EYFS observations, funded hours tracking, parent communication, staff ratios, and Ofsted-ready records. Built around how your setting actually runs.
A nursery is not a simple business. On any given day, you are tracking child attendance against booked sessions, recording observations against EYFS development areas, managing medication and allergy records, communicating with parents, reconciling funded hours against local authority payments, managing staff ratios across rooms, and maintaining records that Ofsted could ask to see at short notice.
The expansion of funded hours from September 2025 (30 hours now available for working parents of children from 9 months) has added a significant layer of complexity. Every eligible child has a different entitlement, a different start date, different hours to track, and a different local authority rate. Getting invoices wrong means either undercharging parents or overclaiming from the council.
At minimum, nursery management software needs to cover:
The challenge is that "nursery" covers an enormous range of settings. A 120-place day nursery with four rooms and 30 staff operates nothing like a childminder caring for three children from a home setting. A forest school with no fixed classroom has different observation needs from a Montessori nursery with structured learning environments. Good software needs to work for your specific type of setting, not force you into a generic workflow.
The nursery software market has consolidated over the past few years. There are a handful of established players and a wave of newer entrants. Here is an honest look at what is available.
| Provider | What They Offer | Pricing | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Famly | Danish company. Comprehensive all-in-one: EYFS, parent app, invoicing with in-app payments, staff management, occupancy planning. Consistently top-rated for interface quality. | From £94.80/month (pay per setting) | Settings wanting the most polished all-in-one experience. Expensive but feature-complete. |
| Connect Childcare | UK company. 3,400+ settings. EYFS, invoicing, parent portal, funding management. Established but interface frequently criticised as dated. | From £94.80/month | Established nurseries comfortable with a mature platform. 12 months notice to leave. |
| Tapestry | UK-built. Originally observation-only, now expanded into broader nursery management. Strong on EYFS learning journeys. Cost-effective compared to Famly. | Per-child pricing (contact for rates) | Settings that prioritise EYFS observations and learning journals above other features. |
| Blossom Educational | UK. Digital learning journals, observations, EYFS planning, parent app, attendance, staff rotas, invoicing with funding claims. | Per-child pricing | Settings wanting integrated learning journals with management features. |
| Nursery in a Box | UK. Focuses on invoicing and funding management. Automated reconciliation for 15/30 hour entitlements. Registers and daily diaries. | From £59/month (flat rate, no per-child) | Settings where invoicing and funded hours are the primary pain point. |
| eymanage (eyworks) | UK. Finance and occupancy specialist. Bulk allocates funded hours, tracks LA rates including deprivation and EYPP. Strong on the financial side. | Contact for pricing | Settings needing detailed financial management and occupancy forecasting. |
Most of these charge per child per month (typically £2-5 per child). For a 60-place nursery at £3 per child, that is £180 per month, £2,160 per year, £10,800 over five years. And at the end you own nothing. If you stop paying, you lose access to the system and your observation data.
Funded hours reconciliation is where most nurseries feel the pain. The funding system is genuinely complicated. Universal 15 hours for all 3-4 year olds. Extended 30 hours for working parents (now from 9 months since September 2025). 2-year-old disadvantaged funding. EYPP supplements. Different hourly rates per local authority. Deprivation supplements that vary by postcode. Some councils pay termly, others monthly, others in arrears. Every platform claims to handle this, but nursery managers consistently report spending hours each term manually checking that the system got it right.
Per-child pricing punishes growth. When your software costs £3 per child per month, filling those last few places means your software bill goes up too. A 90-place nursery pays 50% more than a 60-place nursery for the same system. Flat-rate pricing exists (Nursery in a Box offers it), but it is the exception.
Childminders are an afterthought. Most nursery software is designed for settings with 30 or more children. The workflows, the screen layouts, the pricing models: all built for group settings. A childminder looking after three children from home does not need room management, staff ratio calculators, or occupancy forecasting. They need simple observation recording, parent updates, basic invoicing, and funded hours tracking. Paying £100 or more per month for features designed for a 60-place day nursery makes no sense.
The observation burden is real. EYFS requires ongoing observation evidence. Ofsted inspectors want to see that practitioners are tracking children's development, identifying next steps, and sharing this with parents. Digital tools make this easier than paper, but the volume of data entry required has become a source of stress for practitioners. A system that requires tapping through five screens to log a single observation is adding to the problem, not solving it.
Ofsted's new framework adds pressure. From November 2025, a new five-point grading scale applies. From April 2026, initial inspections for new settings will happen within 12-18 months of registration, down from up to 30 months. Inspectors are looking for systematic evidence of care quality, safeguarding, and SEND identification. Your software needs to make that evidence accessible quickly, not buried in menus.
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A bespoke system starts with your setting. Not a product demo. Not a feature list designed for a generic nursery. Your actual daily workflow, from morning drop-off to parent collection to end-of-term funding reconciliation.
We sit down with you and map exactly how your setting operates. Then we build a system that matches it precisely. The result is a system where every screen, every form, and every report reflects the way your staff actually work.
The number of registered childcare providers in England fell to 53,600 in 2025, down nearly 20% since 2018. Most of that decline is childminders leaving the sector (down 5% in the last year alone, losing over 1,000 providers). Group-based nurseries have held steady. School-based provision has grown.
