This was a selling point for my daycare, but the app itself is trash. It’s full of bugs. Updates don’t come through despite confirming with my daycare that they’re doing everything correctly on their end. It’s extremely important that I know how much my infant ate and slept everyday and this app just doesn’t deliver the basic info it’s designed to deliver. The billing system is unbelievably glitchy. The payment history doesn’t reflect what’s actually been paid. Paying with two cards doesn’t work. I’m not sure what this app actually does well.
I love this app and use it just about every day. It is the easiest way to check in and see what my daughter is up to during the day. I highly recommend this app to anyone who wants to have a better idea of what their child is learning at daycare and who wants to be able to make payments on the go.
First day on the app and I can’t view my child’s progress on the app. I have to go on the website to see the updates though notifications. The timeline isn’t working neither on the computer or on the app. The idea of this app is great if it worked
It takes your money and doesn’t help you with any issues you might have. Can’t get tax documents because I’m not the primary bill pay user. I pay all the bills and have no idea who they think the primary is.
The app is very poorly designed and lacks significant function needed for parents to communicate with teachers and keep up a child’s day. The thread may be good for some but it is not ideal for everyone. It would be better if you could see like objects together. For example naps, feedings, diaper changes,etc. The font is also too large and it takes too long to scroll through. A grid style would be easier to view and take up a lot less space. It would also be better if you could view a single day at a time if desired rather than the thread just continuing to run together. It is nice that you can leave a comment for a teacher, but that is about the only benefit that I can say to this particular app from a parent perspective. Pictures do not show up as a full picture and it takes three clicks to be able to actually view a picture and or download it. There’s also no consolidated album for you to view all the pictures at one time. There is no way to leave a note or special instructions or anything of that nature for teacher before a teacher makes an entry on the student. And there is no way to mark a student absent if needed. The app is also slow and refreshes after every click. This is by far not everything but these are definitely the most obvious flaws. Any day here that uses this app is going to have parents that are severely disappointed especially if cost increases are involved. Paper reports would be better than this app.
I don’t download a lot of apps, so I make sure all of my notifications are cleared. The daycare for my son uses this app and if it’s not one thing it’s another. I can’t wait for the day they finally cut ties with this app. I mean, you’d think they’d read the reviews and fix the issues but 27 reviews and not a single one is good. Even the one that I saw that was 4 stars looks like they accidentally clicked 4 stars. Fix your app. It keeps telling me to download the new app and then when I click on the download, it sends me to the App Store where there is no download available. I’m amazed that someone intelligent enough to develop an app did this bad at developing. The notifications showing up even after you’ve looked at them is bad. The constant crashing, the spinning wheel. Everything in this app is horrible. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long at the daycare. The only reason I feel it has, is because other people have thought like me, “I’m sure someone has already told them.” It’s almost like the developers worked extra hard to make the app difficult.
Our children’s school uses SmartCare for check-in / check-out and making tuition payments. SmartCare makes tuition payments unnecessarily difficult. The account information isn’t helpful - you’re never sure how the charges add up to the account balance, but you pay anyway. They updated the UI recently for making a payment, and now literally making a payment someone has to tap the “Pay Now” button a number of times to get without any type of haptic feedback or active state for the button. Finally, after who knows how many times the button is tapped, you see the spinner and some toast message appears at the top of the screen, which I assume is a confirmation, but you can’t read it because the whole toast doesn’t appear onscreen and then it disappears incredibly quickly. Then you get back to the screen where the account info is and the balance still appears as it was and you’re left wondering - did that payment go through? You scroll down to recent activity, which is in chronological order with oldest most recent payment first, and you see “payment received from bank account… $0.00” - what?! From a product perspective Payments are not hard, but SmartCare makes payments so difficult and leaves users feeling unsure if their $3-5k payment made it. SmartCare needs to take care when dealing with such large transactions on a regular basis. Do better.
Getting updates on this app is ok. The kicker for us is our center has to manually approve everything, so there’s a huge delay in between when something happens and when we get the notification. Not really the apps fault though. However, the UI is atrocious and navigating around the app is painfully excruciating. I have never in my life had to manually mark notifications as read as many times as I have to in this app. There is zero excuse for not having notifications automatically mark themselves as read. The file upload from when teachers upload pictures is incredibly clunky. You tap, then tap again, and then when you’re finished you tap the back button and you’re in some weird media browser screen. Unintuitive and I wish our center didn’t use this app.
