Built for schools, after-school programs, child care centers and summer camps

One product, four kinds of pickup

PickupLink was built around the school car line, and the words in the product are school words: grades, classrooms, teachers, dismissal times. Nothing in it assumes a bell schedule, though. A "school" is any site that releases children to adults. A "grade" is any group with its own pickup time. A "classroom" is any room, group or cabin with a named adult in charge, and "dismissal" is whenever your pickup window opens. An after-school program, a child care center and a summer camp set up exactly the way a school does and run the same four steps every day: email, tap, verify, release. There is no app for families to install at any of them.

What changes between them is the shape of the pickup window and how well the staff know the families. A school releases 300 children in 20 minutes to parents the teachers mostly recognise. A child care center releases them one at a time over three hours. A camp releases them to parents its counsellors met last Monday. PickupLink's settings cover the window; the named, location-verified check-in covers the rest.

K-12 schools

The car line, the walk-up gate and the early-release day. Public elementary schools, private, charter, Catholic and Christian schools, Montessori schools and small multi-campus groups use PickupLink to know who is in the next car before it reaches the door. Grades carry their own dismissal times, so kindergarten at 2:50 and fourth grade at 3:05 each get their own email and their own rows on the board. Siblings at the same time are one link and one tap. Optional car tags print from the roster for schools that like a number on the windshield, and typing the number at the curb flags the whole family on the classroom board.

Everything a school needs is on its own pages: PickupLink for schools covers the office, the classroom and the curb, and the car line page covers the geofence, staging students and the staff member at the curb.

After-school programs

After-school and extended-day programs have the hardest version of the problem. Pickups trickle in from four o'clock until closing, the staff on duty at 5:45 are rarely the people who met the parents in September, and the adults collecting a child on a Tuesday are often a different set from the ones who collect on a Thursday. A sign-out sheet on a clipboard records a signature, not whether the person signing was allowed to.

In PickupLink the program is a group of its own with its own pickup time, either inside the school's account when the program runs on the same campus, or as its own site when another organisation runs it. Set the pickup time to the moment the program opens for pickup and keep check-in open for as long as the program runs: the window can stay open for up to 12 hours after that time. Every approved adult gets one email as the window opens. Each one taps "I'm here" from the parking lot whenever they arrive, and the staff board shows the child's name and the adult's name in arrival order. The release is recorded with who collected the child and when, so "who picked up Maya last Thursday?" has an answer with a time on it. Adults who are listed as contacts but not approved to pick up never receive a link. A parent who calls to collect a child early gets a link on the spot with "Dismiss now" on that one student.

One thing to know: each child has one pickup time in PickupLink. A child who stays for after-care every day belongs in the after-care group rather than their daytime grade, so the parent's link arrives for the after-care window and not for the bell, and the office moves a child between groups when their schedule changes.

Child care centers and preschools

A child care center releases each child one at a time across the whole afternoon, often to a rotating cast of parents, grandparents and nannies, and licensing expects a record of who collected each child and when. Most centers keep that record on paper at the front desk, or in a general-purpose child care app that every family has to install and every teacher has to learn.

With PickupLink the center is the "school", each room is a classroom with its lead teacher, and the pickup window is set once in Settings: pickup opens at 3:00, check-in stays open until close. The day's email goes to every approved adult before the window opens, anywhere from 15 minutes to four hours ahead, so the link is in the inbox of whoever is collecting that day. On arrival they tap "I'm here" from the car or the sidewalk and the room's board shows the child's name and the adult's name. Staff bring the child to the door, match the face to the name on the board, and tap once. The release is logged with the adult's name and the time, and each child's report shows every pickup over the last 30, 60 or 90 days. An adult who is not on the child's approved list has no link and cannot check in; a grandmother the front desk adds that morning gets hers the same day. Accounts exist for adults only, and nothing is collected from the children themselves.

Summer camps and day camps

Camps have new families every session and seasonal counsellors who have never met any of them. A camper's parent, the carpool parent and the grandparent visiting for the week all turn up at the pickup loop, and the nineteen-year-old at the gate has to decide whether to release a child to each of them. Camps are also where the pickup plan changes most often: a Friday early close, a rained-out afternoon, a field-trip bus that runs late.

Set the camp up as a school with one group per session or age group, each with its own pickup time, and import the roster from your registration export at the start of each session. Counsellors are teachers in PickupLink, invited by email, and see their own group's board on a phone. Every approved adult gets the link before pickup, taps it at the loop, and the group's board can speak the camper's name out loud so counsellors do not need to watch a screen. Parents of two campers in the same session check both in with one tap. On a rained-out afternoon, "Dismiss now" opens check-in for a whole group at once and emails every family. When a session ends, campers who have left are marked inactive on their record and the next session's roster is imported.

What the words mean outside a school

• School is your site: the school, the program, the center or the camp. It holds the address, the timezone, the pickup area on the map and the check-in settings. One administrator account can run more than one.
• Grade is any group with its own pickup time: a grade, a session, an age group or "After-care". Every child is in exactly one.
• Classroom is a room, group or cabin with one adult in charge, who sees that group on their own live board.
• Teacher is whoever releases children: a teacher, a room lead, a counsellor, a program coordinator. Office staff and administrators see the whole site.
• Parent is any adult approved to collect a child: parent, grandparent, relative, sitter, carpool driver or emergency contact, each with their own "can pick up" flag. Only approved adults get a link.
• Dismissal time is the moment pickup opens. The email goes out before it, and check-in stays open after it for as long as you choose, up to 12 hours.

Setting a pickup window when there is no bell

1. Step 1

   Pick the moment pickup opens.

   Give each group a dismissal time equal to the start of your pickup window: 3:00 PM for a center, 4:00 PM for after-care, the end of the camp day for a camp.

2. Step 2

   Keep check-in open until you close.

   Set how long after that time check-in stays open. The default is 90 minutes; a center that opens pickup at 3:00 and closes at 6:30 sets 210. The link a parent receives works the whole time.

3. Step 3

   Choose when the email goes out.

   By default 15 minutes before the window opens; anything up to four hours ahead works, so a family with a 5:45 pickup has the link in their inbox from early afternoon.

4. Step 4

   Draw the pickup area.

   A box on the satellite map around the parking lot, the drop-off loop and the front door. Parents who walk in check in from the sidewalk; parents who wait in the car check in from the lot. Check-in from outside the box is refused.

Pricing is the same for every kind of site

Pricing is per site, by size, whether the site is a school, a program, a center or a camp: $299 per year for a site with up to 300 children, or $799 per year for up to 1,000 children with personalized support and onboarding. Parents are unlimited. Enterprise covers larger sites, districts, child care groups and camp networks at a custom price. Every plan includes every feature, billing is by credit card online or by invoice (sent 30 days after activation, due net 30), and families and staff never pay. A program or camp that runs on a campus already on PickupLink is added to that account as a group, at no extra cost.