The funded hours expansion from September 2025 is the biggest structural change the sector has seen in years. Extending 30-hour entitlements to working parents of children from 9 months has dramatically increased the administrative complexity for every setting that accepts funded children. More children, more funding streams, more local authority reconciliation, more scope for error.
At the same time, Ofsted has tightened inspection timelines. New settings will be inspected within 12-18 months from April 2026, half the previous window. The new five-point grading framework is live. Digital evidence of practice quality is not formally mandated, but it is increasingly expected. Settings that rely on paper records will find inspections harder.
The software market is dominated by a small number of platforms. Famly is the most polished but also the most expensive. Connect Childcare has the largest UK installed base but the worst reviews for interface quality and exit terms. Tapestry is strong on observations but was not originally built as a full management platform. The gap is clear: no single tool handles EYFS, funding, invoicing, parent communication, staff management, and Ofsted evidence equally well at an affordable price.
ESRE builds nursery management systems for a one-off cost. No monthly subscription. No per-child fees. No price increases when you fill more places.
Most nurseries pay for a management platform and often supplement it with separate tools for specific functions. For a 60-place day nursery, the monthly spend commonly looks something like this.
| System | Typical Monthly Cost | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Nursery management platform | £95 to £240 (flat) or £120 to £300 (per-child) | Famly (£95-239/mo flat), Connect Childcare (from £95), Tapestry (per-child) |
| Funded hours specialist (if separate) | £30 to £60 | Funding Loop, eymanage |
| Accounting | £20 to £40 | Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent |
| Staff training/CPD tracking | £15 to £40 | Noodle Now, EduCare, or manual |
| Total monthly cost | £160 to £380 | |
| Five-year total | £9,600 to £22,800 |
On per-child pricing, costs scale with occupancy. A nursery that grows from 40 to 80 children sees its platform cost double, for the same system. And the funded hours tool knows nothing about the observations in the main platform, which knows nothing about the accounting system. Each term's funding reconciliation involves manually cross-referencing between them.
| System Scope | Typical One-Off Cost | Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Core: observations, attendance, parent communication, basic invoicing | £6,000 to £12,000 | Management platform subscription |
| Full: above plus funded hours reconciliation, staff management, Ofsted reporting | £12,000 to £25,000 | All four subscription categories above |
| Multi-site: chain management with per-setting dashboards and centralised data | £20,000 to £40,000 | Per-setting subscriptions multiplied across locations |
A 60-place nursery paying £250 per month across its tools spends £15,000 over five years and owns nothing. A bespoke system at £15,000 pays for itself in under three years, does not increase when occupancy grows, and belongs to the setting permanently.
Every system we build, the client owns all the code. There is no vendor lock-in. No 12-month notice period. No per-child fees that grow as your setting grows.
What we build is not one screen. It is a connected data architecture from which multiple applications emerge. Child, family, staff, and financial data is entered once and appears wherever it is needed. That means no more logging into three systems to complete one task, no more end-of-term data compilation from scattered sources, and no more paying separately for features that should be part of the same system.
All of these surfaces draw from the same data. An observation recorded by a practitioner appears in the child's learning journey, is visible to parents in the app, and contributes to the Ofsted evidence set. A funded hours change updates the invoice, the manager dashboard, and the headcount claim simultaneously. One entry, visible everywhere it needs to be.
We train you and your team to evolve the system using AI. Since December 2025, AI tools have reached the maturity to work reliably alongside people for maintaining and extending systems. We set up your AI to understand your specific codebase, with failsafe environments, version control, and automated backups.
Because the data architecture already exists, adding new functionality is straightforward and inexpensive. Opening a second setting? It connects to the same group management structure. Adding a holiday club or wraparound care? The booking and invoicing extends from the existing system. Need a new report for a local authority audit that did not exist at launch? All the data is already there. The initial build creates the foundation. Everything after that is incremental, and much of it can be done in-house with the tools we provide.
See examples of what we build across different sectors.
Per-child pricing means your bill grows every time you fill a place. Bespoke is a one-off cost. It stays yours regardless of occupancy.
Every practitioner, every room leader, every manager accesses the system at no extra cost. Hire more staff without your software bill increasing.
Children's data and safeguarding records on servers in the UK. No overseas vendor routing sensitive data through infrastructure you have no visibility of.
A core nursery system covering observations, attendance, and parent communication typically takes four to eight weeks from first conversation to live deployment.
A core nursery system typically takes four to eight weeks from first conversation to live deployment. More complex systems with funded hours reconciliation, multi-site management, and data migration take eight to fourteen weeks.
Yes. We build systems that track every funding stream (universal 15-hour, extended 30-hour, 2-year-old disadvantaged, EYPP), automatically split invoices between funded and private hours, and reconcile against local authority payments. The system knows your council's specific hourly rates, deprivation supplements, and payment schedules.
The records you create during normal operation are the records Ofsted needs to see. Observations, attendance, safeguarding logs, staff training records, medication administration. A bespoke system organises this information so it is accessible quickly, not buried in a menu structure designed for a different purpose.
Yes. Most nursery software is over-engineered for childminders. We can build a simplified system that covers EYFS observations, parent updates, basic invoicing, and funded hours tracking, without the room management, ratio calculators, and occupancy forecasting that childminders do not need.
Your system is cloud-hosted on secure UK-based servers. Your data belongs to you. Every change is recorded in real time to a write-ahead log (WAL), so nothing is ever lost. You can also back up locally on a schedule for additional peace of mind.