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Every year, brightwheel publishes a back to school roadmap filled with brand new features and enhancements our team is building for you. Built for early educators, our roadmap is created with your daily challenges in mind and shaped by your feedback, so you can spend less time on admin work and more time doing what you love. This year, we’re excited to unveil the list of new features we’re rolling out by the end of fall!
3 highly anticipated features
1. Application & Submission Fees and Tuition Agreements
Thanks to feedback from customers like yourself, you can now include a fee as part of an admissions packet! This means you can easily collect admission fees directly when families submit their applications or enrollment packets.
When a family submits their packet, an invoice for the fee is automatically generated. Parents can pay seamlessly, whether they're re-enrolling with an existing payment method or are brand new to brightwheel. This new feature helps you save time managing admissions and streamlines the enrollment process for both your center and families.
And, with tuition agreements, you can go a step further! Easily send your tuition contract with policies, pricing, and bill plans to families. They can review and sign your contract while adding their payment method in one seamless step, ensuring clear expectations and a smooth start to billing.
2. Form Improvements
We've been hard at work making significant improvements to forms and packets in brightwheel, and we're excited to share them with you! You now have more control and flexibility than ever when it comes to managing your essential documents.
You can now easily print, download, and export forms and packet submissions, including the ability to download in bulk. We've also enhanced field linking to connect more information directly to student profiles, saving you time maintaining student information. When families complete a form, you can instantly update student profile information with just one click, and we’ve expanded the available field mappings to include custom student profile fields, emergency contact information, and additional student information, like gender, medication, and notes. On top of that, we’ve introduced new building blocks for fillable documents and custom forms, including drawn signatures, checkboxes, and dropdowns. Plus, to get you started even faster, coming soon we're adding new quick-start templates for common use cases and state-specific forms.
This means you'll save time managing paperwork and have a more seamless experience collecting and organizing critical student and family information.
3. Updated Curriculum
We're excited to announce our updated curriculum, shaped by feedback from customers like you! We've expanded our Developmental Continuum of Skills and updated our content to align with the Science of Reading and an enhanced math scope.
In response to requests for more inclusive resources, we're also launching Spanish literacy kits, providing Spanish-language curriculum materials and developmental resources. These new offerings will be available for the 2025-2026 back-to-school season, making them invaluable for programs serving Spanish-speaking communities.
This means you'll have access to a more comprehensive and inclusive curriculum, empowering you to better support all learners in your program.
The complete back-to-school roadmap for 2025
Below are all the features we've rolled out for you this back to school season 🙌. Click the links below to explore how you can start taking advantage of these fresh, hot-off-the-press improvements right now.
Financial management
- Expense tracking
- Automated rate sheet setup
- Digital signatures on year-end tax statements
- Upcoming Invoices Review
- Tuition Agreements
- Mobile check deposits
- Automated late fees
Admissions and forms
- Application & enrollment packets
- Updated Forms Builder
- Drawn signatures
- Dropdowns and checkboxes
- Enrollment templates
- State form templates
- Response field linking to student profiles, including custom fields
Curriculum and assessments
- Observation logging enhancements
- Spanish Teacher Guides
- Experience Curriculum
- Expanded Developmental Continuum of Skills
- Alignment to the Science of Reading
- Enhanced Math scope
- Spanish teaching tools
- Experience Assessments
- New assessment framework
- Track student progress over time
- Observation tracking - by skill & student
Family engagement
- Mark messages read and unread
- Heart activities on student feeds
- Sign-up forms
- Create sign-up forms for conferences, volunteer events & tours
- Share, track & manage sign-ups
Staff and site management
- Staff time off for scheduling, tracking & payroll
- Future & multiple-day student absences
- Staff Professional Development
- Courses to maintain certification
- Reports to track staff engagement & progress
Coming soon
The brightwheel team looks forward to delivering even more value to programs like yours this year and beyond 🎉. Expect to continue to see the platform improve so you can save more time, get paid faster, enhance program quality, and build stronger connections as an early education leader. Be on the lookout for more coming soon to:
- Mobile check deposits
- Automated late fees
- Updated Forms Builder
- State form templates
- Experience Curriculum
- Expanded Developmental Continuum of Skills
- Alignment to the Science of Reading
- Enhanced math scope
- Spanish teaching tools
- Experience Assessments
- New assessment framework
- Track student progress over time
- Observation tracking - by skill & student
- Sign-up forms
- Create sign-up forms for conferences, volunteer events, and tours
- Share, track, and manage sign-ups
- Staff Professional Development
- Courses to maintain certification
- Reports to track staff engagement and progress
🎥 Watch Now: Brightwheel Open House 2025
Catch the on-demand webinar with brightwheel Founder & CEO Dave Vasen (yes, from Shark Tank! 😊) as he shares exclusive updates and a behind-the-scenes look at what’s coming next.
In this session, you'll:
✅ Discover the latest time-saving tools to simplify your daily operations
✅ Get a first look at upcoming features designed to elevate your program
✅ Hear Dave’s answers to your burning questions
Whether you joined us live or are watching for the first time, this recording is packed with insights to help you make this your best school year yet.
👉 Watch the recording now
Never miss a back-to-school feature launch
Stay informed about new features with the Product Spotlight Newsletter, sent to all brightwheel Premium administrators. The newsletter is sent both via email and directly in the brightwheel app.
You can make sure you’re subscribed to newsletter emails by filling out this form, and you can learn more about how to view in-app updates here.
Brightwheel is the complete solution for early education providers, enabling you to streamline your center’s operations and build a stand-out reputation. Brightwheel connects the most critical aspects of running your center—including sign in and out, parent communications, tuition billing, and licensing and compliance—in one easy-to-use tool, along with providing best-in-class customer support and coaching. Brightwheel is trusted by thousands of early education centers and millions of parents. Learn more at mybrightwheel.com.
