Frequently asked questions

One flat price for your whole setting. Essentials is £9.50 a month (or £95 a year) for childminders, after-school clubs and small settings. Complete is £30 a month (or £300 a year) for nurseries and pre-schools, and adds Rooms, the Workforce hub, the Kitchen hub and Polish with AI. Groups, for multi-site operators, is priced on the number of settings — contact us. Annual billing gives you two months free.

No. It's one price for the whole setting however many children or staff you have, and there's no limit on how many children you can add. Many childcare platforms charge per child per month; we don't.

Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. You add a card to begin, you're not charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel any time before then and pay nothing.

No. Plans are monthly (or annual if you choose) and you can cancel whenever you like from your billing settings — no minimum term, no notice period, no exit fees.

It follows the type of setting you register as. Childminders and after-school clubs are on Essentials; nurseries and pre-schools are on Complete. Nursery chains and multi-site operators use the Groups plan, which adds a read-only group portal across all your sites.

Yes, in transit and at rest. All traffic is over HTTPS. The live database and every uploaded photo and document sit on an encrypted volume (LUKS2, AES-256), and backups are encrypted with AES-256 before they leave the server. Passwords and staff PINs are hashed; connected-mailbox tokens and two-factor secrets are encrypted inside the database as well.

On servers in the European Union (Germany), at Hetzner's Nuremberg datacentre, with encrypted off-site backups. Access to the server is by SSH key only.

Yes. Taylormade Care is operated by One Swan Software Ltd, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC197291. As the setting, you are the data controller for your children's records and need your own ICO registration too (£40 a year for most small organisations); we act as your data processor.

Yes. A UK GDPR Article 28 agreement between your setting (the controller) and us (the processor) is built into the app for a manager to read and sign, with annexes listing exactly what we process, how it is secured and every sub-processor.

You do. Each setting's data is isolated from every other, and we don't access it for any purpose other than supporting you when you ask. Learning journals, contracts and invoices export to PDF at any time, and we provide a full export before closing an account so nothing is lost.

Only where you choose to. Polish with AI (Complete plan) tidies a practitioner's rough observation note into an EYFS write-up. Children's and staff names are removed before the note is sent, our AI provider does not keep the notes or train on them, and you read the draft before anything is saved. The assistant on this website answers only from our published pages and help guides — it never sees any setting's records.

Yes. Any account can turn on two-factor authentication with an authenticator app, and managers can see every device signed in to their account and sign out the ones they don't recognise.

No app, and no passwords — and that's deliberate. Each family gets a secure personal link to their child's day: the diary, photos, observations, invoices, notices and messages. They tap the link and they're in. Nothing to install, no logins to forget, and no password resets for your staff to handle. Links close on their own after 90 days unopened and parents can request a fresh one themselves.

Yes. Private one-to-one messages with each family (they reply from their secure link), announcements to all families or a single room with read receipts, an optional daily summary email, and accident, medical and medication records that parents sign as read.

Yes. Connect your Gmail or Outlook in Settings and parent emails go from your real inbox, so replies come back to you. Any SMTP provider works too.

Yes, and without a shared login. A manager sets the tablet up once as a shared device; after that it shows the staff list and each person unlocks it with their own PIN. Everything they record is filed under their name, the tablet locks itself after a few minutes idle, and settings, staff records and invoices stay behind the manager's own login. An activity trail shows who did what, when, and on which device.

Yes. There are free apps for iPhone and Android, and the web app works in any modern browser. Staff can sign children in, write the diary, add observations with photos and clock in and out from their phone.

Most settings are running in under half an hour: sign up, confirm your email, add your details and your first child. If you're moving from a spreadsheet or another system you can import your children and contacts from a CSV, and parents can fill in their own child's details through a secure starter-pack link.

Records cover EYFS observations and milestones, attendance, medication, accidents, safeguarding, contracts, policies, risk assessments, fire drills and the complaints record, with PDF exports designed to be inspection-ready. Choose your nation in Settings and the regulator, framework and ratio bands follow: Ofsted and the EYFS in England, CIW in Wales, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland.

On the Complete plan, yes. Build the rota, assign staff to rooms, and see staff-to-child ratios and coverage checked live through the day, including qualification mix. Staff report sickness and leave from their own phone, clock in and out, and timesheets export for payroll. The Single Central Record tracks DBS, first aid and training expiry.

Yes. After-school clubs are on the Essentials plan: registers, bookings, attendance, invoicing and parent updates, with no per-child fees. Sessions can be any pattern you offer — after school, breakfast club, holiday days.

Yes, with their own logins. Managers see everything; supervisors add contracts, invoices and compliance; staff see the day-to-day records; nurseries can name a deputy manager and give the cook a kitchen-only login.

A small UK company, One Swan Software Ltd. It started as software built for one childminder and now serves childminders, pre-schools, nurseries and clubs. It's designed and supported by the same people who write it.

Personal UK support by email. You get a confirmation with a copy of your message straight away, and a real person replies within one working day, usually sooner. There's also a searchable help centre inside the app covering every feature.

Cancel from your billing settings whenever you like. Your data stays available to export, and if you ask us to delete your account we remove the records and confirm what, if anything, we're legally required to keep and for how long.