Features / Attendance
Attendance that reassures parents automatically
Nestlings tracks check-in and check-out for every child with one tap — and tells each family their child arrived safe, the moment it happens. No sign-in clipboard, no morning texts asking “did she get there okay?”
One-tap check-in and out
Mark arrivals and departures from the room list as children come through the door. Every event is timestamped with the staff member who recorded it.
"Arrived safe" notifications
The moment a child is checked in, their guardians get a push notification. It’s the smallest feature parents talk about the most.
Who’s here right now
A live headcount per room — present, expected, and out today — so ratios and headcounts are never a guess.
Records for licensing
Attendance history is stored per child with full timestamps. When licensing asks for records, they’re already organized.
Built for how mornings actually go
Drop-off is the busiest fifteen minutes of the day. Attendance in Nestlings is designed to be worked through with one hand — tap the child, they're in, the notification is sent, and you're back to greeting the next family. Late arrivals and early pickups land in the same record with their real times.
Because attendance feeds the same system as everything else, the day's roster flows into daily sheets (no logging records for absent children) and into billing when your plans depend on attended days.
For day homes and centers alike
A day home with six children uses the same flow as a center with six rooms — the room list just gets shorter. Centers get per-room views and staff-role permissions; day homes get a single screen that takes seconds. Ratios, emergency contact details and allergy flags sit one tap away from the attendance list, where you need them during an evacuation drill or a real one.
What happens after check-in
Attendance is the first signal of the day. Once a child is marked present, staff know who is in care, parents get the arrived-safe confirmation, and the child appears ready for daily-sheet updates. At pickup, check-out closes the attendance record with the real departure time.
Those records do not disappear at the end of the week. They remain attached to the child so providers can review past days, answer parent questions and export monthly hours when families need documentation.
Attendance FAQ
Can attendance be corrected later?
Yes. Staff can record missed check-ins or check-outs after the fact, which helps when a busy pickup or drop-off was recorded late.
Do parents see attendance hours?
Parents can review their child’s hours from the app, which is useful for daycare receipts, subsidy records and simple peace of mind.
Does this replace paper sign-in sheets?
For many programs, yes. Nestlings keeps timestamped records per child, but providers should always follow the exact record format required by their provincial licensing body.
Built for exceptions, not just perfect days
Attendance systems are easy when every child arrives at 9:00 and leaves at 5:00. Real programs have late drop-offs, early pickups, sick days, part-time schedules and staff recording a checkout after the parent has already left. Nestlings keeps the normal check-in flow fast while still allowing staff to correct records when the real day was messy.
The parent experience stays simple. Families care about two things first: did my child arrive safely, and what hours were recorded? The arrived-safe notification handles the morning reassurance, while the hours view gives parents a clear record later. That record can support subsidy claims, receipts or family bookkeeping without asking the provider to recreate the month from memory.
For staff, attendance also reduces duplicated work. The list of children present becomes the working list for the rest of the day, so daily-sheet updates focus on children who are actually in care.