Protect subsidy revenue.
Find compliance gaps before inspection.
hayway turns attendance, staffing, billing, and state rules into a ranked daily action list. Your director sees what needs attention, why it matters, and what to do next.
- Runs alongside your state system
- Director-approved actions
- Founder-led migration
- Month-to-month plans
Add coverage in Infant A at 7:30a
Forecast: 9 infants, 2 staff scheduled
The operating layer for the day
Your center already produces the data. Flow turns it into decisions a director can stand behind, before the morning gets loud.
See the day before it starts
A 7-day, room-by-room staffing forecast built from your own attendance, schedules, and reservations. Confidence is shown, and when the data is thin Flow says so instead of guessing.
A short list, not a dashboard safari
Flow ranks what actually needs a decision: add coverage, rebalance staff, open capacity, protect a break. Every card carries the facts, the timing, and the alternatives it considered.
You make the call
Accept, decline, or defer. Flow rechecks live data at the moment you decide, then tracks whether the decision helped, so your judgment gets sharper with every week.
Fill a gap from your own bench
Broadcast an open shift to your approved staff and substitutes by app, text, or email. The first valid acceptance wins the assignment, with the whole trail recorded.
Flow recommends. Your director decides. It never publishes a schedule, moves a child, or files a claim on its own.
- Review
Add coverage in Infant A at 7:30a
Forecast: 9 infants, 2 staff scheduled
AcceptDeclineDefer 2h - Review
Twos room trends over ratio Thursday
3 drop-ins confirmed, 1 teacher on PTO
AcceptDeclineDefer 2h - Review
Break window safe at 1:15p
Room stays in ratio with floater cover
AcceptDeclineDefer 2h
Illustrative preview. Every real recommendation shows its reasons.
Review subsidy claims against attendance
hayway compares prepared claim and copay records with recorded attendance, flags configured voucher-risk patterns, and organizes remittance differences. Operators still follow the state's official submission and review process.
- Claims priced from real attendance
Prepared claim and copay records for Indiana and Kentucky can be compared with recorded attendance.
- Voucher-risk monitor
Flags absence patterns that may be nearing a configured state-program threshold for operator review.
- Get-Paid-Right view
Compare billed and reimbursed amounts, confirmed shortfalls, pending amounts, and recorded overpayment exposure.
- Runs alongside KinderConnect
Keep using the required state system. hayway prepares center-side reconciliation records and export files, not certified e-filing.
2 vouchers at risk, nearing the monthly absence cap. Act before the slot terminates.
Reconciliation runs alongside your state system, no certified e-filing.
A structured path from import to launch
Review data imports, configure center rules, verify the setup, and then invite families. hayway plans are month to month.
Step 01: Plan your data import
Bring CSV exports for families and primary guardians, children, and staff. Review the mapped fields and correct every flagged row before import.
Step 02: We dial in your rules with you
Configure tuition, subsidy, and sibling-discount rules, map rooms and ratios, and review the state baselines used by the platform.
Step 03: You go live, families and all
Invite parents to pay, sign contracts, and follow daily sheets, photos, and messages after your center verifies its configuration.
Review your supported CSV imports with the founder before launch.
Everything it takes to run your center
Billing, compliance, curriculum and operations in one system built for childcare, with native apps for families and teachers. Pro includes an AI co-director that knows your state's rules.
hayway Flow™: the operating layer for the day
Flow turns the data your center already produces into a ranked, explainable decision queue: staffing coverage, capacity you can open, breaks that stay safe. Your director stays in charge; Flow keeps the picture current.
- 7-day room-by-room staffing forecast with confidence shown, never faked
- Ranked recommendations, each carrying the facts, timing, and alternatives it considered
- Accept, decline, or defer; every decision rechecked against live data at the moment you act
- Private coverage dispatch to your approved bench; first valid acceptance wins the shift
- Break protection that will not leave a room short of ratio
- Co-Director answers from your center's own records and your state's verified regulations, advisory only
Billing & subsidy revenue
One billing engine for subsidy and private-pay families alike, closing the gap between care delivered and dollars collected, so you are not stuck reconciling two systems by hand.
