Nursery software, built around how your setting runs
Most nurseries run happily on Famly, Ovivio or Tapestry. This page shows what those products cover, where a system built for your setting would do more, and what it would cost against your subscription. A first release with the four core features typically costs £3,500–£5,000 and goes live within a month.
£495 for a working prototype in 5 days. It comes off the build.
Next First Gear slot: w/c 19 Oct · 2 of 3 builds booked this month
Is custom worth it for you?
Three questions, and a straight answer.
What nursery management software does, and who offers it
These are the jobs nursery software usually covers, and which of five well-known products offer each one. Press “Need it” on the ones your setting needs. If your current system already does them all, you may not need me; if it doesn't, the estimate below follows your picks.
| Feature | Famly | Ovivio | Cheqdin | Connect | Tapestry | Your setting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First release | ||||||
| Child and family recordsContacts, allergies, medical notes and photo consents | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | |
| Sign-in registerArrival and departure times, ready for funding claims | Yes | Yes | Starter+ | Yes | Yes | |
| Invoices from your own fee rulesSessions, age bands, sibling discounts, meals and late fees | Yes | Pro+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Funded hours15 and 30 hours, stretched entitlements, termly claim export | Yes | Pro+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Room ratiosStaff and children per room, flagged before you go over | Yes | Pro+ | Starter+ | Yes | Yes | |
| Accidents and medicinesLogged on a tablet, signed by the parent at pick-up | Premium+ | Yes | Starter+ | iConnect | Yes | |
| Phase two | ||||||
| Parent portalInvoices, extra-session requests and messages | Yes | Yes | Starter+ | ParentZone | Yes | |
| EYFS observationsLearning journal linked to the areas of learning | Yes | Pro+ | No | iConnect | Yes | |
| Staff recordsDBS, paediatric first aid and training expiry reminders | Premium+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| RotaShifts planned against the children booked in | Pro+ | Pro+ | Yes | Yes | Not listed | |
| Occupancy and waiting listFree places by room and month, enquiries to start dates | Premium+ | Business+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Group dashboardOccupancy, debt and ratios across every site | Custom | Business+ | Pro | Yes | Not listed | |
From each product's own site, checked Oct 2026: Famly, Ovivio, Cheqdin, Connect, Tapestry. A plan name means that plan and up; Pro+ is Famly's or Ovivio's Professional plan. Connect Childcare sells three products, and iConnect or ParentZone means you need that one too. A dash means the product's site doesn't list it.
Next: the tools it connects to ↓What I’d build first, and what waits
A first release covers one job end to end. For a nursery, that job is a child joining and being billed: their record and consents, the sessions agreed with the parent, the funded hours they’re entitled to, and the invoice that comes out at the end of the month. Those four carry your income and the records you’re required to keep, which is why they’re ticked already.
Room ratios and the accident and medicines log are small enough to fit in the same month if they matter to you now. The parent portal, observations, staff records, rota and a group dashboard make up phase two. Each phase has its own fixed price and takes about a month.
Observations usually sit in phase two. Your staff keep the journal they know while billing moves first, and when observations go live, each child’s past entries come with them, so no key person starts a journal from a blank page.
What AI can do here
Three jobs where it saves time without making decisions about children:
- Draft observations. A key person types or dictates a few words (“Ava stacked five blocks, counted them aloud”). The system drafts the observation, suggests the EYFS area of learning, and the key person edits and approves it before a parent sees it.
- Write the day’s update. Meals, naps and nappy changes are already logged, so the end-of-day message to parents drafts itself for staff to check.
- Check the funding remittance. It reads the local authority’s payment breakdown and flags each child where the hours paid don’t match the hours you claimed.
I wouldn’t let AI near safeguarding notes, and children’s photos never go to an AI service. AI features are priced separately, from £1.5k to £5k, once the first release is in use.
The tools it should work with
Tick the accounts package and payment services your system should send invoices and payments to. Each connection is priced into the first release.
Switching from your current system
What comes across. Children, parents and emergency contacts, allergies and medical notes, consents, booked sessions, fee rates, funded-hours entitlements and each family’s balance, with a history of past invoices.
