Services · Mobile app development · Childcare apps
Codeeo offers childcare management app development Birmingham nurseries, preschools, childminders and wraparound clubs can run their day on. We build the parent app, the practitioner app and the manager dashboard as one system: registers, daily diaries, funded hours, invoices, safeguarding records and messages. For a city where one room may hold families speaking Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Polish and English, and where parents work early hospital shifts or study across town, the app has to fit real routines rather than a generic template.
Your setting stays accountable to Ofsted and the EYFS; the software simply makes the evidence easier to keep and the communication easier to manage. Our team of 80+ works with Birmingham clients remotely, with discovery sessions and design reviews held over video call.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
Inside the app
A nursery manager in Erdington, a childminder in Moseley and a group running sites from Sutton Coldfield to Selly Oak have different days, but they share the same pressure points. Parents want to know their child ate, slept and was safe. Practitioners want to record that quickly without a clipboard. Managers need ratios, funding claims and invoices to agree with each other at the end of the month.
We start from the statutory requirements in the EYFS for group and school based providers or the childminder version, whichever applies to you, and then add what makes your setting easier to run. Each feature below can sit in the first release or a later one; the order is decided with you in discovery, based on where the most time is lost today. Nothing is bolted on because a competitor has it.
Notices, menus, newsletters and reminders can be shown in English with translated versions for the community languages your families actually speak. Interface text is planned for right to left scripts such as Urdu and Arabic where needed, and every translated message keeps the English original visible so nothing important is lost.
Parents who read English less confidently still get the full message.
Practitioners sign children in and out by room, with times recorded against the key person. The manager screen shows children present against staff on the floor, so ratio problems are spotted before an inspector or a parent notices them. Staff breaks and room moves update the count straight away.
Attendance records that match the ratios you are required to keep.
Quick taps for food eaten, sleep times, nappy changes and bottles, with photos only where the parent has given consent. Safer eating notes and allergy flags appear on the child's card at mealtimes, so agency or bank staff covering a room see them without asking.
Parents see the day as it happens, and staff record it in seconds.
Each child's entitlement, whether universal hours, the working parent offer from nine months or the two year old offer, is held alongside the eligibility code and its reconfirmation date. The system warns families and the office before a code lapses and prepares the figures you submit to Birmingham City Council each term.
Fewer lost claims and fewer awkward conversations about grace periods.
Many Birmingham parents work rotating shifts at hospitals, warehouses and transport depots. Parents can request extra sessions or swap days inside the rules you set, and the manager approves them only when the room has capacity and staffing to match.
Flexibility for families without breaking ratios.
Families apply online with the child's details, medical needs, dietary requirements and the days they want. The office sees requests by start term and room, offers places in order, and sends settling in plans once a place is accepted. Signed contracts, consent forms and emergency contacts are stored against the child rather than in a filing cabinet, and parents can update their own details later.
A waiting list you can trust and new starters with complete records.
A restricted area where staff record a concern, a body map observation or a prolonged absence, and the designated safeguarding lead reviews and acts. Access is limited by role and every view is logged. The app supports your procedures under the Birmingham Safeguarding Children Partnership; it never replaces them.
Concerns recorded once, securely, and seen by the right person.
Bills show funded hours, additional paid sessions and voluntary charges such as meals on separate lines, which is how the Department for Education expects them to appear. Parents can pay by card or Direct Debit and add their Tax-Free Childcare payment reference.
Invoices parents understand and fewer billing queries at the door.
DBS check details, paediatric first aid, food hygiene and safeguarding training dates sit in one place, with reminders well before anything expires. Managers see at a glance who can be counted in ratio and who still needs an induction signed off.
Staff evidence ready whenever Ofsted asks for it.
For groups with nurseries in Birmingham and in Solihull or Sandwell, the dashboard shows occupancy, waiting lists, funding and staffing by site. Each local authority's claim is kept separate, since every provider claims from the council where the setting is located.
One view of the business without mixing up council claims.
Who this suits
Childcare in Birmingham ranges from single room preschools in church halls to private groups with several purpose built nurseries, plus a large number of registered childminders working from home. A sensible app depends on which of these you are, how many children you care for and how your families pay. We would rather build a small app you use every day than a large platform that sits half finished. If you are comparing a childcare management app development company Birmingham owners have already used with an off the shelf product, these are the situations where a build of your own pays off.
You run one or two settings, the register is on paper and invoices come from a spreadsheet that only the owner understands. A first release covering registers, diaries, parent messages and invoicing removes most of the end of day admin. Funding and staff records follow once the team is comfortable. We plan training around room leaders, because they decide whether a new tool sticks.
Start with the tasks your staff repeat every day.
Your sites might run from Harborne to Castle Bromwich, with a head office that needs consistent reporting. Different councils, different term dates and different parent profiles all need handling without separate systems. We build shared records with per site settings, so managers keep local control while the directors see occupancy, staffing and funding in one place.
Childminders need something that works on a phone, offline if signal drops, and does not take an evening to update. A network or agency coordinating many childminders needs oversight of registrations, training and quality visits. The app gives each childminder a simple daily tool and gives the coordinator the oversight they need.
Built for one adult caring for a small group, not a scaled down nursery screen.
Breakfast and after school clubs on primary school sites deal with late bookings, changing pick up arrangements and payment from many families at once. We build booking that respects session capacity, collection lists that update as parents change plans, and reports the school business manager can use without logging into a separate system.
Ways to work with us
Most single settings choose a fixed scope first release, followed by a monthly support plan for updates. Larger groups often keep a small dedicated team working through a longer roadmap that covers several sites. Whichever you choose, the scope, the deliverables and the review points are written down before work starts. Codeeo has delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US, and is rated 4.7 from 23 Google reviews, but your references should come from how clearly we plan your app, not from what we have built elsewhere.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We pick frameworks your future developers can maintain, usually a cross platform mobile app for iOS and Android with a web dashboard for managers, hosted in a UK data region by default unless you decide otherwise. Connections to accounting, payroll and Direct Debit providers are made through their published APIs, and practitioner screens keep working offline in rooms where the wifi is patchy, syncing once the tablet reconnects.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
It depends on the first release you agree, not on a standard package.
A focused release with registers, diaries, messaging and invoicing is far quicker to deliver than a group platform with funding returns, multi site reporting and staff records. In discovery we list every feature, mark what must be in the first version and agree the delivery plan in writing. Timing also depends on how quickly your team can test, and on whether we are moving data out of an existing system, which needs careful checking before go live.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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