In many facilities, access to the management system is a privilege: the coordinator has it, the secretariat has it, and that's it. Educators note attendance, meals, and nap times on a sheet posted in the section, and at the end of the day, someone transcribes everything. It seems prudent. It is, almost always, the cause of half the problems that are then attributed to the software.
Let's see why the right question is not "how many people should have access," but "who sees what," how to build profiles item by item, and why the supplier's licensing model influences this choice more than one might think.
The Hidden Cost of Data Entered Later
The "few hands" model has three concrete side effects.
The data arrives late. At 9:30, the coordinator does not know how many children are in the facility: they will know when someone has finished transcribing. But that number is needed for the kitchen, needed for the numerical report in the section, needed if a family calls to find out if their child has arrived.
The transcription introduces errors. A departure time that shifts by a quarter of an hour, a lunch quantity noted incorrectly, two similar names that get confused. It's not distraction: it's what happens when you hurriedly copy, at the end of the day, a sheet written by someone else.
One person becomes a bottleneck. If the person entering data is on vacation or sick, everything stops. Meanwhile, the same information is written twice, once on paper and once on screen: double work, paid twice.
The Right Question is Not How Many People, But Who Sees What
When access is restricted, the real fear is not that educators will make mistakes marking attendance. It is that someone opens a screen that does not concern them: unpaid fees, contracts, accounting notes, complete family records, health information. A legitimate concern, to be taken seriously.
Only it is a problem of permissions, not of the number of accesses. Closing the management system to everyone to protect the administration is like blocking the entrance to the facility because the office does not have a lock. The principle is another: every person sees the minimum they need to work, and they see it immediately.
In Easy.School, roles are customizable with granular permissions: it is decided item by item what each profile can open. And permissions are defined for both staff and families: even what families see in their area is a choice of the facility.
How to Build a Profile, Item by Item
The method is tedious and works: you take the list of sections of the management system and for each one decide who opens it. A few starting points.
- Section Educator — attendance, daily diary, meals, nap time, diaper changes, communications to families of the children they follow. No fees, no invoicing, no contracts.
- Coordinator — all educational areas, plus staff, registrations, and reports of the facility.
- Secretariat and Administration — records, fees, invoicing, documents, deadlines. The daily diary is not needed.
- Auxiliary Staff and Kitchen — attendance for the day and dietary tables, nothing else.
- Family Member — only their own child, with their own bulletin board.
Two precautions. Build a role for a homogeneous group, not for a single person: otherwise, in a year you will find yourself with fourteen different profiles and no one remembers why. And start narrow, expanding on request.
To the three basic roles — coordinator, educator, and family member — corresponds a different bulletin board: internal notices to staff do not end up under the eyes of families, and a circular for families does not get lost among service communications. The tool also changes: the educator works from the Easy Staff app, the one they hold while welcoming, and marks attendance at the moment the child enters. Parents use the Easy Family app and see their own child, not the entire facility. The act of recording returns to where it was born and the evening transcription disappears.
Why the Licensing Model Decides for You
This is the point that almost no one puts on the table. Some suppliers charge for the license per user: every person to whom you grant access is one more entry on the bill. The effect is easy to predict.
- Fewer accesses are opened, choosing based on cost rather than on who really touches the data.
- Credentials start to circulate: two or three people use the same profile and from that moment on, it is no longer known who wrote what.
- Those who remain outside continue to work on paper, and the management system becomes an archive of data a day old.
It is an organizational choice made for pricing reasons. In Easy.School, the license is tied to the number of enrolled children, not the number of users: staff is unlimited and included. The cost is the same whether you give access to two people or twelve: the question "how many people" ceases to exist and only the one that matters remains.
The numbers, for transparency: the first 20 children cost 25 euros per month or 250 euros per year plus VAT, with 4 GB of included space; each additional child adds 0.60 euros per month (6 euros per year) and 0.2 GB. There are no other items: staff accounts do not appear on the invoice.
The Lifecycle of an Access: Open, Correct, Move, Close
Opening many accesses also scares due to maintenance: staff changes, someone covers two locations, someone leaves halfway through the year. These situations can be managed with four operations.
- Opening. You create the profile, assign the role, and the credentials start. If they end up in spam or are lost, they can be resent without doing anything again.
- Correction of Data. Those who work can request the modification of their data with a request that the coordinator approves: no one touches a colleague's record and the coordinator does not act as a typist.
- Multiple Locations. Those who work in multiple facilities are added to the other location reusing the same credentials, without creating a second profile. One person, one access, two locations.
- Exit. A profile is disabled without deleting the history: those who leave the facility stop entering, but the diary they compiled remains where it is, readable and attributed.
More Accesses Make Traceability Better, Not Worse
The recurring objection is: "if many write, it is no longer clear who did what." The opposite happens. When a sheet of paper is transcribed by a third person at the end of the day, the real author of the information is irretrievable: on screen, it shows who copied, not who observed the child.
With personal credentials, however, every operation has a name. Easy.School records a log of actions on the database tables, so when a piece of data does not match, it is possible to reconstruct what was modified instead of opening a memory investigation. The condition for it to work is a single one: every person has their own access, credentials are never shared.
There is also a compliance aspect: giving each person only the permissions they need, and being able to document who accesses what, is the principle of data minimization that the GDPR requires for children's and families' data. A single access shared by the entire section is indefensible.
How to Transition to the Open Model Without Trauma
The change can be made in a few weeks, if done in an orderly manner.
- List who touches the data today, including paper: almost always there are more people than those appearing in the management system.
- For each, write down the three or four pieces of information they actually enter in a day: that is their minimum permission.
- Build a role for a homogeneous group, instead of tailoring permissions person by person.
- Start with a pilot section for two weeks: this helps to bring out missing items before involving everyone.
- Remove the paper sheet. If it remains there "for safety," double work remains too.
- Review permissions after a month: something will be missing, something else will be too much. It can be corrected in a few minutes.
In Summary
Limiting access does not protect data: it only makes them older and less reliable. What protects them are permissions defined item by item, personal credentials, and a log that indicates who did what. Those who observe the child must be able to record what they see, at the moment they see it, from the tool they already have in hand. And if the supplier charges per user, that organizational choice is not being made by you: the pricing list is making it.
Do you want to see how roles are built in your facility? Try Easy.School for free.