Observations and learning journals. These come across too, and I price them into the import. Where your system exports observations as data, each one becomes a live record again, linked to the child and to the EYFS areas it was written against, photos included. Where the only export is a PDF per child, I attach that file to the child’s record, so the history is there for parents, staff and Ofsted.
How. I run the import on a test copy first, you check a sample of families against your current system, and anything that doesn’t match gets fixed before go-live. Keep the old subscription for a month afterwards as a fallback, and check its notice period before you give notice.
What your current system lets you take
From each vendor's own help pages, checked Oct 2026. Where a page doesn't say, I've written what I'd ask their support.
I'm on Famly
- Children and parents come out as CSV through Custom Lists and Custom Reports. Attendance and bookings export as CSV for a date range.
- Finances → Reports gives invoices, invoice lines and bill payers as CSV, payments and deposits too, and every invoice as a PDF in a zip.
- Each child's learning journey downloads as a PDF from their profile. The full data package is a zip of CSVs with observation photos, but names in it are encrypted, so I work from the reports above.
- Famly sells API access as an add-on, which I'd use where the reports stop. Once your setting is removed, all child, parent and staff data is deleted, so export first.
I'm on Ovivio (Blossom)
- Observations and formative reports export as PDFs emailed to a manager, per child or for the whole nursery. Big journals are best exported a term at a time.
- Invoices and credit notes export as CSV in a general layout or ready for Xero, Sage 50 or QuickBooks. The children list and emergency contacts list export too.
- Their pages don't cover balances, bookings, bulk photos or an API. I'd ask support for those three exports and how long they keep your data after you leave.
I'm on Cheqdin
- The Student Register exports to Excel with parents' names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and allergies.
- Billing → All Transactions exports to Excel for a date range. Invoices download one at a time, and published daily reports can be downloaded from the web portal.
- Cheqdin deletes an account after a period of inactivity and can't restore it. I'd ask them, in writing, for bookings, balances and every observation with its photos before you cancel.
I'm on Connect Childcare
- iConnect exports a child's learning journal, observations and photos included, and parents can download it from ParentZone for 30 days.
- Reports such as the attendance summary export to Excel, and a Reporting API pulls data out in raw form.
- I'd ask them whether that API covers children, contacts, bookings, invoices and balances, and how to export all media in one go.
I'm on Tapestry
- Child profiles export to CSV, assessments to CSV or PDF, and all media as a zip.
- Observations export in bulk as PDFs, 200 at a time. Accident forms and care diaries come out as PDFs, and invoices as PDFs in a zip.
- Their 2022 contract terms delete your data 90 days after the contract ends. I'd ask for a CSV of invoices and balances, which their pages don't mention.
I'm on Parenta Abacus
- Parenta's help centre lists a CSV export of finance data for Sage, but it didn't load when I checked, so I couldn't read the rest.
- I'd ask Parenta which reports export to CSV or Excel (children, contacts, sessions, invoices, balances), how journals and photos come out, whether there's an API, and when data is deleted after you cancel.
What you pay now, and what a build would cost
I've filled this in from your ticks and a typical setting. Change the numbers to match yours and compare the two over three to five years.
£209 a month ex VAT
What a subscription can't give you
- Invoices that follow your fee rules exactly, so month end needs no spreadsheet fixes.
- No price rises, and no plan upgrade to get a feature you need.
- The code and the data are yours, so you can change supplier without starting again.
- Changes when you ask for them, not when they reach a vendor's roadmap.
The build is the middle of your estimate (£4,250), paid up front. The first month's hosting is free, so the plan starts in month two, and one plan covers every site. Subscription prices are list prices ex VAT and leave out set-up fees and price rises.
