Every year, brightwheel publishes a back-to-school roadmap of brand new features and enhancements the team is building for you. Take a look here at the official list of 25+ improvements that you’ll see in brightwheel by this fall!

3 highly anticipated features coming this year

1. Staff time off

Thanks to feedback from customers like yourself, you’ll soon be able to track paid and unpaid time off for all staff. Time off events will automatically show up on schedules, and staff will be able to see their total paid and unpaid time off hours directly in the brightwheel app.

This means you can now track hours, run payroll, and track time off all in one place. You’ll spend less time managing staff records and more time focusing on what is most important to you.

2. Expense management

Over the last few years, brightwheel has built a robust platform for automated tuition payments. Now, we’re building out a full-fledged financial management offering by first enabling you to track, categorize, and report on expenses.  

You’ll be able to automatically track your expenses in brightwheel by connecting your bank account or credit/debit card. And no more paper receipts! You can track them digitally in brightwheel. You’ll also have access to Profit & Loss reporting to understand where your money is going, and you’ll be able to customize your chart of accounts with customized categories and GL codes. 

This means you can now bill families and manage expenses all in one place. You’ll spend less time on bookkeeping and more time focusing on your top goals this year. 

3. Collecting deposits and fees in registration forms

Later this year, you’ll be able to automatically bill families when you send them an enrollment form. This means you can seamlessly set up the registration experience for a new family without toggling back and forth between Billing and Paperwork in brightwheel. You’ll provide an even more professional experience for prospective parents, and you’ll also save time in your process.

The complete back-to-school roadmap for 2024

Below are all the features being built for you this year. The best part? Some of these releases are already live today 🙌. You can click the links below to learn more about how you can start using some of these hot-off-the-press improvements immediately.

Billing and finances

• Year-end tax statements
• Toggle billing notifications
• Edit and void credits
• Yearly and quarterly payments
• Billing only staff role
• Expense management
• Online payments in Canada
• Edit billing plans
• Improved and new reports: deposit and billing plans
• Bulk invoice management
• Collect deposits and fees in registration forms

Staff and family management

• Payroll
• Time tracking updates
  • Customizable overtime
  • Pay periods
  • Audit logs
• Spanish app and help center translations
• Parent directory
• Photo and video gallery for families
• Staff Time Off for schedule, tracking, and pay

Learning and curriculum

• Student portfolios
• Lesson plans: improved printing options
• Observations on web
• Experience Curriculum new monthly kits and themes
  • Get started with Experience Curriculum in brightwheel today

Site management

• Forms enhancements
  • Fillable PDF forms
  • Pre-fill for incident reports
  • Reshare, search, filter, and delete a form
• Attendance updates
  • Faster check-in/out flow
  • Easier error flagging and correcting
  • Audit logs
  • Missing signature requests
• Staff permissions: enable and disable parent messaging
• Improved and new reports: attendance, enrollment, staff, multi-site
• Custom student profile fields
• Enhanced CACFP meal reporting and logging

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.

Hear brightwheel’s CEO, Dave Vasen, speak to this year’s roadmap

Dive even further into what the brightwheel team is building by watching this on-demand webinar featuring Dave, brightwheel’s Founder and CEO. (You might recognize him from Shark Tank. 😊)

How to stay up-to-date on when back-to-school features go live

Stay informed as new features become available with the monthly customer newsletter that is 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.