It's somehow already October, which means it's time to start thinking about family-teacher conferences. It also means almost everything on brightwheel's Back to School roadmap is live in your account today 🎉.
In this newsletter, you'll find resources for the season and the latest ways to get even more value out of brightwheel this year:
Tips for family-teacher conferences
Custom student profile fields
Scheduling one-time charges
Time off in mobile schedules
Free months for referrals & more!
How to have great conversations with families this school year. 💜
As you head into another family-teacher conference season, consider ways you can have even more valuable connections with parents and guardians.
Use portfolios and individual learning reports for meaningful conversations about each child's development. Watch this on-demand webinar and download this checklist so you feel prepared and energized for these discussions.
Newer to family-teacher conferences? This resource is a great place to start.
Exciting news: custom student profile fields are live in brightwheel!
Have you ever wished you could track and report on specific child details like photo permissions, dentist name, or how the family heard about your program?
Well, now you can! Custom fields can be added to student profiles today, and you can also export a report for these fields.
This is one of the 25+ improvements on this year's Back to School roadmap. Most of the updates are live in your account 🙌. Thank you to the brightwheel community for shaping each year's roadmap. Keep the feedback coming. The team will continue to add new features in the coming months and years.
Available now: Scheduling one-time charges in brightwheel 🤩.
Invoicing families just got even easier. You can now schedule one-time charges to send to payers at a future date, giving you more control over when they receive invoices. Gain greater peace of mind and schedule charges for registration fees, field trips, meals, and more!
Time off events now show up on schedules and in the app. Yay!
In response to customer feedback, we added the ability to record staff paid and unpaid time off in August. Now, you'll see time off in Schedules, and staff can easily pull up all time off events in the mobile app. This means you and your team can track hours and sick/vacation time seamlessly in the same place you message families, manage attendance, and more.
Get a free month for referrals! Know a provider who would love brightwheel? You'll get a free month for every referral that signs up 💰.
Check-in video to share with families. Here is a new 1-minute video you can use to show families how to sign in their children on brightwheel.
Payment FAQ Guide. Download this PDF so you feel confident answering questions from families. Requiring autopay and online payments is how you'll get your past due $ amount to zero.
Mark messages as unread. Another new improvement is live in your account: you can mark messages as unread on the web! You'll see this in the mobile app in a few weeks.
Have ideas for what we can include in future newsletters?
Additional resources
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