Playground

Josh Andrews

Nadiuska

Zach Fortin

Help topics that apply to administrators and the Administrator Dashboard

For Single-Site Administrators

Set up and manage your Playground admin account

Account

A free, members-only perk that helps you save on everyday supplies for your center.

Playground Saving Club

Learn how Playground can help your center run efficiently and streamline processes.

What is Playground?

How Playground helps schools control who can access your building, data, and program

Secure Access Options in Playground

Learn more about the customization capabilities in Playground!

Playground's Branded Experience

What Playground is and how it works for admins

Overview

Videos to assist Spanish-speaking providers onboard onto Playground

Onboarding Videos for Spanish Providers

A step-by-step guide to setting up and using Playground.

Playground Onboarding Guide

Template emails and messages drafted for admins to send to families and staff during the Playground rollout

Introduce Families & Staff to Playground

Adrian Ruiz

Setup & Implementation

Learn where to find Playground’s latest feature updates directly inside the platform.

How to View Product Updates in Playground

Complete key end-of-year tasks, including generating tax statements, billing reports, and reviewing outstanding balances.

Your Guide to Closing Out the Year

Learn how to use AI to automatically adjust text, correct spelling and grammar, and tailor your tone.

Meet Camber: Your Childcare AI Assistant

How to reset a forgotten password or update your password from your account settings

Reset or Change Your Account Password for Admins

Complete these steps before your access ends to save the reports and records you'll need

Playground Account Offboarding Checklist

Henry Lee

Manage your account, introduce families and staff

Guides & How-To

Sasha Reiss

Configure and manage billing, payments, and payouts for your program

Billing & Payments

Track collections & see exactly how much was paid, when it was paid, and what was paid for.

Family Payments Overview

Set up Playground billing in just 4 easy steps

Billing Implementation Overview

Learn about billing processes for administrators

Billing Overview

Billing Plans Overview

How billing and payments work for your program

What to expect as you prepare to receive your first deposit from families.

Before Getting Your First Payout

How Autopay works, what to expect on your first run, and how to avoid common issues.

Before Running Your First Autopay

How to verify your account with Stripe and complete your billing setup

Sign Up for Stripe

Learn how to customize your Playground Payment Settings.

Configure Billing Settings

Learn how to setup and manage the bank account where payout deposits will be disbursed

Set Up Your Payout Deposit Account

Understand why Playground asks for the last four digits of my social security number

Why do you need personal information to verify my program's billing account?

How to think through your subsidy tracking before you start setting things up

Lay the Groundwork for Subsidy Tracking

Learn how to handle non-recurring charges like semester tuition, registration fees, and state assistance co-pays at your center.

One-Time Fees, Semester Billing & Co-Pays

Daniel Andrews

Set up your billing account and payment preferences

What to review, how to confirm it processed correctly, and answers to common post-Autopay questions.

After Running Your First Autopay

What to review, what’s normal, and what to do if something doesn’t look right once your first deposit hits your bank account.

After Your First Payout

Learn what a debit is and how to create one for a student. This article covers all the ways to post a debit in Playground, from the Billing Overview, Statements…

Create a Debit

Learn how to manage and delete student billing plans of all types

Manage Billing Plans

Learn how to use filters, totals, and sorting in the Transactions table to quickly answer common billing questions.

Navigating the Transactions Table

Learn about billing alerts and reminders on payments homepage

Review Billing Alerts and Billing Reminders

Everything you need to know about refunding payments in Playground

Refunds

Learn how to apply discounts to student invoices in Playground.

Discounts

Learn how to create and apply held deposits in Playground.

Held Deposits

Learn how to edit and update existing payment plans.

Adjust Debits

How to set custom billing rates per student and charge families based on daily, hourly, or per-minute attendance

Attendance-Based Billing

Learn how to create student billing plans of all types

Create Billing Plans

Managing drop-in care availability and bookings

Drop-in Care Billing

Best practices for creating late fees to charge guardians for overdue payments

Late Charges for Overdue Payments

Manage autopay, guardian payment methods, and guardian charges.

Manage Guardian Payments, Autopay, & Overdue Balances

Logging & applying offline payments payments made by guardians, like cash, check, or third-party payment tools like Venmo, Zelle, or Cashapp

Offline Payments

Payouts refer to deposits made to your bank account for money you have collected through Playground.

Payouts

Billing statements reflect all billing-related activities that occurred on a student’s account in the specified billing period

Understand & Generate Tax Billing Statements as Admins

Learn about the different fee approval types and how to charge families for late pickups, incidental charges, & program enrollments

Fee Approvals

How student and family ledgers track every charge, credit, and running balance

View & Understand Balances and Ledgers

Manage charges, payments, and account balances

Here’s a guide to understanding issues that are caused by duplicate charges and how to resolve them effectively.