Pros: - once in a while I can successfully sign my kid into the kiosk at school using the app Cons: - no push notifications (critical missed feature or bug): parents need to know when the teacher sends a message - poor UI: think of your users, we are shuffling our kiddos through a door among 15 other toddlers/parents, not to mention navigating meltdowns. Please fix the UI (a bigger target area when selecting my child so I don’t have to click it 20 times, and a confirmation page verifying success rather than a tiny confirmation message) so I can actually be sure my kid has successfully logged in - no way to message the teacher: maybe this is done purposefully, but there is no way to directly message the teacher without the teacher engaging first - payment: updating an expiration date/CVV on the payment page is a nightmare. That UI needs a some tweaks to make it usable - outages: it seems more often than not, the system doesn’t work at sign in/out. I understand data issues can be the challenge, but I struggle to believe that is the case with the state of the UI Get a product manager who understands UI/UX. Don’t pass QA unless you’re in real life scenarios: grab a screaming toddler, head to their preschool, and try using the app. You’ll realize the 1 star rating is warranted, if not generous.
This app works if you only have one parent doing drop off and pickup. Although they claim the app supports multiple person check-in/drop-off, which is true, but some one else authorized to pick up your child will be able to check out your child without you knowing. The timeline feature which displays your child’s happening will only report check-in/check-out from your phone but not another person’s. So if you need to know where your child is, who picked them up and at what time you can always call the school’s admin office since they can look up the SmartCare reports to let you know. I’m sure school admin will rate this app poorly as well with this added overhead responsibility , but they are probably too busy answering calls from concern parents who don’t know if their child made it to school or left school since they have a different designated drop off/pick up person.
Needs accessibility improvements for completely blind VoiceOver users
I am a totally blind single father of one and as such I need to use this app with voiceover and iOS. The daycare center that my kid is enrolled in uses this app for bill paying and other functionality. In the billing tab I am unable to access the ad new payment method button because it is completely invisible to the voice over virtual cursor. I don’t have any help at home and my kid is too young to understand how to help her a completely blind father even though she is fully sighted. It is a very uncomfortable experience when I have to get someone at the daycare to help me work this app and expose people who are not related to me to my important personal information.
Our daycare uses this app for it’s staff and parents. There is always a new update to download. Then once the update is complete, it requires you to re-authenticate. I’d imagine the frequent updates would be helpful but they never appear to be useful. Being a single parent and working full-time, I rely on this app for insights into my child’s development, growth and whereabouts. The dates and times are never correct. The payments have never worked for me. ALL of the data was lost recently and everyone at our daycare had to resubmit our personal details and information to be able to re-register the app again into the system. This app has me constantly worrying about my child, instead of being a tool for knowing how my child is doing.
The app and SmartCare system crashes all the time. Countless times, I showed up at daycare and couldn't sign-in or sign-out my kid without updating the app, logging out, then logging in again. The terminal at daycare crashed so many times as well and teachers need to spend their time assisting parents. On top of that, we (parents) are forced to use the app and are getting charged $5 a month to do so. Our daycare already lost a couple parents in the past 2 months because of this move to SmartCare, we will also move our son out as soon as our contract expires as it seems this is making everything much more complex, expensive and take away the teachers from spending time with the kids.
This app is terrible, it does not send push notifications to your phone or watch...what is the point of having a way to communicate with parents if the parents are forced to open the app to see what is going on with their children. Also you cannot start a new message to your child’s teacher, instead you have to pick a totally unrelated post, such as a diaper change and use that to message them, even if the new age is not regarding that diaper change. Unfortunately we are forced to use this app..the only bright spot is sign-in, easier than the old Brightwheel app; however the Brightwheel app is better than this app in every regard.
The app provides no means for a parent to communicate to the daycare facility besides the picture “comment” function. - The app does NOT show billing updates unless closed then reopened. - Upon check-in and checking out there are comment boxes that appear, however they are NOT functional. The comment area can only be used with pictures posted. - I would like to have a way to actually communicate with the facility and staff. - Upon checking in, it’s required to “select a child” but in the case of ONE child that option should be automatically populated. - Trying to mark all notifications as read is cryptic and requires several taps. - There’s a media button on the app, but it would be fantastic to have the ability for the center to give us a document like a permission slip that needs signed or for us to take a picture and return a form. - There’s always a red dot 🔴 on billing whether paid or not.
Our Center changed from another app to this one and the change is jarring. The only reason I can see is that it helps the Center on the backend because there is nothing helpful about this app from the parents side. It is hard to navigate, updates are complicated, no notifications show on my phone - only email now despite trying to update “Notification preferences”. It’s easy to miss communication from the center like requests for supplies. Overall a terrible ux design. Wish they would change back. If you want unhappy parents/customers pick this app!
