Incidents and accidents
Filing a report that will still hold up months later, and what happens to it afterwards.
When to file
File for anything that left a mark, needed first aid, involved a head, or that you'd want a record of if a parent asked next week. When you're unsure, file — an unnecessary report costs three minutes, and a missing one costs considerably more.
Filing a report
Open Health — from the More tab, or Incident on the Classrooms screen — and tap the incident button at the top. The New Incident form asks for the child, the type, the Date of incident and Time of incident, whether a guardian has been notified and a description, then a Teacher signature before Sign & submit. Anyone on staff can file.
The date and time start at now. If you're writing it up later — the next morning, say — change them to when it happened: the report is dated by the incident, not by when the form was saved. The photo and your signature are kept with the report.
Teachers can also use the longer Incident Report form under Care, which adds location, injury details, first aid, witnesses and any medical follow-up. All of it is saved to the center's record, so the full report can be read and exported from any device, not just the one it was filed on.
File the same day, ideally the same hour. Detail decays fast, and a report written from memory at pickup time reads like one.
Writing it well
Write what you observed, not what you concluded. "Fell from the second step of the climber, landed on left knee, cried immediately, ice applied for ten minutes, resumed play" is a record. "Minor fall, child fine" is a summary of an opinion.
Avoid naming other children in the narrative. Refer to "another child" — families can see reports about their own child, and other families' children aren't theirs to read about.
Telling the family
Tell the family in person as well as in the app — a parent who learns their child was hurt from their phone while driving home is a conversation nobody wants.
Guardian notified on the Health form means you have already told them, in person or by phone. Answer Yes and RoundUp sends the written report on top of that conversation; answer No and it sends nothing, because it isn't RoundUp's place to break that news for you. The Incident Report form in Care sends the report when you submit it.
A report filed offline with Yes is sent as soon as the device reconnects and the report syncs. A report you answered No on shows Send report to guardians; tap it when you're ready. Each report shows Guardian notified and Report sent separately, because telling a family at the door and their having the written report are two different things. Guardians get a push notification, a notification in the app, and an email — whichever of those actually reaches them. None of them contains the description: they say a report has been filed and to open the app, and the report itself stays behind the family's own sign-in.
RoundUp tells you what went out. If a family has no app account, no device and no email on file, you'll see Marked as notified, but nothing could be sent — please call the family. Take that literally: the mark on the record is your note that you told them, and at that point you haven't.
One send per report: once it has reached the family, the button goes away. If nothing could be delivered, it stays, so you can send again once the family has an account or an email on file.
At pickup, Capture parent signature in person records the parent's signature against the report, with you as the witness. Families can also open the report in their own app and tap Acknowledge incident.
Follow your center's policy and your state's requirements for notifying families immediately rather than at pickup. The app records what happened; it doesn't replace the phone call.
Follow-up and sign-off
Add follow-up on a report adds a new dated note underneath the earlier ones, which stay as they were. Once the family has acknowledged the report, a director, assistant director or admin can tap Sign & close incident to sign it off.
RoundUp keeps who acknowledged the report and how — in the app, or in person and witnessed by whom — and who signed it off and when. If a report is edited after it's filed, the earlier wording is kept alongside the change, with who made it and when.
That's deliberate, and it cuts both ways: correct a genuine mistake, but don't soften a description after a difficult conversation. The original is still there, and a record that was quietly tidied reads worse than one that was right the first time.
Closing a report and marking the family notified can't be done by editing it — only through Sign & close incident and Send report to guardians, which record who did each.
Exporting
For a summary across the center, generate Incident trends or your state's Injury / Incident Summary from Daily Reports → Analytics. Reports can be exported one at a time as a PDF with Export PDF under Recent reports in Care, on any device — including reports filed on another one. See Licensing reports.
More: All director guides