Features
Everything NestliCare does
Every feature is included for every daycare. No tiers, nothing for a daycare to buy. Turn on what you use and leave the rest off.
Daily care and the classroom
What teachers log all day, and what families see.
- Quick log
- Say or type one sentence about the room. We draft an entry for each child, and nothing saves until a teacher reviews it. Available in the United States and Canada, except Quebec.
- Activities and photos
- Meals, naps, diapers, moods, notes and photos, logged for one child or the whole room, shared to each family's feed.
- Your own activity tiles
- Add tiles for the things your program does, and hide the built-in ones you never use.
- Observations and progress reports
- Record milestones as they happen, then turn them into a progress report you sign off and share with the family.
- Curriculum and weekly plans
- Plan each room's week, publish it to families, and print the binder for the classroom.
- Meals and CACFP
- Menus, menu cycles and meal counts by child, with claims sent to My Food Program if you use it.
- Incident reports
- File an incident report from a phone or the web and keep it with the child's records.
- Room mode
- Pin a shared tablet to one room so any teacher can log without signing in on their own phone.
- Name-to-face checks
- Run a quick headcount against the room list and record that it was done.
Attendance and check-in
Drop-off and pickup without a clipboard.
- Check-in kiosk
- Parents enter a 4-digit pickup code on a tablet at the door and tap their child in or out.
- QR check-in
- Parents scan a printed or rotating code with the app. The rotating code changes every few minutes.
- Pickup contacts
- Grandparents, nannies and carpool drivers each get their own pickup code, so you always know who collected a child.
- Signature at check-in
- Turn on a signature at the kiosk if your license asks for one.
- More than one stay a day
- Before-school, after-school and back-again days are recorded as separate stays.
- Live ratios and room overview
- See who is in each room and whether every room is in ratio, as it changes.
- Instant notices for families
- Families get a push notification when their child is checked in or out.
Families and enrollment
From first inquiry to a signed-up family.
- Leads and inquiries
- Every inquiry lands in one list with its notes and follow-ups, and converts to an enrolled family in one step.
- Enroll online
- Add an Enroll button to your own website and your public NestliCare profile, so families can apply any time.
- Enrollment packets
- Send the forms a new family needs as one packet and see what is still missing.
- Fillable forms
- Turn your own PDF forms into forms parents fill in on their phone, or start from a pack of state forms.
- Handbook and policy sign-off
- Share your handbook and policies, and see which families have acknowledged them.
- Immunizations and documents
- Keep each child's immunization records and documents on file.
Billing and payments
Tuition that goes out on time and gets paid.
- Automatic invoicing
- Invoices build themselves from each family's plan on the schedule you set. Review them first, or let them send.
- Plans that fit how you charge
- Weekly, every two weeks or monthly, hourly from real check-in times, drop-in day rates and half days.
- Autopay by card or bank
- Families pay by card or bank debit (ACH in the US), once or on autopay, and payouts go to your bank.
- Late fees and late pickup fees
- Add late payment fees by hand or automatically, and charge late pickups by the minute.
- Discounts and credits
- Sibling discounts, family credits and one-off adjustments, applied on the next invoice.
- Closure credits
- Closed for a snow day? Credit every enrolled family in one click, previewed family by family first.
- Payment reminders
- Send a reminder on any unpaid invoice, and see what is past due at a glance.
- Cash, checks and refunds
- Record payments made outside the app and issue refunds, so every family's balance stays right.
- Simple bookkeeping
- Books keeps money in and money out in one place, with payments filled in for you.
Subsidies and outside payers
When a subsidy office, scholarship fund or employer pays part of the bill.
- Agencies
- Add each outside payer once: a state or county subsidy office, a scholarship fund or an employer.
- Per-child awards
- Record each child's award as a fixed monthly amount or the child's full tuition, with start and end dates.
- Split on every invoice
- The agency's share comes off the family's invoice automatically, prorated for weekly and every-two-weeks plans. The family pays the rest.
- Expected co-pay
- Note the co-pay the agency expects from the family, next to the award.
- Claims and an agency ledger
- Each billing period creates a claim on the agency's ledger, so you can see what each agency owes you.
- Statements to agencies
- Email each agency a statement of what it owes, and record its payments and any write-offs.
- Employer-paid tuition
- Set an employer to cover a child's full tuition. The family's invoice shows it covered, and the employer gets a statement.
Communication
One inbox for every family.
- Messaging
- Private messages with a family or a group, with photos, from the web or the app.
- Announcements
- Send a notice to the whole center or to the rooms you choose.
- Newsletters
- Write a newsletter once, schedule it, and it arrives by email and in the app.
- Push notifications
- Families and staff get alerts on their phones for the things they choose.
- Email replies come back to you
- When a parent replies to one of your emails, the reply lands in your dashboard, not a lost inbox.
- Calendar
- Events, holidays and closures in one calendar that families and staff can subscribe to.
Staff
Schedules and hours without the spreadsheet.
- Schedules
- Build each week's schedule by room and share it with your team.
- Clock-in and timesheets
- Staff clock in from their phone by scanning the center's code, and you approve timesheets from anywhere.
- Time off
- Staff request time off in the app, and you approve or decline it.
- Training and certifications
- Log training hours and see certifications before they expire.
- Staff documents and onboarding
- Collect each new hire's documents and walk them through your onboarding steps.
- Staff messageboard
- An internal board for your team. Parents never see it.
NestliAI
Help with the paperwork, always with a person checking. Available to daycares in the United States and Canada, except Quebec.
- Ask NestliAI
- Ask about today's attendance, unpaid invoices, your roster or waitlist, and get an answer from your own records.
- Drafts, not decisions
- Quick log entries and progress report drafts are suggestions a teacher reviews before anything is saved.
- Move in from another app
- Send us your records from a spreadsheet or another system, and we load them for you.
Apps
The same NestliCare on every screen.
- Parent app
- Families download the NestliCare app for iPhone or Android to see their child's day, message you and pay.
- Staff in the same app
- Teachers and admins sign in to the same app and see the tools for their role.
- Kiosk and room tablets
- Run the check-in kiosk or room mode on any tablet.
- Web dashboard
- Owners and admins run the whole center from any browser.
- Four languages
- The web dashboard works in English, Spanish, French and German.
Running the business
One center or several.
- More than one center
- Run several centers from one account, with admins who only see their own center.
- Reports
- Attendance, staff hours, CACFP meal counts and enrollment, ready to print or export.
- Exports
- Export reports and billing records to CSV for your accountant.
- Integrations
- Payments through Stripe, CACFP claims through My Food Program, and calendar feeds for phones.
All of it is free for daycares
Online payments cost 2.9% + $0.50 by card or 1% (max $6) by bank, paid by parents at checkout unless you choose to absorb it. That fee is how we make money.
See pricingReady to stop overpaying for daycare software?
Join hundreds of daycare owners who switched to NestliCare and kept more of what they earn.
Get Started FreeFree forever. No credit card required.