What nursery software costs
List prices ex VAT, from each vendor's pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
| Product | Price | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Famly | £79, £159 or £209 a month per site. Groups of 10+ sites are quoted. | Xero import and export from Premium, automatic invoicing on Professional. |
| Ovivio (formerly Blossom) | £89, £149 or £199 a month per setting on monthly billing, less on annual. Multi-site is quoted. | Priced per setting, not per child. |
| Cheqdin | Free up to 5 children, then £68 (75 children), £99 (150) or £149 (275) a month. | Annual plans are 20% less. |
| Connect Childcare | £50 a month for each product: Connect Childcare, iConnect Daily and ParentZone. Groups are quoted. | Free set-up. |
| Tapestry | By children per year, from £68 (6 children) to £1,200 (400). £212 a year covers 60. | Every tool on every plan. Best known as a learning journal. |
| Parenta Abacus | Per-child pricing, quote-based. | Price not published on the vendor's own site. |
When off-the-shelf is enough
For one nursery that charges by the session, claims funding the standard way and bills monthly, a subscription does the job for less than a build. Off-the-shelf also wins when:
- you’re opening a setting and don’t know your routines yet;
- you want parents to download an app from the App Store;
- your staff are happy with what they have and the invoices come out right.
A build earns its keep in a group of sites, where per-site fees multiply, or when someone spends a day each month fixing invoices in a spreadsheet because the software can’t model your fees.
Open-source software you could run instead
There's a third route: free software you host yourself and can change. I haven't found an open-source project that covers a UK nursery end to end. None of them handles EYFS observations or funded-hours claims, but these come closest, each checked Oct 2026.
- Gibbon GPL-3.0
Good for: Child and family records, attendance, fees and invoices by email, a parent portal and messaging.
Missing for you: Built for schools (ages 5 to 18), so there's no daily diary, ratio rota or EYFS framework.
- Odoo Community LGPL-3.0
Good for: Invoicing and recurring fees, accounting, contacts, employee records and a customer portal.
Missing for you: Nothing made for childcare. Registers and observations would be custom modules.
- eVaka LGPL-2.1
Good for: The one real early-years system I found: places, attendance, monthly invoicing, and apps for parents and staff.
Missing for you: Written for Finnish councils, their fee rules and population register. Worth studying, not installing.
If you'd rather go open source, I can set it up, host it and connect it to your accounts and payments, and build the nursery pieces it's missing.
Your plan, ready to keep or send
Everything you ticked, split into a first release and phase two, with a price range for each. Email it to yourself or send it to me.
First release
The first month after kickoff
- Child and family records
- Sign-in register
- Invoices from your own fee rules
- Funded hours
Phase two
About a month, after the first release is in use
Nothing picked yet
- First release estimate
- £3,500–£5,000
- Phase two estimate
- None picked
- After launch
- Cruise, £199/mo
Estimates, not quotes: First Gear ends with a fixed price for the first release.
How the estimate works
Each phase starts at £1,500 for what every system needs: logins, hosting, backups and your data imported. Each feature and connection adds £250 to £1,250 depending on its size, and the range is 15% either side of the total. The break-even uses the middle of both phases.
A Monday, before and after
An example for a manager of three settings, not a record of any one nursery’s day.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| 8am | Paper registers in each room. Ratios are counted by eye. | Staff sign children in on a tablet. Each room’s ratio shows on screen and turns amber before it goes over. |
| Mid-morning | A parent calls about an invoice. The answer is in a spreadsheet on the finance manager’s laptop. | The invoice shows each session, the funded hours taken off and the extras, so anyone can answer. |
| Afternoon | An accident is written in a book; the parent signs at pick-up if someone remembers. | The accident is logged on the tablet and waits on the pick-up screen until the parent signs. |
| Month end | Invoices exported, funded hours taken off by hand, totals typed into Xero. | Invoices are drafted from the register, checked, and sent to Xero. GoCardless collects. |
The rules your system has to follow
- EYFS statutory framework. The framework for group and school-based providers (in force from 1 September 2026) says what records you keep: each child’s name, date of birth, parents’ contact details and who they live with, hours of attendance, their key person, and written records of medicines given and accidents, which parents are told about. It also sets ratios: 1:3 for under-twos, 1:5 for two-year-olds and 1:8 for three and over, or 1:13 when a teacher with QTS, EYTS or EYPS works directly with them.
