The Complete Guide to Nursery Management Software

Nursery management software is one system for the records a nursery keeps every day: who is booked in and who has arrived, what each family owes, which children are funded, what each child is learning, and who is working in which room. The case for it is simple. Most of those records describe the same children and the same sessions, and keeping them in separate spreadsheets, paper registers and accounting tools means typing the same facts several times and finding out they disagree at the worst moment.

This guide is written for nurseries, pre-schools and other group settings in England. It covers what the software does, which features matter, and how to compare systems and switch without losing a term.

What nursery management software covers

The core of most systems is the same handful of jobs:

• Children and families: child records, contacts, who can collect, medical and dietary needs, permissions and consents.
• Bookings and registers: each child's regular sessions, extra sessions, absences, and a register of actual arrival and departure times.
• Invoicing: bills worked out from the sessions booked, with funded hours taken off and extras itemised, ideally passed straight to your accounting package.
• Funding: parent declarations, eligibility codes and the termly claim to your council.
• Learning and development: observations, photos and progress records against the EYFS, shared with families.
• Staff and occupancy: rotas, room capacity and how many places are free in each part of the week.
• Communication: announcements, messages and a portal where parents see their child's day, their invoices and the forms they need to sign.

Beyond that core, systems differ in how well these parts are joined up. A booking change should flow into the next invoice, the occupancy picture and the funding claim without anyone re-entering it.

The features that matter most for settings in England

Funding that matches the rules where you are

Since September 2025, working parents in England can get 30 funded hours a week from when their child is 9 months old until they start school, alongside the universal 15 hours for 3 and 4-year-olds and 15 hours for eligible 2-year-olds. For many settings, funded children are now in every room. Your software needs to apply funded hours correctly on invoices, produce your council's declaration form, and help you keep eligibility codes valid. Our guide to nursery funding sets out the entitlements in more detail.

Invoices parents can understand

The DfE's statutory guidance asks for invoices that separate funded hours, paid hours, food, consumables and activities. Check that a system can produce that breakdown without hand-editing. See nursery accounting software: what you need to know.

Learning records that suit how your staff work

Observations need to be quick to capture on a phone or tablet in the room, link to the areas of learning you use, and reach families once a manager has approved them. Look at how a practitioner records a moment in practice, not just at the reports it produces.

Safeguarding records kept apart

Concerns and their history need tighter access than the rest of the system: visible to your designated safeguarding leads, not to every member of staff, and never to parents.

Occupancy you can plan from

Knowing which sessions have space next term, and whether you have the staff to cover them, is how you fill places and avoid paying for cover you don't need.

Data protection

You are handling children's personal data. Ask where data is stored, who at the supplier can see it, whether they will sign a data processing agreement, and how you get your data back if you leave.

How to compare systems

1. Start with your busiest hour. Write down what happens at drop-off, at the end of the month and at funding claim time, and ask each supplier to show you those tasks, not a general tour.
2. Ask about your council. Funding forms and portals differ by area. Ask whether the supplier already supports your council's form and portal, and what they do if not.
3. Check the integrations you rely on. If your accountant uses Xero or QuickBooks, ask whether the connection is live today and which way data flows.
4. Look at the parent side. Sign in as a parent during the trial. If families find it confusing, you will be the help desk.
5. Understand the price. Most systems charge by number of children or places. Check what is included, whether set-up costs extra, and the notice period.
6. Ask for honest limits. A good supplier will tell you what their system doesn't do. Be wary of claims you can't test in a trial.

Switching without losing a term

• Pick your moment. The start of a term or the start of a billing month is easiest, because sessions and funding claims start fresh.
• Move the essentials first. Children, contacts, sessions and rooms are what you need on day one. Learning history can follow.
• Run one billing cycle in parallel. Compare the new system's invoices with your old ones before they go out to families.
• Tell parents early. Explain what changes for them (a new portal, a new way to sign forms) and when.
• Train by role. Room staff need the register and observations; managers need invoicing and funding. Nobody needs everything on day one.

Where Pigeonhole fits

Pigeonhole is nursery management software built for settings in England. It covers the register, invoicing with Xero and QuickBooks connections, council funding forms, EYFS observations, safeguarding records, staff rotas and occupancy planning, with a staff app for iOS and Android and a web portal for parents. Children and contacts can be imported from a CSV in whatever format your current system exports, and our Chrome extension can lift records straight from your old system's pages.

It is priced by the number of children, and there is a 30-day free trial. See nursery management software for an overview or pricing for the details.