Guide · For parents and guardians · 10 minutes

The family guide

Your child's center uses RoundUp to share what happens during the day — photos, meals, naps, and messages from their teacher. Here is how it works. Centers: print this for your welcome packet.

Last updated: September 1, 2026 · Print this guide

1. Getting the app

1. Look for your invitation

   Your center sends an email invitation to the address they have on file for you. If it has not arrived, check spam, then ask the center to confirm which address they used — a typo is by far the most common cause.

2. Install RoundUp

   Search for RoundUp Early Childhood in the App Store or Google Play. It is free.

3. Accept the invitation and set your password

   Open the link in your invitation, set a password, and sign in. If you have children at more than one center, or more than one child, they all appear in the same account.

4. Turn on notifications

   This is the difference between seeing your child's day as it happens and finding it at bedtime. You choose which kinds you want, each on its own switch: messages, photos, check-in and check-out, daily reports, billing, and announcements. Most families keep photos and messages on and turn the routine ones off.

   There is also a quiet hours setting — set a start and end time and notifications hold until morning, so a late staff update does not wake the house.

2. Your child's day

Teachers record the day as it happens, from a tablet in the classroom. Depending on your child's age and what your center chooses to share, you may see:

• Check-in and check-out — when your child arrived and left, and who collected them
• Meals — what was offered and roughly how much was eaten
• Naps — when they went down and when they woke
• Diapering and toileting — for the ages where that is tracked
• Activities and observations — what they did and something their teacher noticed
• Mood, incidents, and medication — anything you would want to know before pickup

Meals, naps, diapering, temperatures and supply requests appear as your child's teacher logs them, so the routine half of the day is there in the afternoon. The written half — highlights, observations and photos — arrives once the room has finished the day and a director has approved it, usually late afternoon or early evening. Most centers also email a summary that pulls it all together.

3. Photos and privacy

Photos and video of your child are taken only within the permissions you set at enrollment. These are separate permissions, not one yes-or-no — you can allow some and refuse others:

• Photos — whether staff may photograph your child at all
• Video — whether staff may record video, set independently of photos
• Sharing with other families — whether images of your child may appear in what other families in the classroom see
• Use outside the center — whether images may be used in marketing or on social media
• Downloads — whether families may save images to their own devices

A permission can also carry a start and end date, so you can allow something for a single event or a single term rather than indefinitely.

Changing your mind

You can request a change at any time from your child's profile in the app. The request goes to your center to action rather than taking effect on its own, and the center keeps a record of who changed what and when. A change applies going forward — it does not retroactively withdraw images already shared.

Who can see your child's information

Access is limited to the guardians and authorized contacts your center has approved, plus the staff who work with your child. Nothing is public.

Your answers are enforced, not just recorded: if you have refused photos, or refused sharing with other families, or set a date range that has passed, images of your child are withheld from what other families are shown — by the server, not by the app on their phone. The one exception is downloads: that setting controls the save option inside the app, so treat it as a preference rather than a lock on an image someone is already allowed to see.

Your rights over your child's records

Under "My child's data" in Settings you can inspect everything the app holds about your child, get a copy in a portable format, ask for a correction, ask for a category to be deleted, and withdraw permission for further collection through the app. Withdrawing app-based collection does not end your child's enrollment — your center will keep whatever records state licensing requires by other means.

For the full picture of what is collected and how it is handled, see our Privacy Policy.

4. Messaging the classroom

Use the messages tab to reach your child's teachers — a late pickup, a rough night, a question about tomorrow.

• Messages are attached to your child and visible to their teachers and center administrators. That is deliberate: it keeps a record with the center rather than in one teacher's personal phone.
• Teachers reply when they are not with children, so expect answers around nap or after close rather than instantly.
• Anything urgent — a same-day pickup change, an emergency — call the center. Do not rely on a message being read in the next ten minutes.

5. Tuition and payments

• Invoices appear in the app and arrive by email on your center's billing schedule
• Pay by card or bank transfer; card details are handled by Stripe and are never stored by your center or by RoundUp
• You can save a payment method and turn on automatic payments if your center offers it
• Receipts and your full payment history stay in the app — useful at tax time, and for dependent-care claims
• Subsidies and employer contributions show on your invoice as a separate line, so you can see the portion that is yours

Questions about an amount go to your center, not to RoundUp — they set the rates and issue the invoices.

6. Forms and documents

• Enrollment forms, permission slips, and policy acknowledgments arrive in the app and can be signed on your phone
• Upload immunization records and physicals directly rather than bringing paper to the office
• You will get a reminder before anything with an expiry date lapses
• Keep emergency contacts and authorized pickups current — this is the one thing worth checking every few months

7. Common questions