I’m usually very patient with apps but this is one of the most frustrating apps I’ve used. Not only do basics not work, such as the push notifications or the fact it crashes a lot on open, but it is also both slow and clunky. My only expectation is for the app to perform moderately well at what it does but this doesn’t even come close. Advice to the developers: actually QA and make sure your basics work. Cache the most recent data (at least make it an option) so the pull request from the server isn’t so mind numbingly slow. Incorporate some basic, general usability standards- scrolling for the images. Pinch to zoom. Etc...
This app now won’t launch at all after the update that came out a couple days ago (version 3.9). It shows the logo and then crashes completely. I rebooted my phone and the issue remains. iPhone 11 on the latest iOS. I deleted and reinstalled the app. Upon login, it crashes again. Other problems, when the app worked: -I could not find any way to contact support, hence this review. The “app support” link for this app in the App Store goes to a “page cannot be found” error. The help section of the website only seems to have an outdated list to changelogs. -Notifications from teachers can’t be marked as “read” on the timeline (the only place you can actually read them). Instead you have to go to another tab altogether to mark them as read. It’s a few extra steps and an unnecessary waste of time. -Pictures teachers send seem to be heavily compressed and terrible quality.
My daycare switched to this for the bill pay feature which is nice. Everything else I hate. The brightwheel app was so much easier to see information and was just overall presented better. There is no option to insert your child’s photo and it displays a girl icon as a default. There is no way to send a general message unless you add a comment after one of the last posts to you. I’d like the ability to send an absent message or general note. It shouldn’t have to be tied to when your child went potty last. It has the look and feel of a very basic (outdated) system.
I’ve only read a few of the reviews so far but agree with every comment!! - text to large - no central place to see photos (& takes too long to get to the photos with no scroll option) - save to your photos isn’t an option - there should be simple drop down options if you want to check out naps, food, photos, etc. across time. Now you need to scroll through a mess of text to find a photo or note from days earlier. My kiddo just started at this daycare this week that uses this system and I’m already considering switching because of the poor technology. They are doing a fantastic job but this technology is crap! I don’t know if they choose you because you are cheap but that’s what you feels like. I went to your company’s site and it seems to be sold as a great tool for the daycare but you need to make a tool that is great for their main focus - making sure they have safe kids and happy parents! This app makes me very unhappy.
I love a lot about this app but I keep not seeing the teacher posts when they occur which isn’t everyday. I have more than one child at the same daycare. Every day that means two notifications of sign-in and two sign-out notifications. When one of the teachers post a note or pictures I often miss reading it because it’s buried in the notifications of sign in sign out. I would like some way to be notified separately when there is a message from the teacher.
Unfortunately I have to use this with my sons daycare. The payment page is confusing and I never know what exactly I’m paying for. It’s difficult to navigate all the charges and payments and see how things add up. There is no direct way to communicate with the center other than leave comments on posts they’ve made. Notifications are terrible as well. Please don’t respond with a phone number for me to call. Spend the fees you charge and make this app user friendly based off all of these reviews you can clearly see have issues.
This app isn’t ideal in many ways. If it’s intended use is to inform parents about their child’s day, then it misses the mark by a long shot. I understand that the posts are a way to provide information in real time, however that’s time consuming for the care providers and distracting to a working parent to constantly be getting notifications. The parent then has to scroll through all the notifications rather than having all of the information in one place like a traditional paper daily sheet that most care providers use.
I was excited to hear our daycare was modernizing drop off and pick up with an app that also includes a timeline and pictures. But it's so clunky and missing some really basic functionality. Like, why don't I get push notifications based on the notification settings? Why don't the notifications get marked as Read when I check them in the app? Why doesn't the timeline update every time I open the app? Once they get some of this fundamental stuff sorted out it'll be a much nicer app.
Overall this app is very good and simple to use. It needs one simple and vital improvement: I should be able to sort by children. I have two children in the same child care facility, and all of their information is listed chronologically in the same journal timeline. This makes it very difficult to see how a child's day was. It would be much better if I could choose a child, and then view the individual child's day.
Crashing. Hanging. And the forever spinning wheel. Information shows up... information disappears. See the other reviews for more information- they’re all correct. And how do they respond to bad reviews? They blame bandwidth and “configuration settings” then say “call us.” If I called them every time I had a problem with this app I’d be on the phone daily. We were spoiled by our last daycare because they used the fantastic Brightwheel app (5 stars and over 9,000 reviews). If you are a childcare provider, I strongly recommend you skip this app and look at Brightwheel.
