Daybook
Summer & day camps
Tell Daybook you run a camp and the app changes its words and its screens: the summer as weeks and days with the places left, families with their children, allergies and care needs beside every name, registration from your own website with the waiver, photo consent and a deposit, and a family portal where parents see what they booked and pay. Then the day sheet, printed for the gate.
The rules a camp lives under
Children’s records are required on a camp account and kept until the youngest child turns 21 — flagged on that day, never deleted on their own. Allergies, care needs and who may collect each child sit on the child, not in a binder.
Your database lives in Toronto, encrypted in transit and at rest; the owner can export the account’s data or delete the account.
Asked for each child at registration — no photos, the family portal only, or the portal and your public website — and no answer means no photos. The family signs the waiver again each season.
Camp fees go out untaxed unless you say yours are taxable: child care for children 14 and under, for less than 24 hours a day, is generally exempt. Anything else you sell carries GST/HST by province.
Daybook names these so you can see where it helps. It is not a compliance product: it does not count your ratios, it does not check anybody in or out, and nothing it prints is a tax form — your province and your accountant have the last word.
Three things that go wrong
The thing a counsellor most needs to know about a child is on a registration form, and the form is in the office.
In Daybook Allergies and care needs sit on the child — on the week board, the day sheet and the group sheet, beside the name, for every child who might be at camp that day.
Forms come in by email, deposits by e-transfer with no note, and somebody reconciles the two in a spreadsheet on a Sunday.
In Daybook Families register on your own website — the children, their allergies, photo consent and the waiver — and pay the deposit by card, or by e-Transfer matched to the booking for you to confirm. A full day goes on the waiting list, unbilled.
Part-time families, add-on days and swaps, and the list at the gate is wrong by Wednesday.
In Daybook The week board shows every child and every day they come. A family reports an absence or asks for an extra day in their portal, and the day sheet prints from the same record.
The brief
A family writes in March, again in May, and the week before camp. Daybook files each message on their booking and writes the brief: what they asked for, what you owe them and what they owe you — rewritten whenever something new arrives.
The brief and the AssistantTexting comes with the top plan of every rate card (Company, for a trade), from a verified toll-free number of your own.
The picture is a contractor’s job. A camp’s booking gets the same brief.
A real capture of a contractor’s job. Daybook wrote every line of this brief from the messages on the job; only the five teal labels are added. A camp gets the same brief on a booking, a property manager on a work order.
A real capture of a contractor’s job. Daybook wrote every line of this brief from the messages on the job; only the five teal labels are added. A camp gets the same brief on a booking, a property manager on a work order.
On top of everything Daybook does for every business — the full list is here — a camp gets its own. And the parts that make no sense for a camp are switched off: quotes, material takeoffs, subcontractors and hazard assessments. Nobody at the gate walks past a screen that belongs to a contractor.
The week
The week board is the screen a camp lives on: who is in, which days each of them come, their age and what they are into, and the things you cannot afford to forget — allergies and care needs on the same row as the child, and a birthday when there is one.
The summer
The weeks, each with its options and its price, part-time days and add-on days, closures with their reason, and the places you have each day. Families see open, few left or full — never your numbers — and the month and the year show the whole summer, events beside the regular weeks.
The day sheet
A camp day has the same shape from morning to pickup, so the day is a roster you can print: every child booked in, their allergies and care notes, the parent and the number to ring. The week sheet adds who may collect each child — and where nobody is recorded, it says to check with the guardian before releasing.
Families
Siblings sit under one family instead of being two unrelated customers, with the children, the contacts, the bookings and the money on one record — and next summer is a change to a record you already have.
The family portal
Parents open the portal to their invoices and a way to pay them, their signed agreements, the weeks they are booked into and the photos their consent allows. They report an absence or ask for an extra day there, and while you run early access for next summer, they book it there too.
Announcements
Rain on Tuesday, a change of pickup point, the thing to bring on Friday — written once, shown at the top of every family’s portal, and emailed to them as well once you have read it back.
The money
Take the deposit when the family registers — by card into your own Stripe account, or by e-Transfer matched to the booking for you to confirm with one tap. The balance goes on an invoice filled in from the booking; a card refund goes back through Stripe, and a refund never takes a child out of camp.
On the phone
The day’s numbers, the weeks, the families and the notices go with the director from the desk to the field. Seasonal counsellors are free and unlimited on every camp plan, and clock in and keep their hours from theirs.
The economics
Camp software tends to charge a fee on every registration, or per staff login, and often in another currency. Daybook is three plans sized on the registrations you take in a year, in Canadian dollars, with your counsellors free.
| Workflow | Camp platforms priced per registration or per login | Daybook |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | Often billed in US dollars, with the modules priced separately. | Canadian dollars. Every plan, every add-on, printed on the pricing page. |
| Counsellors | Typically a fee for every staff login. | Seasonal counsellors free and unlimited on every plan. |
| Registration | Usually a separate registration site, and the deposits matched up by hand. | Families register on your own website with the waiver and the deposit, and land in Daybook as bookings. |
| The week | A spreadsheet beside the registration site. | The week board, the day sheet and the contacts sheet, printed from the same record. |
| Canadian tax | Usually worked out by hand. | Camp fees untaxed unless you say otherwise; GST/HST by province on everything else. |
Nothing here is a discount, and there is no setup fee.
A camp has its own rate card — three plans sized on the registrations you take in a year. Session $149 / Adventure $299 / Expedition $499 a month CAD, priced on registrations a year. Admin seats included on every plan. Seasonal counsellors are free and unlimited on every plan. Adventure and Expedition include selling online, and Expedition 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 camp registering before the summer.
Upload a spreadsheet or paste it in — parents, phones, emails — and the families are there. Their children, allergies and pickups go on each family’s record, or come in with this summer’s registration.
The weeks, the options and their prices, the closures and the places per day — then the registration form on your website sells exactly what you built.
Your website comes with the account, written for a day camp, and you edit it in the app; its registration form takes the children, the waiver, photo consent and the deposit, and drops a real booking into Daybook.
Not yet. The week sheet prints who may collect each child — and where nobody is recorded, it says to check with the guardian before releasing.
No. A full day is recorded on the family’s request and shown to you by day; you enrol the family when a place comes free.
Yes. Open an early-access season and Book next summer appears in their portal: they confirm the returning children, add a sibling, update allergies, sign the waiver again and pay.
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.
The roster, the allergies and the contacts are the office’s screens and the printed sheets. Counsellors are free and unlimited on every plan, and clock in and keep their hours on their own phones.
They are switched off, not hidden. A camp account never shows a screen that belongs to a contractor.
Your own weeks, your own families and your own registration form beat any feature list — start the trial and set the season up in it.
14-day free trial · No credit card · Bring your client list