Reviews for brightwheel: Childcare App

I think it's a pretty good app, well laid out and easy to navigate. I have two gripes. One; I don't want a notification that I've received a notification. Just put the verbiage of the message directly into the notification. Two; if using the QR code to check in/out, I've already authenticated myself through being present and having the app associated with my child open. I shouldn't need to enter the pin as well.

The idea of this app is awesome. IF IT WORKS!!!!! Still Missing push notifications. It often missing notifications like check ins and photos. The time on the notification is off too. Checked with the daycare center and they have all notification on time but it's the app that not delivered it to us. It would skip some item and send out next item push notifications randomly. The note was entered 10:30 am but the app notification didn't receive until 2pm. My phone was on WiFi at work all day.

Great App for parents to monitor what's going on. It's really up-to the provider to update activities to the App so the more diligent they are the better for the parent. The message feature is a great way for providers to communicate. I get copies of the menu so that's helpful. As a parent I'd like to know if there's a way for the provider to easily note the arrival and departure time for the child. My friend's school has daily arrival and departure time. Mine does not.

The app is decent at covering the main functionality. But it has a few annoying limitations. 1. The photos added by the teachers are not automatically downloaded, so we have to click download many times often. 2. The conversation functionality is limited, e.g. today we wanted to send a photo of a missing toy, no way to do that. 3. Hard to find out remotely if q kid has been checked in - have to scroll through the notifications. Why can't i just see it on the home page? So. Good, but not great.

Great to check in, communicate with my kid's care provider, and we love the pictures they can post. The update to include ACH/credit card payments is nice, but please turn of the constant notification dot to do that. We aren't going to do that because we don't want to pay fees. Seeing a dot like there's something wrong in general, then seeing it's a payment, but there's nothing wrong with that either is disconcerting, then annoying.

This makes having my child in preschool so much easier, and less worrisome. The ability to communicate with the teachers on a regular basis, and get updates, as well as sign in and out and all the awesome features of this app really make my life easier. Thank you guys. My only request would be to make tables be better designed, perhaps The columns could be collapsible. Because when I'm on my mobile and I'm looking at billing it's very hard to see the totals. It seems like I have to scroll a lot

A good app! It came highly recommended, but if I had not known information beforehand, the company is pushy, and it is not a good deal financially if you don't sign up at your orientation. A big issue for my clients is how small the "add info" button is at check-in, and I agree. I wish it were more prominent so they could easily add their child's daily information. Overall I love it, my clients love the updates, and the company is very helpful throughout the set up process!

Received a text to sign up for my grandson... would not let me... kept asking for information that was not given to me. Kind of bogus! Edit 12/04/19....after receiving an email explaining how to use the app, I have decided to reevaluate my review. I was able to signup on the app with not much problems. While it did work with better instructions it was not the easiest app, but deserves better than a one-star...so I have given it a three-star instead.

Brightwheel uses plaid to gain access to your bank accounts. This is fine. The problem is that if you have more than one account at the same bank, brightwheel provides no interface to select from the list of accounts that plaid returns to it. Brightwheel just randomly chooses one and takes money out of that. If you want to use a different account than it chooses, you have to go through the manual account verification process. What a piece of junk.

I love how easy it is to log into this app and see everything my child has been learning, eating and up to date time on when she takes a nap. It contains a lot of useful information that, while having to be at work most of the day, puts my mind at ease on the wellbeing of my child. One downfall is I haven't been able to pay with automatic payments until here recently. I have no way of tracking my previous payments to the daycare because of payments being made with cash.

Nice app required by our daycare. Mostly the functionality is good, features are nested under each child. Can't edit photo or info for my child though, assume the daycare has locked it. (Partly a daycare company choice) = Biggest issue for me is fees for payments. They charge ~3% on every transaction, and our daycare requires we pay through the app. Adds up to hundreds per year. 4% is the max allowed by US law, for scale. There's no information about this fee until you have to pay an invoice.

This is a great app! It's easy to keep track of payments and your account. You can do autopay, too. I also love how the teachers can input updates like meals and nap time. They can even post pictures! The only issue I have had is I do not get any notifications from the app. They are turned on, but I miss messages bc it doesn't notify me. Other than that this is a wonderful app!

The app is great for keeping up with your children while at school. However, the billing is not intuitive when trying to split payments. There doesn't seem to be a way to archive unused accounts, or make one account the default. There is also duplicative statements and invoices making it difficult to decipher which tab is the authoritative info. Additionally, I have to uninstall and reinstall once a week because the app thinks that I have no children on the account.

5 minutes in, and littered with bugs. Had to resend 2FA a bunch of times before it came through. Registration forced filling in "Street 2" section. Updating profile info didn't get pulled into any of the registration forms, and the form fields can't be edited. Emailed links send you to the browser instead of the app. Immunization records can't be updated after uploading

I wish there was a way to rotate photos or add and upload photos from my computer to newsletter modules. The video feature often does not work in the app. When I go to send the video it will just send a message that media cannot be found. This app needs to be rebooted often in order for my class roster to show up. You cannot capture multiple moments at once. This is a one picture at a time and send to families kind of app. I have used other apps and this one is on the bottom of my list.

While I love having an app to communicate with the parents of the children in my class, the app has hardly functioned since its last few updates. Error, no internet connection, resizing pictures, and all it does is just sit on that page. Says it allows 10 pictures to upload at a time, yet it hardly does more than 5 if it works, and only 10 at a time is such a low number to allow too. I have to constantly restart my phone. And now I have no enter button for paragraphs in messaging to the parents!

The last update made the app so much harder to use for my use case. I am usually looking at pictures and videos from the last few weeks, trying to save some of them. The app always lacked a way to jump to a particular date, but the date was shown at the top of the screen as I was scrolling. Now, the date is not shown anymore, so it's even harder to navigate to an older date. The worst part, when navigating back from viewing a picture or video, the page scrolls itself back to a different day.

App and website are clunky. The credit card additional charge is misleading and percentage rate is more than stated. You have to sell your personal data through Plaid to make ETF payments. There was no opt out option. There is no ability to download forms or paperwork as a PDF for your records. I would not recommend child care centers to use this app.

Trying to get my bank account verified has been a horrible experience. I messed up putting in my micro deposits one too many times and had to call customer service. Apparently having the correct deposit amounts now no longer matters and you have to jump through 10,000 hoops. Brightwheel uses some other company to do this. I still haven't been able to get my bank account verified.

Let's me view and sign documents, but not upload them. Every time I try to it says "app update required", but I'm using the latest version. I even uninstalled and reinstalled to make sure. Update 8/27/25: Today I started conversation with support through email, except it's an AI that just keeps telling me to uninstall and reinstall to make sure it's the latest version, which I have already done. Totally useless.