The app is okay for check in/out, but you have a huge “convenience” fee if you use a credit card, and there is no way to change the payment amounts or dates. Tuition is billed weekly, but we would pay for two weeks worth on the weeks I was paid (biweekly). The app does not allow for this option, I don’t want to have to keep a constant eye on my bank account to make sure I keep a current balance if it has to come out weekly. Huge inconvenience for me, maybe I should bill THEM for my INCONVENIENCE!
With the old version, I could generate my own tax statements for a specific time period to claim my Dependent care Reimbursement through my Employer. Now, I can not do that. Extremely inconvenient and a horrible feature to disable. If there is a different way, I would love to hear it, but other than this feature, I was happy with the app because we do not fully utilize it, and now without the tax statement ability by the parent, It is of no major use to me. Disappointed.
The app is not user friendly. I had been told my child had a wet diaper after his nap but he only goes to after school. There’s not a way to make advanced payments. There are way too many notifications for useless things of switching classrooms. There should be album area so you can see it. Also you should be able to click your kid in or out by using the app on the phone and not have to bring phone in to do this. This is the worse app ever! I will be so glad when my child doesn’t go to that daycare anymore so I can remove this app forever!!!
This has never been an excellent app, and our center has had plenty of glitches with it. But its best feature was that I received notifications when my child was picked up or dropped off. They were great for peace of mind, not to mention that I could see if he was unexpectedly picked up. Since the update this summer, those notifications have disappeared. It makes no sense to remove the best feature of an otherwise bad app! Bring back the notifications.
Whoever came up with the App design needs to be fired and whoever approved the design should be banned from working in tech industry. I mean, how can someone come up with such a terrible app. Seems like this was created by 2nd graders. Actually at this point I think 2nd graders would have done a better job. The reviews truly reflects in the quality of this App. At this point, I think they just need to pull this down, go back to drawing board, and really come back with some better design. There is no recovery from here. Just put this app in Trash and start over.
This app compared to others is bare bones. The timeline is awkward. It’s a constant timeline that is very hard to differentiate the days. The text is far to large and it’s unappealing. It’s been noted that’s it’s a hard app for the teachers to use as well. Any center that uses this app does not care about the parents or teachers input on what they would like in a childcare app. This is designed for billing the parents and making payments easy. The timeline seems an afterthought. There’s no way to communicate with the teachers. All in all a very poor design.
I like almost everything about my little one’s daycare center except for this app. Our center uses SmartCare to communicate daily activities, share pictures, and accept payments. I can never view the photos and the updates are just a long timeline scroll instead of a chart or a daily email recap like other child care apps. The payment system is poorly designed but it seems to work okay. I wish my daycare center used a different system.
The feed is pointless. I have to refresh it multiple times in order for it to show the proper information. The fact that it’s in order by time is inconvenient. I’d rather be able to click on “feeding” “Naps” etc as an additional option. And if you have multiple children it’s even more confusing. Everything is lumped together instead of being separated by children. It would be nice to be able to click on my child’s name and just see their information.
I love this app for the fact I can see my son through the day while he’s at daycare. The issue that I’m having with the app is that it isn’t sending me any notifications. I have even went through settings to make sure my notifications were on for this specific app(which they were) but I am still not getting notifications.
This app is ok. Not great. It really needs push notifications rather than having to scroll through a timeline. There is no way to mark your child absent and there is no way to message the teacher/center if you need to. You have to use a post that the teacher submitted and make comments on that to be able to message them. Also, we can only update our billing preferences on one device, so if we need to make changes only one person has this access.
I downloaded this app because the center I just recently started working at uses it and since my daughter is enrolled here, I figured I’d download it for pics and what not. I download the app, and it won’t let me sign in saying user not found, but if I go to safari, I can sign into my account just fine, it makes no sense and it’s extremely annoying, you’d think a lot of changes would have been made with all the complaints I see but nope, still a crap app
Parents, we know you are busy and want to save as much time as possible. With the Smartcare Parent app, you can sign your child into and out of your child care center with your smartphone. No more hassling with fingerprint readers or pen and paper. Mobile technology means a quicker and more efficient sign-in and sign-out experience for you. We all know that nothing brightens your day more than a photo or video of your child having fun. Now you can get those photos and videos as they happen, and even share them to your Facebook or Twitter feeds. Do you wish you could make payments on the go and not have to worry about carrying your purse, wallet, or checkbook? Well, now you can! Pay your tuition with a credit card or have payments automatically debited from your checking account…all through this mobile app. Smartcare truly has the mobile solution for you.
