Getting Started with Nestlings

Nestlings is childcare management software built for Canadian daycares, day homes, and the family day-home agencies that oversee them. This guide covers the first steps for each type of account.

Who uses Nestlings

  • Providers (daycare centers and day-home operators) — run daily operations from the mobile app: attendance, daily sheets, messaging, billing.
  • Agencies — oversee multiple licensed day homes from the web dashboard, with one subscription covering every home under them.
  • Educators / staff — use a scoped version of the provider app to record attendance and daily sheets, without access to billing or program settings.
  • Parents / guardians — use a free mobile app to follow their child's day in real time, message their provider, and manage billing. Parents never pay Nestlings directly.

Creating your program

  1. Download the Nestlings app (Android is live today; iOS is coming soon — see nestlingsapp.ca for the current link).
  2. Sign up with your email and choose I'm a provider.
  3. Select your program type — Day home or Daycare center — and give it a name.
  4. Your 30-day free trial starts immediately. No credit card required.

Agencies are set up differently: a Nestlings team member provisions your agency account and issues an invite code, which you redeem after signing up to link your account to the agency.

Inviting families and staff

  • Guardians: from the app or dashboard, add a child's profile, which generates an invite code for that child's guardian. Share the code (or the invite link) with the parent — they redeem it in the app to link to their child.
  • Staff: from Manage → Staff in the app (or the dashboard, for centers and agency-run homes), create a staff invite code and share it with your educator. They redeem it during sign-up to join as staff, scoped to daily operations only.

The daily loop

Nestlings is built around one loop: a staff member records a moment — a meal, a nap, a photo, a check-in — and the child's guardians see it the moment it happens, no manual sync or refresh required. Everything else (billing, reports, lesson plans, messaging) supports that loop without adding admin overhead.

Getting help

Email hello@nestlingsapp.ca with product questions, privacy inquiries, or agency onboarding requests. More guides are on the way — this documentation site is just getting started too.

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