Handling Duplicate Charges

Learn why a payout adjustment happens, what causes it, and how to identify the transaction behind it.

Negative Payouts

Resolve common billing issues regarding mismatched balances!

Resolving Common Issues with Tuition Billing Balances, Credits, and Charges

Correct and adjust student balances by creating, editing, or deleting charges and credits

Correct Account Balances

Handle disputed charges, failed payments, and other unexpected scenarios like negative deposits.

Disputed Charges & Failed Payments

Resolve credit balance issues on student accounts in Playground

Credit Balance Troubleshooting

Resolve unmatched balances, unassigned debits and credits, and missing payment methods after splitting a family

Split Family Billing Troubleshooting

Resolve card declines and payment method issues for families in Playground

Payment Method Troubleshooting

Common autopay issues and how to resolve them in Playground

Autopay Troubleshooting

Resolve billing discrepancies and payment failures

Troubleshooting

James Aschkenasy

Track and manage student attendance for your program

Attendance

Everything you need to know about Playground door locks — features, setup, pricing, & the installation process

Guide to Playground Door Locks

How attendance works in Playground for students and staff, and where to find it

Attendance Overview

Learn more about attendance in Playground

Info about Playground’s partnership with ZkTeco USA & MellinTech.

Our Partnership with ZkTeco USA & MellinTech for Door Locks

Set up keyless entry using Playground's integration with Kisi

Integrate Kisi with Playground

Configure your connected check-in kiosk, mobile app, and additional settings like geofencing, access hours, and role-based access

How To Set Up Playground's Door Lock Features

Learn how to log check-in/out and edit attendance records

Log & Manage Student Attendance

Enable carpools for your families that live close together and view the active carpools for your center!

Manage Carpools as an Admin

Complete a Name to face check-in for your classroom to make sure all students are present.

Name to Face

Guardians can let you know their estimated time of arrival for check-in and check-out

On My Way Queue For Admin

Learn how to enable, complete, and utilize daily wellness checks

Wellness Checks

An overview of all of our access control features in Playground

Door Lock Software Features

Resolve the most common door lock, Kiosk, and hardware access problems

Troubleshooting Door Lock Issues

How to resolve common scheduling issues across locations in Playground, including missing students, filter confusion, and forecast discrepancies

Scheduling Troubleshooting for Single Site Admins

Felicity

Resolve attendance discrepancies and errors

Amanda Galluzzo

Communicate with families and staff through posts, messages, and newsletters

Chat & Feed

Settings, custom posts, and best practices for using the Feed across your team.

Get the Most Out of the Feed

Learn how admins can use the Chat, Feed and Newsletters to request materials from Guardians.

Request Materials from Guardians

Learn how admins can set chat permissions, create group chats, archive/delete chats, mark chats as read, and download chat transcripts

Chat for Administrator

Learn how to utilize parent engagement on both the web

Manage the Feed on the Web

Create and send newsletters to your families and/or staff.

Newsletters

Create a post that is sent out to all users in your Playground account.

Record & Post Activities to the Feed on Mobile

Learn how to send a private response to a post or announcement using Chat

Contextual Post Replies for Single Site Admins

Add emojis to your posts to enhance communications!

Add Emojis to Messages on Windows & Mac for Single Site Admins

Molly Farber

Send updates, manage messages, and stay connected

How to resolve common image formatting, rotation, and size issues in newsletters.

Troubleshooting Image Issues in Playground Newsletters

Resolve problems with posting to the feed.

Troubleshooting Feed Issues

Eamon Davis

Create, send, and manage forms, documents, and file requests

Paperwork & Forms

Learn how staff paperwork works in Playground, including how to view assigned documents, track completion status, and manage paperwork across staff members.

Staff Paperwork Overview

Paperwork only accessible to providers for their records

Provider Paperwork Overview

A complete guide to Playground's Paperwork features

Student Paperwork Overview

How paperwork and document management work

Learn how to create and manage file requests for staff in Playground. This article walks through requesting documents from staff, tracking uploads, and reviewing submitted files.

Create and Manage Staff File Requests

Learn how to upload, customize, and manage fillable PDFs for staff paperwork in Playground. This article walks through adding fillable fields, assigning PDFs to staff, and managing completed submissions.

Create and Manage Staff Fillable PDFs

Learn how to create, customize, and manage staff forms in Playground. This article walks through setting up forms for staff paperwork, collecting signatures, and managing completed submissions.

Create and Manage Staff Forms

Create, send, and manage paperwork for your program

For Single-Site Administrators

Account

Billing & Payments

Attendance

Chat & Feed

Paperwork & Forms

Enrollment

Listings

Program Management

Subsidy

Payroll & Time Tracking

CRM & Marketing

Learning & Curriculum

Food Program

Expenses

Reports

Settings & Configuration