Roster Upload Tool Overview

Easily export and upload your program's roster and let our team do the work for you!

Sabrina avatar
Written by Sabrina
Updated over a week ago

Adding students to your brightwheel account early is vital to successfully implementing brightwheel at any center.

brightwheel has made this process as easy as possible by allowing programs to upload their student rosters and have our team import the roster into the program's account within two business days, but typically faster!

Table of Contents


Export Current Roster

We accept rosters in many formats (CSV, XLSX, PDF, and doc), and we even have a template to use if needed. The preferred format is CSV or XLSX; these file types are universally recognized and will help us prevent any errors that could occur when converting other file formats into a CSV!

Review our Roster Exports from Other Systems resource to see if your current provider is listed so you can easily follow the instructions to export! You'll ultimately want to find the reporting option that contains information on your students as well as parents, families, and emergency contacts.

💡If your current platform has the option to filter based on student status, we recommend only exporting active students. This will prevent confusion and ensure only the students actively enrolled in your program are imported to brightwheel.


Upload Your Roster to brightwheel

Once you've exported your roster from another system, you can easily upload it to your brightwheel account on the web! Follow the upload steps here to complete this process.

Once uploaded, our team will process and finalize the import on your behalf within two business days, but typically within the same day. This timeframe can vary depending on the file type and any work involved to convert it into a readable format for our database. Once the import is complete, you'll receive an email notification.


What Next?

While your file is being processed, this is a great time to set up the aspects of your account that are not impacted by your roster upload.

  1. Add a Deposit Account - Adding a deposit account to the billing section of your brightwheel account will allow you to charge parents for tuition and other fees right inside brightwheel! There is a verification process that may take a couple of days, so having this set up and verified before it’s needed is highly recommended.

  2. Add Teachers and Staff - Teachers and staff are added individually. While you’re waiting for students and parents to be imported, you can use this time to get your staff added to brightwheel. Hold off on assigning them to rooms until after your roster has been imported (adding rooms before your roster is fully processed may result in duplicate rooms).

  3. Start Creating Lessons & Lesson Plans - To get the most out of brightwheel, leverage our learning platform to help your teachers structure their day, and quickly log observations based on the lesson.

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