- Flat-rate, hourly/age-based, drop-in, prepaid wallets and sibling discounts
- Recurring invoicing and parent self-checkout
- 0.4% fee on ACH, 1.5% on card
- Subsidy claims and copays reconciled against attendance
- Employer-sponsored seats and scholarship funds billed as third-party payers
- Before- and after-school care programs with standing enrollment and recurring billing
- Voucher-risk monitor flags children nearing absence limits
- Owner P&L by category with a dollar revenue forecast
- Year-end tax statements
Compliance, ratios & your AI co-director
Stay inspection-ready, and on Pro let an AI co-director answer from your state's regulations.
- Audit-readiness scanner for missing or expiring certs and health files
- Live staff-to-child ratios, with a predictive 7-day forecast on Pro
- CACFP meal-claim tracking
- Pro: AI co-director answers from Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois and Tennessee regulations, and proposes ratio changes you approve
Families & the parent app
One place for parents to follow the day, pay, sign and stay connected.
- Daily sheets with photos, meals and naps
- In-app messaging and emergency SMS broadcasts
- Messages and updates auto-translated into 10 languages
- Allergy and dietary meal checks that flag conflicts before serving
- Portal to pay, sign and view records and tax statements
- Biometric / passkey check-in with PIN and QR fallback
- Tablet check-in that keeps working offline and syncs when the connection returns
- Live classroom video
Built to scale across sites
Run one center or a whole group from a single back office.
- Multi Center Dashboard with multi-site rollups
- Anonymized local-market tuition benchmark
- Forward capacity planner: see which seats go dark, months ahead
- Supply requests from the floor, par-level replenishment and receiving
- An on-call substitute bench to fill open shifts fast when staff call out
- Staff stay-risk scores that surface likely departures before they happen
- Role-based access enforced at the database level
- Custom domains, white-labeling, procurement and payroll-ready CSV export
Teachers & the classroom app
A native app built for the classroom floor, so teachers run the room from their phone and everything they post flows straight to families.
- Check children in and out with the live ratio for the room
- Post photos and daily moments that reach the parent app right away
- Log meals, naps and safe-sleep checks, with allergy flags before serving
- File incident reports that reach families after director approval
- Message families and classroom groups, and request supplies for the room
- Clock in and out, and run field trips with an off-site safety roster
Curriculum, assessment & accreditation
A best-in-market teaching suite: plan against a standards-aligned framework, assess through authentic observation, individualize teaching, and turn it all into accreditation-readiness. Aligned to the NAEYC 2025 program standards.
- Configurable learning framework with a Head Start ELOF default, crosswalked to your state's standards
- Observation-based, strengths-based assessment, never a single high-stakes score
- Individual learning plans with next steps derived from each child's own progress
- Developmental portfolios and family-facing progress, not just photos
- A NAEYC accreditation-readiness map auto-assembled from your live data
- AI drafts plans, tags observations and writes narratives, always yours to confirm
Continuous improvement, built in
A director's improvement loop: score your center, surface the highest-dollar fix to make next, act, and watch the trend. Honest by design.
- A single 0–100 Center Improvement Score across revenue, funding and compliance
- Your highest-dollar fix surfaced first, ranked by real dollars
- A 90-day score trend so you can see the line move
- Every opportunity carries the real records and a one-click path to act
- Reads "not yet measured" instead of a fake number when the data isn't there
- Private peer targets from centers like yours, never named or ranked
- A dated library of childcare grants matched to your center, with a guided writer that drafts each application from your real data
A front door you can actually trust
Move families through the lobby in seconds without loosening security. Passkey check-in confirms who is arriving, every arrival and pickup updates your live ratios, only authorized adults can sign a child out, and parents can look in on the room while they’re away.
Passkey check-in on your lobby kiosk
Families check in with their own phone’s FaceID or TouchID through standards-based WebAuthn passkeys: no proprietary face-scan, no badge to lose. Opt-in per family, with a 4-digit PIN or QR fallback whenever someone prefers it.
Live ratios update on every arrival
Each check-in and checkout recomputes your staff-to-child ratio by room against your state’s legal age bands, so the front desk and directors see the real count the moment a child walks in, not at the end of the day.
Authorized-pickup enforced at the door
Every release is matched against the child’s authorized-pickup list. Pick “someone else” and the kiosk demands a name and reason, flags and audit-logs the override, and alerts your directors in real time.
Bring your own classroom cameras
Connect the cameras you already run: any HLS, MJPEG, or embeddable feed. Directors watch live right in the dashboard, scoped to their own center and visible only to elevated staff. No new hardware, no cloud relay.
