Features

eyMan offers a comprehensive enquiry management process that can be linked with your own nursery website to capture new parent enquiries online and straight into eyMan. You can manage the entire enquiry process from follow ups to visits through a simple drag and drop pipeline view, then send online registration forms to parents where completed details will be automatically added to the child’s profile on enrolment. Children can also be wait-listed if there are no available places and enrolled at a later date, or an enquiry can be marked as lost.

eyMan includes a simple and quick setup for sessions to cover all your fee types for children across age groups. The ability to create and schedule these sessions on a per hour, per session, AM/PM and wrap-around care basis with multiple rates makes the system flexible. Extra sessions can be added as required. Invoicing can be set up on actuals or equally spread (annualised) along with customised email and branded PDF templates. Batch invoicing enables you to generate and send invoices for all children in one go saving a lot of time. The system also takes care of the funded hours and products/services that the child's pattern would have consumed. Various other settings and customisation allows scheduling and invoicing to work in your way.

The occupancy charts in eyMan provide an overview of the number of children across all the room/groups in the nursery that are booked in. The system provides Daily Occupancy Charts which shows the number of children occupying the nursery at each hour of the day. There are also Average Occupancy Charts that report the number of hours available for child scheduling per day as well as the nursery and room capacities to calculate the total number of hours available in each room (and the nursery in total) per day. The availability chart can also be used to identify where there is space for any enquiries that are received. It draws information from the children’s schedules and the rooms they are scheduled for that day, so the children’s schedule will have to be adjusted when they move rooms. The system also has the capability to identify the number of staff required for the scheduled children as per their age groups to help you do staff scheduling (weekly rota) and manage required child to staff ratios. This goes a long way in running your setting more efficiently.

eyMan incorporates useful aspects to support your payments process. Reduce your monthly debtors and improve cash flow by collecting and reconciling payments automatically using GoCardless for direct debit, or enable parents to pay directly using their smartphone and payment gateways Stripe or SagePay. Speed up the payment reconciliation process by uploading payments directly from your bank account. Enable our automatic payment allocation options to add payments to outstanding invoices and add any payments on account to an invoice when it is generated.

eyMan has a unique terms and funding setup that defines term dates and funding settings. The system helps to take the hassle out of funding calculations, enabling you to differentiate between the Universal Entitlement (UE) portion of funding available to some two-year olds and all three/four-year olds of 15 hours, and the Extended Entitlement (EE) portion of funding available to three/four-year olds of an additional 15 hours (30 hour funding). Our bulk funding allocation screen will save you hours of time and eyMan will deduct available funding from a child’s invoice accurately and automatically.

eyMan enables you to keep your child and staff data up to date quickly, easily and accurately by enabling parents and staff to update the key information for their children or own profiles respectively. Address details and emergency contacts, allergies, dietary and medical information can all be updated through our online profile forms. These are sent electronically with a few clicks, eliminating the need for costly ink and paper forms. Receive notifications as soon as forms are completed and easily view any changes made. All changes are automatically updated to the child or staff member’s profile.

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is never truer than when you move away from the restrictions of a paper-based learning journey by incorporating photos, videos and audio files. With eyLog you can add multiple media to a single observation, enabling you to truly capture the story - be it those first steps, a pop star moment, or grasping a pencil - simplifying the process of recording such moments and assessing the progress of the child, all while eliminating the need for costly paper and ink solutions. Observation sheet format can be customised to match your processes so that staff find it easier to transition to eyLog. The comprehensive sections allow staff to add activity analysis, assessments, next steps and notes to ensure a thorough observation.

eyLog supports a wide range of assessment frameworks in England, Scotland and Wales which enables you to focus and plan towards a well-rounded learning and development for the children. You can easily customise which frameworks appear on your tablets, depending on the requirements in your early years setting. The English frameworks include Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Early Learning Goals (ELG), Early Years Developmental Journal (EYDJ), Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL), Every Child a Talker (ECaT), Leuven Scales of Well-being and Level of Involvement, British Values, Phonics, Schemas and Montessori. The Scottish frameworks are Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), Pre Birth to Three, Four Capacities and the Wellbeing Wheel. The Welsh frameworks are Birth to Three Matters and Foundation Phase.

eyLog allows you to record moments and complete observations from anywhere, even without internet connectivity, such as outdoor visits to the garden/forest/park or blind spots within the nursery. When internet connectivity is restored, observations are automatically uploaded to our servers. This unique feature ensures that observations are not lost if the internet connection is poor or drops completely within the nursery.

