Childcare management that proves who was there.
A paper sign-in sheet records a claim. Firstep records a verified event — who checked a child in or out, at what time, and how that presence was confirmed. Everything else your school runs on every day sits alongside it.
Built for preschools and daycare centers. Web today, with the iPhone app for parents in beta testing as of August 2026 and Android to follow. No setup fee, no annual contract.
Checked out of Rm 1. Picked up by Anne St. Clair.
Checked in to Rm 1 by Bryan St. Clair.
Parents see the event. Staff see the verification detail behind it.
Your most important record is a clipboard by the door
Sign-in sheets, group texts, a photo app, a billing spreadsheet, and a binder of immunization forms. Five systems, none of which talk to each other, and the one that matters most in a dispute is the one anyone can write anything on.
A claim, not a record
A handwritten time is whatever the person writing it decided to write. It proves a pen touched paper, nothing more.
Updates scattered everywhere
Photos in one app, closures by text, invoices by email. Parents miss things, and staff answer the same question all day.
Chasing tuition by hand
Reminder emails typed one at a time, checks logged in a spreadsheet, and no clear picture of who is actually behind.
One system for the whole day
Verified check-in and check-out
Presence confirmed by an on-site code scan or a boundary around your building — plus a front-desk path for families without a phone.
Classroom activity feed
Teachers post photos and updates to their own room, tagged by category. Only families with a child in that room can see them.
Automatic daily summary
One end-of-day email per family covering their own child — meals, naps, moments — sent to every linked guardian, not just one.
Messaging in one inbox
Message a family, a classroom, or the whole school. Parents reach the front office or their child's teacher without guessing a name.
Safety and licensing records
Incident reports parents acknowledge digitally, immunization and medication logs, and live staff-to-child ratio tracking per room.
Tuition billing
Your rates, your credits and discounts, card or bank payment, and reminders that go out before something is late.
A morning list of what is waiting
Families to approve, messages nobody has answered, immunizations out of date, tuition past its grace period — gathered on one page instead of found by chance.
Room boards for parents
An optional noticeboard per room where families talk to each other about carpools, lost jumpers and party dates — instead of a group chat nobody at your school can see.
Help, and a real support line
A searchable how-to written for each kind of account, and a ticket queue straight to us with a published answering time.
This is the whole thing, not a concept
The screens your staff use every day. Names and rooms below are made up — no real school's records go on a website — but nothing else is staged.
Who is in the building, how each arrival was confirmed, and whether every room is still within ratio — without counting heads. The names are invented; the screen is not.
There are exactly two ways a child gets checked out
Either an approved account holder is physically at your school and verifies it, or a staff member logs it at the front desk for an authorized person standing in front of them. There is no third path, and no way to do it remotely.
- Scan a code at your school. You control the code and can rotate it whenever you want.
- Or confirm location. You define the boundary; the app checks the phone is inside it.
- A PIN confirms identity. Auto-filled after a scan, typed manually when only location was used.
- Staff fallback for everyone else. Logged at the desk, tagged as staff-entered, same audit trail.
Two logs, two audiences
The same event, recorded once and shown differently depending on who is looking.
Checked out of Rm 1, 4:45 pm.
The same event plus the verification behind it — method used, device and app version, IP address, and distance from your building in meters.
The detail exists for audits and disputes. Parents never see it.
Published, not quoted
Every competitor in this category makes you book a call to find out what it costs. Here is the whole thing: $50 a month minimum, then a graduated rate per enrolled child.
Common questions
When does Firstep launch?
The school side is built and running, and pilot schools are using it now. Check-in and check-out, the front desk, classroom activity and photos, messaging, announcements, immunization and medication records, ratio tracking, incident reports, and tuition billing are all in daily use. The iPhone app for parents is in beta testing as of August 2026, with Android to follow; parents can also use the web, and phone check-in by scan or location comes with the app. Pilot schools get the earliest access and help shape what comes next.
How does verified check-in actually work?
Two ways, and each school picks which to enable. A parent either scans a code displayed at your school, or their phone confirms it is inside a boundary you define around the building. Either way the record proves physical presence — a parent cannot mark a child as picked up from somewhere else. For anyone without a phone, staff log the entry at the front desk and the record is tagged as staff-entered.
What does Firstep cost?
Fifty dollars a month minimum, and above that you pay by enrolled child on a graduated scale that starts at $4.00 and falls to $1.00 per child at volume. Staff and parent accounts never count toward the bill — only enrolled children. The full bracket table is published on our pricing page, because you should not have to sit through a sales call to learn a price.
Do parents need a phone to use it?
No. Everything a parent needs — the day's activity, messages, the room board, and their bill — works in a browser on any device. The phone app adds check-in by scan or location, and push notifications. Families without a smartphone are checked in and out at the front desk by staff, and that path is not a workaround: it is a supported way to run the whole day.
Do parents need to pay anything?
No. Families use the app at no cost. Firstep bills the school, and the school decides whether to collect tuition through the platform.
Is my school's data separated from other schools?
Yes, and that is designed in rather than added later. Every record is scoped to your school at the database layer, so no other school on the platform can reach your families, staff, billing, or photos.
Can we use it across multiple campuses?
Yes. Multiple locations can be grouped under one account, with each campus keeping its own separate family and classroom data. You can bill each site separately or combine them into a single invoice — and combined billing generally costs less, since the enrolled-child counts pool into one calculation.
Pilot schools are being onboarded now
Early schools get direct access to us, influence over what develops next, and pricing locked for the first year. Tell us about your school and we will be in touch.