Built on standards-based WebAuthn passkeys using the device’s own FaceID or TouchID, not proprietary facial recognition.
Tap to check in
FaceID or TouchID on your own phone
Know exactly where you stand in your market
An anonymized, privacy-safe read on local tuition, the subsidy dollars on the table, and who you compete with: a view that exists only because hayway runs the centers, and sharpens with every new one.
k-anonymized (suppressed under 5 distinct centers), bucketed to the nearest $50, never a competitor's name, id, or exact price.
Your center at a glance
Occupancy, average tuition, subsidy mix and collection rate, computed so the numbers can never read over 100%.
Subsidy opportunity
How many subsidized children, participating providers and dollars are in your county, the money on the table.
Competitive landscape
Who you compete with within 8 miles: capacity, subsidy acceptance and where you sit against the local median.
Cost vs. market
Your tuition against the anonymized local median, per age band, the benchmark no standalone tool can build.
Demand & occupancy gap
One sentence that turns your fill rate and county demand into your next growth move.
One score, and the next move to raise it
Built on real process-improvement methodology, hayway turns the data your center already records into one clear answer: what to fix next, and whether you're actually improving. It ranks your highest-impact opportunities by real dollars, each with the records behind it and a one-click path to act, then rolls them into a 0–100 Center Improvement Score with a 90-day trend.
- One score, honestly computed
A weighted 0–100 Center Improvement Score across your money and your license: revenue, funding and compliance, with a 90-day score trend.
- The highest-dollar fix, first
Opportunities ranked by real dollars, each carrying the exact invoices, claims or records behind it and a one-click path to act.
- Never a number it can't stand behind
Where the data isn't there yet, it reads "not yet measured." No fake zeros, no invented metrics.
Illustrative sample. Your score is computed from your center's live operating data.
Built by a process engineer and daycare parent
Bringing process-improvement methodology, flexibility, and transparency to your center.
- Six Sigma Green Belt and structured problem solving
- Lean and 5S, root cause analysis, DOE and GR&R
- Fifteen years leading and training operations teams
- High-volume hospitality, from back-of-house trainer to sous chef
- Studying Data Science at IU Southeast
- A daycare parent on the other side of drop-off
Children's data, protected at every layer
A child's file is some of the most sensitive data a family ever hands over. hayway defends it in depth: isolated per center, encrypted where it matters, scoped to who genuinely needs it, and logged so access stays accountable.
Your center, walled off from every other
The separation between centers is enforced in the database with tenant and role controls, not just on the screen, so each center's children, families, and finances stay scoped to that center.
Extra locks on the most sensitive details
Medical alerts, allergies, custody and incident notes, Social Security numbers and bank details each carry an added layer of field-level encryption at rest, so those fields are not stored in plain text alongside the rest of the record.
Access scoped to the role
Teachers see only the children in their assigned room. Directors see their own center. Parents see only their own child. Least-privilege by default, and nobody can hand out access they don’t already hold.
FERPA-style disclosure trail
Every view of a sensitive record and every disclosure to a parent is logged FERPA-style, with court-ordered custody restrictions enforced. You can answer who saw what, and when, without reconstructing it after the fact.
Signed incident reports lock
Once a parent signs an incident report, it locks from edits. Families and your center keep one stable, signed record of exactly what happened, with no quiet revisions later.
Two-step sign-in that survives staff turnover
Staff sign-in supports phone codes and passkeys, with backup codes so a lost phone never locks anyone out. Turn it on for everyone or just for leadership when you’re ready.
Strong, modern security without the enterprise overhead. We don’t sell or share family data, and access is scoped to the people who genuinely need it. To be straight with you: this is serious protection, not a HIPAA covered entity or end-to-end encryption, and we won’t claim otherwise.
See how hayway compares to your stack today
Most centers stitch together separate billing, parent-comms, attendance, and compliance tools. Estimate what you pay for those now, pick a hayway plan, and we will do the honest math, including hayway's own subscription cost.
Pricing is per site, per month. No long-term contracts and no free trial.
Your current tool spend is an estimate you control with the slider. We do not assume what competitors charge. Only you know your real bills.
Add up your separate billing, attendance, parent-comms, and compliance subscriptions. This figure is your estimate.