Capture the moment and save an observation as a draft, then complete the observation and assessment at a more convenient time. Manage the quality of observations by controlling which staff members have the right to publish and/or review observations ready for a child’s learning journey. Staff with no publishing rights must submit each observation for quality review by a manager or colleague with review rights. Staff with review rights can publish their own observations and review and publish any observations submitted for review. All parent observations are submitted for review by the nursery staff before they become part of the child’s learning journey.

eyLog allows you to enter sign in/out times for children easily through the app and maintain registers. Customisable daily diaries record key information such as register times, what a child ate, when they slept, nappy changes and toileting, which can be shared with parents at the end of the child’s day. Parents can also make use of daily diaries to let the nursery know of a future event and therefore facilitate two-way communication. Managers are able to customise the names and visibility of the daily diary sections at any time from the manager’s dashboard to suit the information they would like to share with the parents about their child daily.

Detailed accident/incident sheets enable you to document any accident/incidents/pre-existing conditions that have occurred in the nursery or at home and need to be recorded. Staff can capture extensive details such as where and what happened, injuries sustained, medical aid sought and RIDDOR reportable incidents and include photographic evidence and/or body maps where appropriate. Send these to parents to view on their parent portal or the dedicated eyLog Parent App and receive electronic acknowledgement by way of completion. A comprehensive tracker also helps you to identify any patterns and trends in accidents/incidents across the nursery.

You can manage staff profiles, schedules and contract/holiday entitlement effectively through eyMan. Staff logins enable staff members to make holiday requests and receive notifications when these are approved or declined. Map the qualifications and training requirements you have for each position and identify any gaps in training and qualifications easily, enabling you to plan your staffs development needs.

eyMan offers complete automatic room movement functionality that calculates the date a child is due to move rooms (on the day of age change or the start of the week following the age change) and moves the child’s booking pattern to the next room automatically. The dates set can also be manually overridden if required. Register reports, staff scheduling and availability charts work alongside this functionality to reflect the predicted changes before they occur, helping you plan and manage staff:child ratios accurately and easily.

Use eyLog to engage parents and help them to understand their child’s development on a more regular and real-time basis, through their child’s learning journey. Parents can view their child’s observations, reports, daily diaries, accident/incident sheets, progress reports and view or send messages from/to the nursery. Add multiple parents/carers and share with grandparents or extended family members, to increase their involvement in the activities at the nursery and contribute home observations to build a holistic view of a child’s early years. Nursery staff are notified when parents add observations or comments and can add their own notes and assessments to home observations submitted by parents. When integrated with eyMan and payment gateways, parents have a full overview of their account and can view and pay invoices online.

The system includes a wide range of automated trackers and reports that are extremely useful to help manage your childcare setting. On eyMan, daily, weekly and weekday register reports give you a range of options and views for your register requirements. An extensive range of HR, Financial and Operational reports are included as standard within eyMan or build your own reports using our custom report builder which covers all aspects of children, staff and enquiry data. eyLog offers comprehensive interactive progress trackers and assessment tools enabling you to track progress across the nursery and within pre-defined cohort groups - boys, girls, SEND, looked after child (LAC), pupil premium, 2-year funded, 3 and 4-year funded, 30 hour funded, children of concern etc. Summative reports, 2 year progress checks and transition reports are also available to complete on the system. All reports on eyLog and eyMan can be downloaded in CSV or PDF format. Where possible, both options are offered.

Both eyMan and eyLog include an integrated e-mail messaging system for the nursery to communicate with parents and staff. Managers can send simple messages such as notifications and announcements or rich text messages such as newsletters. These can be sent to all, a group or individual parents and/or staff. Parents can view these messages via the web parent portal or from the eyLog Parent App at any time.

eyLog uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt all communication between the server and the tablets. We store all data on Rackspace, a secure cloud-based server in data centres located in UK. All data is regularly backed-up onto redundant systems. Very minimal data is stored on the tablets. Both the tablet and the web interface support role-based access with clearly defined access rights. Each nursery staff gets a personal PIN number to access the tablets ensuring the traceability of observations to specific individuals. The names of children/practitioner, etc are not accessible to any search engine. eyLog offers, as an optional extra, to lockdown your tablets using a third-party software called SureLock. We install a security software onto your device so that all applications, except for eyLog, are removed/hidden from the tablet home screen. This ensures that the tablets cannot be misused in any manner – for example, it would not be possible for staff to use Facebook or to send photos by e-mail.