How to keep up with Brightwheel messages and daily reports

Brightwheel is great at telling you your toddler ate half a sandwich. It is less great at making sure you notice the one message a month that says the center closes early on Friday. Out of the box, every nap, diaper and photo pings your phone, and the important things arrive in the same stream.

Here is what Brightwheel actually sends, through which channel, and how to set it up so the signal survives.

What Brightwheel sends, and where

Brightwheel uses four channels for parents. Knowing which is which matters, because they don’t all reach your email.

Messages from teachers and the director live in the app’s messaging threads. Brightwheel’s help page on messaging your provider says parents are notified of replies in the mobile app, and doesn’t describe an email copy of each message. Monthly curriculum newsletters also arrive through Brightwheel messaging, the Sunday before a new theme starts.

Step 1: Trim the push notifications

Brightwheel lets you choose which kinds of updates buzz your phone. The types are: Photos & videos; Notes from providers; Check-ins; Messages & alerts; Incidents, meds and health checks; Food, nap & potty activities; and Learning milestones & kudos (Brightwheel).

1. Open the menu. In the app, tap the three lines at the top left.
2. Find the toggles. On iPhone, tap Edit Profile and scroll down. On Android, tap Settings, then Notifications.
3. Keep the urgent ones on. Leave Messages & alerts, Notes from providers and the incidents/health type on. These are the ones you’d regret missing.
4. Turn off the play-by-play. Food, nap & potty and photos are lovely, but they’re what buries everything else. You’ll still see them in the feed and in the Daily Report.
5. Tap Save. It’s easy to back out without saving.

Each parent sets this on their own phone. If your partner wants every photo the moment it’s posted, they can keep that on without it changing yours.

Step 2: Decide whether you want text messages too

Brightwheel can also send most notifications by SMS, and it’s typically on for anyone who signed up with a phone number (Brightwheel). The switch is in the app: menu, Edit Profile, Settings, Notifications, then the SMS All messages toggle.

Getting the same alert as a push and a text is noise. Pick one. Texts are the better choice for a parent who doesn’t keep the app installed, like a grandparent who does pickups.

Step 3: Turn on the Daily Report email

The Daily Report is the calm version of the feed: one email per child that summarizes the activities logged that day. It is sent automatically when your child is checked out (Brightwheel). It’s off until you subscribe.

1. On the web: log in, click My Profile, scroll to Send Daily Report Email, click Edit, choose Yes for each child and save.
2. In the app: menu, Edit Profile, scroll to Send Daily Report Email, toggle each child on and tap Save.

A few things to know, from Brightwheel’s help page: the report only includes feed activity parents can see, not messages or paperwork. It won’t send if your child wasn’t checked out, or if the only entries were marked staff-only. Your account also needs an email address on it.

So the Daily Report replaces the food-nap-potty pings, but not the messages. That’s why Messages & alerts stays on in Step 1.

Step 4: Put the program calendar on your own calendar

Programs can post events to a Brightwheel calendar, and guardians can see program-wide and classroom events in the app (tap your child, then the Calendar icon) or on the web under Calendar (Brightwheel).

Better: sync it. Brightwheel offers a subscription feed that works with Google, Apple, Outlook and other calendar apps (Brightwheel). On the web, click Calendar, then the gear icon, choose which event types to sync (school events and sign-up slots), and click Add to Calendar. In the app, it’s your child’s profile, the Calendar icon, then the gear.

Billing and paperwork reminders

Paperwork with a due date generates reminders by push and email: a few days after it’s shared, a week later, then one week, three days and one day before it’s due (Brightwheel). Filter those emails into a folder you check, not one you ignore.

Billing notifications are a different story. Brightwheel says parents and payers can’t customize their billing notification settings; that’s controlled by the program. If invoice emails are going to the wrong person, ask the program to update who’s listed as the payer.

How Dottie fits in

Dottie doesn’t connect to Brightwheel directly. It works with what Brightwheel sends to places it can read: your email, a calendar feed or page you give it, or a photo you text it. Push notifications and Brightwheel’s own text alerts go to your phone, not to Dottie, so it never sees those.

In practice that means:

• Paperwork reminder emails in your connected inbox are the kind of thing Dottie picks up: forms and due dates from school email, with a reminder before they’re due.
• The calendar feed: if you can copy the subscription link Brightwheel gives you, you can hand it to Dottie to watch. When new dated events show up, it texts you and asks before adding anything to your Google Calendar.
• A message in the app about a closure or a special day: screenshot it and text it to Dottie, the same way you’d text it a photo of a flyer.

Dottie can get things wrong, which is why it asks before adding anything. If you want the full picture of what it reads and who can see it, the privacy page covers it. For the bigger picture of getting school and daycare email onto one calendar, see how to get school emails onto your calendar.