Daybook
Daycares & early learning
Tell Daybook you run a centre and the whole app changes — its words, its screens, and what it asks you for. Enrolment that runs all year, families with their children and contacts, allergies and medications where staff will see them, waivers signed before the first day, the family portal, and billing that goes out every month without the chase.
The rules a centre lives under
Children’s records are not optional on a daycare account — they are required, and kept until the youngest child turns 21 — flagged on that day, never deleted on their own. The roster, the contacts and who may collect each child are on one record.
Your database lives in Toronto, encrypted in transit and at rest; photo consent is asked for each child and checked on every photo; the owner can export the account’s data or delete the account.
Invoices carry a reference line you label yourself — a subsidy file number, an employer account — so the paper the province sees matches yours.
Every invoice and every payment sits on the family’s record and in their portal, so what a family paid in the year is on one screen.
Daybook names these so you can see where it helps. It is not a compliance product: it does not count room ratios, it does not reconcile subsidies with the province, and nothing it prints is a tax form — your accountant has the last word.
Three things that go wrong
The thing a new staff member most needs to know about a child is in a binder, three pages into a registration form.
In Daybook Allergies and medications are recorded on the child and shown where staff will actually look — on the day’s list and the room sheet, beside the name.
The same invoices, the same reminders, the same families to ring — thirty of them, on the first of every month, by hand.
In Daybook Invoice the families on a schedule, take payment by card or e-transfer, and let the overdue reminders run themselves with a Pay Now link.
A waiver sent home in a backpack, a photo permission nobody can find, a parent who swears they signed it.
In Daybook Waivers and acknowledgements are signed online by the family before the first day, with a record of who signed what and when — and photo consent is checked at the moment a photo is shown.
On top of everything Daybook does for every business — the full list is here — a daycare gets its own. And the parts that make no sense for a centre are not hidden, they are switched off: quotes, material takeoffs, subcontractors and hazard assessments. Nobody on your staff walks past a screen that belongs to somebody else’s trade.
The week
The week board is the one screen a centre lives on: who is in, which days, and the things you cannot afford to forget about any of them — allergies and care needs on the same row as the child, not buried in a profile.
Families
A child is enrolled, not booked for a week. The roster carries from month to month, siblings sit together under one family instead of being two unrelated customers, and next September is a change to a record you already have.
The family portal
Parents log in to see their invoices and pay them, the agreements they signed, the schedule, the photos their consent allows — and to message you, so the question lands on the family’s record and not in somebody’s pocket.
Billing
Invoice the families on a schedule. Take payment by card or e-transfer. Let the overdue reminders run themselves, with a Pay Now link. GST/HST by province where it applies, and the Sales Tax report ready for filing.
Staff
Staff see the day’s children, the allergies, the contacts and their own hours from the phone they already carry — and the office sees what they log the moment it lands. Every daycare plan includes its staff seats.
The economics
Care software tends to charge per child, per classroom or per staff login, with the modules priced separately and often in another currency. Daybook is three plans sized on enrolled children, in Canadian dollars, every one the whole app.
| Workflow | Care platforms priced per child or per room | Daybook |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | Often billed in US dollars, with the modules priced separately. | Canadian dollars. Every plan, every add-on, printed on the pricing page. |
| Staff | Typically an extra fee per staff login, per classroom or per child. | Every plan includes its staff seats, and the pricing page prints how many. |
| Billing the families | Usually a separate billing module, or a spreadsheet and e-transfer by hand. | Monthly invoicing on a schedule, cards and e-transfer, reminders that run themselves — included. |
| Your website | Usually not provided. | A website on every plan, edited in the app and live when you press Publish, with an enquiry form that mints a real enquiry. |
| Canadian tax | Usually worked out by hand. | GST/HST by province where it applies, and the Sales Tax report ready for filing. |
Nothing here is a discount, and there is no setup fee.
Daycares bill families all year, so Daybook bills daycares monthly — three plans sized on enrolled children, every one the same app. Homecare $139 / Center $279 / Campus $429 a month CAD, priced on enrolled children. Staff seats included on every plan. Center and Campus include selling online, and Campus also includes your own domain and texting — a plan without them can add them.
Switching
There is no importer for another product’s export, and the page does not pretend there is. What there is gets a centre running before the next billing day.
Upload a CSV or paste it in — parents, phones, emails — and the families are there. Add the children and their contacts on each family’s record.
Waivers and acknowledgements go out to every family and come back signed online, with a record of who signed what and when.
A website comes with the account and you edit it in the app — your photographs and your words go in, and the enquiry form drops a real enquiry into Daybook.
No. Daybook keeps the roster, the day’s list and the staff schedule; counting the room against your province’s ratio stays the director’s call. The page does not claim otherwise.
No. Invoices carry a reference line you can label — a subsidy file number, an employer account — so your paper and the province’s match. The reconciliation itself stays yours.
It does not print a tax form. Every invoice and payment is on the family’s record and in their portal, so what a family paid in the year is on one screen; what counts for a claim is the accountant’s to say.
They are switched off, not hidden. A daycare account never shows a screen that belongs to a contractor.
Every daycare plan includes its staff seats — the pricing page prints how many on each plan, and what one more costs.
Your own rooms, your own families and your own billing beat any feature list. Start the trial and set the centre up in it.
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