- Ofsted inspects against the EYFS, so the records above are what an inspector can ask to see.
- Funded hours. Working parents can get 30 hours a week for 38 weeks a year for children from 9 months to 4 years, or fewer hours spread over more weeks. You can charge for meals, nappies and trips, but a parent who doesn’t pay for them still gets the free hours, so invoices need to show those charges apart from the funded hours.
- UK GDPR. Children’s records and photos are personal data, and medical notes are special category data. The ICO’s guidance covers what you need: a lawful basis, consent for photos, and an answer to a parent’s subject access request within one month.
Is my data safe?
Each login sees what its role needs: a room leader sees their room, the finance manager sees invoices, nobody else sees medical notes. Every time someone opens or changes a child’s record, the system logs who and when, which is also how you answer a subject access request. Data is encrypted, stored in the UK or EU and backed up daily.
Will my staff use it?
Room staff use three screens: sign in and out, log an accident or medicine, add a note. I build those for a tablet held in one hand. During First Gear a room leader tries the prototype in a normal session, and what they trip over is fixed before the build starts.
Other ways to solve it
| Option | Cost | Best for | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nursery software | A monthly fee per site or per child | One setting with standard fees | Fee rules it can’t model end up in a spreadsheet |
| Custom build | First Gear, then a fixed-price build and an optional plan | Groups, unusual fees, several tools to join up | You pay up front, and new features need a plan or a new phase |
| Open source (Gibbon, Odoo Community) | Free to use; you pay for hosting and set-up | Settings that want to own the software without a build from scratch | Someone has to host, update and back it up, and the nursery parts need adding |
| Spreadsheets | Free | A new setting with a handful of children | No audit trail, and one person knows how they work |
| No-code (Airtable, Glide) | Per user, per month | Quick internal tools | Children’s data, permissions and invoicing logic outgrow it, and the fee grows with your staff |
Four guarantees, in writing.
They're written into the terms you accept when you pay.
Every build also comes with a 30-day fix guarantee. If something I built doesn't work as the plan describes, I fix it free.
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See it first
You click through a working prototype before you commit to the build, and you keep it either way.
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Fixed price
You pay the price in the build plan. New ideas go into a later phase with its own fixed price. Nothing is billed by the hour.
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On time
If I miss the go-live date in your build plan because of a delay on my side, you get 3 months of Cruise free (£597). If your data, feedback or sign-off is late, the date moves by the same number of days.
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Yours to keep
Code, data and accounts are in your name from day one. Export your data or cancel a plan whenever you like, and ask for a full handover pack.
You'll talk to me
I've built software for over ten years and started ByteGears in 2020. The person on your kickoff call is the person who writes the code. Recent work includes quoting automation for a renewable-energy installer and a cask whisky auction platform with ID and anti-money-laundering checks.
Questions about a nursery build
Is a custom system cheaper than Famly or other nursery software?
For one nursery, usually not. Famly's top plan costs about the same each month as my Cruise plan, so on price alone a build never catches up. For a group the sums change, because most subscriptions charge per site and the run plan doesn't. Step 3 on this page works it out with your numbers.
Can it handle 30 hours funded childcare and stretched or annualised fees?
Yes. Invoices are worked out from each child's booked sessions and entitlement: term-time or stretched funded hours, annualised fees that stay level across the year, and meals or extra hours shown apart from the funded part, so a parent can see what they're paying for.
Does it work with Xero, QuickBooks or Sage?
Yes. Invoices and payments go into your accounts package through its API, so nobody types them twice, and Direct Debit payments from GoCardless are matched to the invoice they pay.
How soon could we be using it?
First Gear takes 5 days and ends with a go-live date in writing. I'd plan the switch for the start of a billing month, so no invoice run is split across two systems.
Can parents use it on their phones?
Yes, in the browser, and they can add it to their home screen like an app. I don't build native iOS or Android apps, so there's no App Store listing.
Let's get the gears turning.
Send me your plan. If First Gear is the right start, I'll reply with a payment link that holds your slot. If an off-the-shelf product would serve you better, I'll name it.