Your estimate today
$300
/ month
hayway Pro
$275
/ month
Estimated lower monthly spend
$25
about $300 less per year
Estimates only. Actual costs and savings vary. hayway's plan cost is included in this comparison. Payment processing carries standard Stripe fees plus a 0.4% platform fee on ACH (capped at $2) and 1.5% on card, itemized to families.
Plan and verify your move into hayway
Bring CSV exports for families and primary guardians, children, and staff. hayway validates every row before writing, reports problems by spreadsheet row, and uses source IDs so corrected files can be re-run safely. Plans are month to month.
Founder's Circle centers get hands-on onboarding and direct founder support.
Families & guardians
Import family records, primary guardian details, contact information, addresses, and notes from CSV.
Children
Import child details, enrollment dates, allergies, and medical notes, linked to an imported family source ID.
Verified re-imports
Validate the entire file first, then safely re-run the same source IDs to update records without duplicates.
Staff
Import staff names, contact details, job titles, employment types, hire dates, and supported pay details.
One flat price per site
Three plans. Priced per site, with no long-term contracts.
Home
For licensed-exempt and registered home providers: billing, attendance, and families from your phone. One home program.
billed annually
- Up to 8 active children · 1 staff account
- Billing, invoicing & autopay
- Digital check-in & attendance
- Parent app + in-app messaging
- Documents & e-sign
- Year-end tax statements
Home Pro at $29/mo adds subsidy claim tracking and state remittance reconciliation.
Get startedStarter
For a single site: basic billing and the daily essentials. Unlimited children, one location.
billed annually
- Unlimited enrolled children · 1 site
- Core child & family profiles
- Digital check-in & attendance
- Flat-rate billing, invoicing & parent self-checkout
- Leads, tours & waitlist (basic CRM) + in-app messaging
- No parent app · 200 AI actions + 250 texts / mo included
Pro
Everything for growing centers and multi-site orgs: subsidy, scheduling, parent app, AI Co-Director, procurement, and unlimited sites.
billed annually
- Unlimited children · unlimited sites
- Hourly & age-based billing + subsidy claims, voucher-risk & CACFP
- Staff scheduling with Smart Fill & timesheets + parent app
- Document vault & e-sign + accounting export
- Multi-site rollups, AI Co-Director, procurement & compliance suite
- Custom domains & white-labeling · 1,500 AI actions + 3,000 texts / mo
Sitter: free for a single family's babysitter or nanny
Individual babysitters and nannies get a free hayway account. Start one yourself, or accept a family's invite from the parent portal. Log every session, send payment requests, and hand the family a clean year-end summary for their records. No subscription.
Free single-family account · no card required · grows into Home at $15/mo when you take on more families.
Prices are per site, per month. AI actions and texts beyond your plan's monthly allowance bill at $0.10 per action and $0.02 per text. Card payments include a 1.5% platform fee and ACH a 0.4% fee (capped at $2) on top of standard processing. No long-term contracts.
Plan your childcare software search
Practical guides and source-cited state requirements for childcare operators.
Childcare management software buyer’s guide
Compare billing, attendance, compliance, security, and family communication workflows.
Read resourceChildcare billing software guide
Understand recurring invoices, payment methods, reconciliation, and platform fees.
Read resourceState childcare licensing guides
Browse source-cited ratios, training, safety, facility, and subsidy requirements.
Read resourceQuestions, answered
Straight answers about pricing, payments, data security, and how hayway fits your center. Can't find what you need below?
Starter is $50 per site per month (unlimited children, one site, basic billing, no parent app). Pro is $275 per site per month and includes the parent app, subsidy tools, AI Co-Director, procurement, and more. Pro supports unlimited children and an unlimited number of sites, and each site is billed separately at $275 per month. Pricing is per location, and annual billing saves 10%. Each plan includes a monthly allowance of AI actions and texts; usage beyond it bills at $0.10 per AI action and $0.02 per text segment, billed monthly, never as a hard cutoff. No long-term contracts.
Still have questions? Get in touch
Run billing, attendance, subsidy records, and family workflows together.
Billing, enrollment, attendance, compliance and the parent app on a single childcare-native record, with no re-keying a child into five tools. Then we reconcile your KY, IN, OH, IL and TN claims against recorded attendance and flag configured voucher-risk patterns for review. Ask how supported family, child, and staff CSV imports apply to your setup.
No long-term contracts. Built in New Albany, Indiana.