps in our marketing material vs the live features, we'll be closing that gap soon!

Awesome! Thanks for the reply!
I’m also fellow Minnesotan.

[Annalee]

If I understand correctly, payment comes through Stripe which cost a percentage per payment. Am I reading that right?

I currently use Zelle which is free.

[erichelgeson]

@Eric

I like it so far, it has a clean look, easy to use...

I created a child care account and a parent account to see the difference.

Last year we did a complete redesign on our look and feel - glad you like it!

1. Love the allergy list and vaccines, easy to use but your allergy list needs more items, or at least SOY added and a other box (I have a kid that can not have beans, peas, and lentils along with soy and nuts), and a check all box for the vaccines would be nice when entering a new child.

Agree, I've added these to the list next week!

2. I love that instead of deleting a family I could achieve them, but the delete option did not tell how to achieve or where to go to do that. Will achieving the child remove the parent from logging in and can you achieve a child as they age out? (or in my case the foster kids unenroll but the bio child stays)

A family in our system is "archived" when no sprouts are active. Delete in our system is really only if you made a mistake or want to remove all records of the family. Though I do agree a more an "archive" function to remove them from drop downs, reports, etc makes sense.

3. I would like to personalize the message to the families for them to sign up. (I do not do pictures at all unless it is for my records, so I would not want parents to expect them) but that is not a deal-breaker.

That makes sense. We can add in that easily so families get a custom welcome message.

4. I like that I can have each child scheduled at a different time. All my kids have different schedules.

We use this schedule to alert you on late pick up and drop offs as well.

5. Chatbox is great but since I do not see an app in the app store. My tablet is a kindle fire, is this kindle friendly?

It is! We regularly test on Kindle, IOS 13 & 14, as well as Android/Chrome. There is no app to install - our site is what you call an PWA or Progressive Web App - meaning we can do almost everything an app can do - without being in the app store.

6. Easy check-in and out but no check-in on parents screen, this might be common but currently... My covid policy is that they text me (pick up or drop off) from outside to check in the kids, so I need something they can use from their phone.

Correct - We actually did allow that for a while but unfortunately had too many bad apples checking out early to avoid fees, so we have removed it. We have added the ability for you to record who dropped off and picked up. And adding a "QR" code the family can scan to checkin via their phone to avoid bad apples.

7. I could not enter an employee, I got an error 500. I tried a few times.

I saw that - my apologies! All software will have errors once in a while. We'll have it fixed tomorrow (watching the new Croods movie with the kids tonight!)

8. Love the variety of reports. I was able to test most of them.

Thanks! We add more all the time when talking with centers.

9. Would you consider adding a note section for each child that only the employees/owner can see? Like anecdotal notes? Or maybe a calendar that we could add notes too. (X was sent home sick today, M was a no show, T will be absent on x day, P had a temp of xx at snack, H slept longer than normal, W had a bruise on his check at arrival, Z pushed S down, K is teething, J threw a fight at circle time...) Having a way to add notes will be a selling point for me.

Sprout notes, documentation, calendar - everything you just mentioned we are currently working on and expected in Q1 this year.

10. Would you consider adding a weekly schedule/calendar? (theme, letter, color, shape... of the week.)

Yes! We've talked to quite a few of our customers about how they'd like the calendar to look and features, those included.

11. I could not find a way to assign a pin to the family, I even in the parent account. Am I missing something?

To assign a PIN you must have PIN required checked in the Settings - after that you'll be able to assign the PIN.

12. I see the cost for this app is $1 per kid for the month. I currently have 6 kids, all part-time and 1 starting soon. So my cost would be $6/7 a month? What would be the cost of using the payment option?

If you had one starting soon (eg "Active" not checked) - you would not be billed for them. So $6 in your scenario.

13. Like I said I have never found an app that fits my needs. My church uses a program called Breeze (I was part of the team that voted to us it) and if they did a child care app, I would be first in line. One feature that they have that I love is being able to create forms. Any thoughts on adding that to your app? I would love to be able to have a covid check-in form that would have to be completed in order to check-in.

Currently no - we did talk to our customers about what they would like for records on covid checkin, but they all thought adding that level of questions to the Sproutary checkin didnt make sense. Though always happy to reconsider.

Also I'd love to hear more about your experiences with Breeze and forms. Let me know if you have a few minutes next week and willing to chat.

14. If there is an issue with the network on your end or mine, is there a way to correct a child's check-in or out time?

Yes! It also records who edited it and what changed (again, some bad apples, we record changes and deletions and who)

15. Do the parents have to create an account to receive messages that I would send out like the daily reports?

You creating their family account and adding the email address is enough. They can optionally login and see, but they'll revive emails, communications, updates etc just by you adding them.

In closing, I would recommend this App for its features and ease of use.

Wow! I am honored by the detailed review and endorsement. We take feedback from customers seriously and I'll follow up with each and everything mentioned here.