It is October. Your contract renews in January, or your billing has gotten harder to explain, or a teacher keeps saying the check-in tablet is slow. You have been told to wait until summer, when there are fewer children and fewer parents watching. Many directors wait. Some cannot, and switching mid-year is doable if you treat it as a move with a checklist, not a weekend project.
This is a plan for that move. It applies to leaving any childcare app, and we use Brightwheel as the example because it is the one most directors ask about. Brightwheel is a good product. Leaving it is a business decision, not a verdict.
Step 1: Decide what you are moving
Write three lists before you export anything.
Must move: children, classrooms, guardians and authorized adults, emergency contacts, allergies and medical notes, immunization records, tuition plans and balances.
Nice to move: photos, message history, past daily reports, forms parents already signed.
Leave behind: old activity feed items, test accounts, graduated families from three years ago.
The must-move list is short on purpose. Everything else can stay in an archive you export once and keep.
Step 2: Export before you do anything else
Ask for your data while your account is in good standing, and do it before you tell your vendor you are leaving. Get these out:
- Child and family list, with classrooms and enrollment dates.
- Guardian and authorized-pickup list, with phone numbers.
- Health information: allergies, medications, immunization records.
- Billing: open balances, active plans, autopay status, and a year of payment history.
- Documents and signed forms, as files.
- Attendance history for the last licensing period, because an inspector can ask for it after you have switched.
Save everything in a folder you control, with the date in the name. Open each file. A blank column is better found now than in March.
Step 3: Pick the order
Move in this order, and do not skip ahead:
- Week 1: children, families, adults and classrooms. Check them against your roster by hand, room by room.
- Week 2: health profiles and immunizations. Have each lead teacher read the allergy list for their own room.
- Week 3: run check-in on one room, with the old system still live as a backup.
- Week 4: billing, at the start of a billing cycle, never in the middle of one.
Bloomz is built to run beside your old app for those four weeks. A Set up your center guide in the director’s feed shows what is done and opens the right screen for each step. You choose all your exports at once, see one preview of what will come across, import, and undo the whole import if something looks wrong. When the readiness list is clear, you cut over in one step, and parent invitations go out then, after you have seen how many families will get one.
A 1:1 onboarding specialist for your center. We import your data within 24 hours of receiving your export. The self-serve import reads a Brightwheel export, including tuition plans, past invoices and opening balances, and you preview every row before anything saves. Saved cards do not move between apps, so families set up autopay again through one request. More on the switch page.
Step 4: Handle money carefully
Billing is where mid-year moves go wrong, because parents notice a double charge before they notice anything else.
- Do not run two autopay systems for one family in the same month. Cancel the old schedule only after the new one has a confirmed first charge, and tell the parent the date.
- Carry over open balances as a single line, with the amount and the date, so a family can match it to their own records.
- If a family pays partly through a state subsidy program, record the agency award and the family copay separately from the first day. Bloomz Pay tracks subsidy agency awards against balances. Your state’s subsidy attendance system is still where you report attendance; Bloomz does not replace it.
- Check your late-fee policy before you load it. A fee that was waived in the old system can show up as new in the new one.
Published Bloomz Pay rates for childcare are 2.95% on cards and 0.6% on ACH, with a 50 cent minimum and a $2 maximum, and no setup or monthly fees. Compare them with what you pay today, in writing.
Step 5: Tell families, in this order
Parents do not read a long email. They read the first two lines and the date. Send one message, then a reminder, then a note at the front desk.
- Eight to ten days before: what is changing, the date, and what they need to do (usually: download the app, set a PIN).
- The week of: a reminder with the PIN steps and a phone number a human answers.
- Day one: staff at the door with a printed card, helping each parent set up.
Families who speak another language at home matter here. The Bloomz app is translated into 250+ languages, so you can send the setup steps in the parent’s own language.
A short message that works:
Starting Monday, March 3, we are changing how we sign children in and out. You will have a personal PIN. We will help you set it up at the door. Your child’s information has moved over, and your tuition amount and due date are not changing. Questions: call the office at [number].
Say plainly that tuition is not changing, if it is not. That one sentence heads off most of the calls.
Step 6: Keep the old system for a short overlap
Do not cancel the day you go live. Keep the old account, read-only if you can, for 30 days. You will need it to answer one question you did not predict, and for the licensing period you exported.
What to check on day one
- Every child shows in the right room.
- The authorized adults list matches the paper file for three children chosen at random.
- Allergies show on the health profile.
- The first PIN check-in and check-out works on the kiosk.
- A test charge goes through on one staff member’s card.
What Bloomz does not do
Bloomz does not file CACFP claims. It records meals and exports the counts for your sponsor, and it imports DRDP and Teaching Strategies GOLD results through a preset set up against your export, without scoring them. Bloomz does not run payroll, but approved staff hours export to Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll. Subsidy attendance stays in your state’s system outside Washington; Bloomz produces a Washington DCYF attendance export, and it is not yet on DCYF’s approved list. If you depend on any of those inside your current app, plan a separate tool before you leave it.
Pricing and a short call
Bloomz is quoted per center on a short call. If you have a competitor’s written quote, the Best Price Guarantee beats it by 10%. It is free for families.
Read the side-by-side first: Bloomz vs Brightwheel. Then see the process on the switch page.
