It is 7.15 in the morning. The unit’s phone rings, and a guardian says their child has a fever. Another guardian sends a text message to the group’s teacher, who is not at work yet. A third says nothing, and the child is expected until nine. This is how the morning starts in many daycares, and each of these notices has come through a different channel to a different person.
Handling care times and absences is the most invisible work in daycare life. It is nobody’s main job, but it takes time every morning and determines how well the rest of the day goes.
The weekly routine once, exceptions when needed
Most children’s care times repeat from one week to the next. Monday from eight to four, Tuesday from half past seven to three, Friday off. Even so, in many places they are submitted again every week, on a paper form or by email, and someone copies them into a list by hand.
A better way is for the guardian to set the child’s usual weekly routine once. After that they only change the exceptions: on Tuesday the child is picked up earlier, next week is a holiday. A single day can be changed without redoing the whole routine. A longer absence can be reported as a date range, and it shows on the unit’s list on every day it covers.
The guardian has less to do, and the daycare’s lists stay up to date without anyone typing them in.
An absence reported the same morning
Illness cannot be planned in advance, but the way the notice travels can.
When the guardian marks an absence in their own app and picks a reason, the entry shows on the unit’s list when the list is refreshed. No phone call is needed, and no text message to a staff member who is not there yet. The notice goes where the day’s list is, and everyone on shift sees it in the same place.
On the unit’s list, an absence reported by a guardian shows as its own entry. It stays there until staff confirm it or the child turns up after all. If the child arrives despite the reported absence, they are checked in as normal, and the check-in overrides the notice. The child counts towards the staff ratio from that moment on.
What staff see in the morning
When care times and absences live in the same system as attendance records, the unit’s phone shows a morning list with the children grouped by status: present, not checked in, left and absent. Each child’s booked care time is shown next to their name.
This makes a practical difference. At nine o’clock nobody has to wonder whether Eetu is coming or not. The list says either absent, or care time starts at ten, or not checked in, in which case the guardian can be called. In the afternoon the same list shows who has not been picked up yet and what pick-up time was given.
The notice period protects shift planning
Care times have a direct effect on shifts. If a guardian can add care the day before, the shift plan cannot be made reliably. If care cannot be changed at all, guardians phone in and the matter is sorted out over the phone, outside the system.
The notice period is the limit designed for this. Each unit decides how many weeks ahead care times can still be changed. Within the notice period a guardian can still report an absence, but cannot add care. The shift planner knows that next week’s number of children will not grow any more, and can plan shifts accordingly.
The unit’s opening hours set the allowed times, so a guardian cannot accidentally book care for a time when the unit is closed.
Care times tell you what is coming
Once care times are in the system, they become a forecast. Admins see the bookings by group and by period, and the unit sees the expected number of children in advance.
One daycare using Knuut noticed from upcoming care times that clearly fewer children than usual were due on a Friday afternoon. The food order was reduced to match. Some of the staff got to go home earlier than usual and knew about it well in advance.
Another daycare noticed from its attendance records that several children had more hours of care than their contract allowed. This was discussed with the families on the basis of the records, and the contracts were updated to match actual use. Without a summary of the records, that revenue would have been lost entirely.
Several guardians, one child
A child may have several guardians, and everyday life is not always at one address. Each guardian has their own login, and each sees and edits the same care times. When one guardian marks an absence, the other sees it. Guardians do not see other children or each other.
What this asks of guardians
Downloading the app and filling in the weekly routine once. During onboarding the daycare adds the guardians to the system, and they receive an invitation. In our experience guardians take to the app quickly, because it replaces something that used to be a hassle for them: the morning phone call to the daycare.
If you would like to see how the care times view would look in your unit, book a demo.