Lauren

A new Android app update is now out (version 5.1). This is for those of you using the Tapestry app on Android and Amazon Fire devices. There's nothing terribly exciting in this update, but it does fix a few minor bugs and does include some prep work for the next release - which will include new functionality!

Those of you with really large bespoke frameworks should find the Thoroughness page a little more manageable now - you can collapse/expand sections of your framework so you are only looking at the bits you're interested in.

There have been a few new tweaks to our existing billing and booking functionality. - Payment reminders. We know chasing parents for fees can be a bit awkward. To make it a little easier, we’ve added the ability to send a short message from Tapestry telling them how much is owed and how to pay it. You’ll find a button to do that on the Account Balances and Children > Finance pages. - Show a count for unpaid and unsent invoices. This is a small but useful change. You can now see how many unpaid/unsent invoices there are on the relevant tabs on the Invoices page. - Tweaks to some warning/info messages to make them a bit clearer. - New history events for adding / editing / removing a child's billing address. - Layout improvements to the child & staff registers on small screens

If you are a Tapestry user and would like some or all of your data to be deleted, in most cases you will need to contact the school, nursery, or childminder who set the account up. They will be able to delete/amend your account and any content within Tapestry. That is because they are what is known as the 'data controller' and we are the 'data processor'. This means only they can decide what data is collected and stored or otherwise processed by Tapestry, and we can only follow their explicit instructions. If you are a manager on the account, or you have any questions, you can email us at customer.service@eyfs.info and we'll be happy to help! You can find out more by reading our data processing agreement. The most up to date version can be found here: https://tapestry.info/security.html

Introducing the staff register! This online only register lets your team members sign themselves and their colleagues in and out. - You can order the staff list by first or last name. - Notes can be recorded and in/out times can be edited or deleted as needed. - By clicking on a staff member you’ll be able to see their registration history for the day; when they were signed in and out and who by. - Edits to sign in/out times are noted in your History section. The history entry will include the original time.

Here is another round of changes for the management system. This time they’re to do with the invoicing section and it’s a big ‘un! 1. The main addition is the ability to record and allocate payments, then view how much credit/debit each child’s account is in within ‘Account Balances’. You’ll add a record of payments from each child’s new ‘Finance’ tab (go to Booking > Children > choose a child > then look in the tabs under their name and profile picture). Those payments will be automatically assigned to the child’s invoices, starting with the oldest one, but you can overrule that and allocate money to specific invoices if you choose. Receipts for the payment will be emailed to the assigned bill payers. You can edit and delete records of payments The new Account Balances tab (go to Booking > Finance > Account Balances) will show you the balance for each child’s account and clearly indicate whether it is in credit or debit. There are page filters here to show accounts in just one or the other and for each room. Each child’s current balance will show up in a few places; within the Account Balances page, on their Dashboard, within their Finance tab, and on new invoices. You can prevent the balance from showing up on PDF copies of the invoice if you like from within the ‘Config’ area. Note: So you don’t start out with all of children having a huge negative account balances, today we have auto added payments for all of your invoices currently marked as paid. The payment will be logged as being made on the day you marked the invoice as paid, and the payment type will be ‘other’ (as opposed to cash, BACS, direct debit, or however else they actually paid). Tapestry will not auto add payments moving forward. 2. For each child you’ll see a new tab – ‘Finances’. There are two tabs with that, one for their invoices and one for Transactions. The Invoices one is almost the same as what you could see up to now, except we’ve dropped the status filter, and added a check box so you can set whether you see cancelled invoices or not. The ‘Transactions' tab shows a full list of payments and invoices for this child. 3. You’ll also do this from each child’s new ‘Finances’ tab. The name and address you set there will appear on invoices moving forward. You have been able to set the bill payer from the Invoices page for a while, but you can now also set the bill payer from the Manage Relatives section of the Control Panel (on the 'Adding/Editing a relative' screen or via Manage Relationships). 4. Invoice Status changes Whereas up to now an invoice’s status could be ‘Paid’ or ‘Sent’ or ‘Unsent’, we’ve separated out the statuses into a payment one and a sent one. We’ve added a new status – ‘Part Paid’. That’s for invoices that have had some money allocated but not the full amount yet. 5. Funding changes Quite a few of you told us that you need to be able to allocate funding in smaller chunks than 15 mins. We’ve made that change, so you can now apply any number of minutes. When you’re setting up the funded hours within new regular schedules, you might also notice that instead of a setting wheel to choose whether you view it in minutes or as a decimal, there is a check box. 6. Export your invoices You can now export invoice data from the Exports sections 7. A new tab for extra charges In the Rooms section, you’ll now see an Extra Charges tab. This will show you how many times each of your Extra Charges have been charged on each day and for each day as a whole. 8. Other. There are a couple of other little things. You’ll see a new section on each invoice for Payments allocated to it. There are new history events within the control panel for new actions (e.g. recording a new payment) If you generate a negative invoice (this is one where the parent would have a credit, rather than a charge as usual), that credit will be auto allocated as a payment to the next invoice which is a charge. The above is live on all active Tapestry accounts now. If you’re not currently using the Invoicing feature and want to know more about it, take a look at the Invoices feature page on our information website.

We have just released the latest round of management system features! This round includes the following: 1. Extra Charges You can now add products, services, and consumables as ‘Extra Charges’. You’ll set the price for each of these when you create them. You’ll then attach the relevant ones to each child’s Regular Schedule or as one-off extras to automatically appear on their next invoice. 2. Assign bill payers and send invoice links This release gives you the ability to select the bill payer/s for each child from their list of relatives. After you’ve generated an invoice, you can choose to send it directly to them simply by clicking the ‘Send’ button when viewing the invoice, or ‘Send invoice’ from the cog on the full list of invoices. Those parents and carers will then receive an email and an internal Tapestry notification with a link to the invoice in. 3. A filter for invoice statuses Next time you go to your list of invoices, you’ll be able to see a new ‘status’ filter. With this filter you can select which types of invoice you’d like to see, meaning you can quickly and easily hide ‘cancelled’ ones, pick out the ones that are currently ‘unsent’, or find those that are ‘sent’ but not marked as ‘paid’ yet. 4. Prefilled new Regular Schedules based on the child’s previous one. To save you some time when you’re adding in your new Extra Charges or when you just want to make a small change to a child’s Regular Schedule, new Regular Schedules will now auto-populate with the child’s most recent previous schedule. You can then edit, add, and remove those sessions and charges as necessary. 5. New configuration options for invoices If your bill payers find the full breakdown of Regular Schedules on invoices a little bit too much, you can swap that out, or additionally include, a summary view for the PDF. That still shows the different sessions that are included but tells you the quantity of each session rather than listing each individually. With both the summary and detailed view you can choose whether to include the rates you charge or not. 6. Additional tweaks We've also included a few little tweaks to improve the general usability of the Invoices feature: - Session prices visible on the Sessions Config overview page. - Invoices of children with the statuses ‘Awaiting Deletion’ and ‘Inactive’ remain on your Invoices list (but please do still export copies of all their invoices for your own records). - An improvement to the "next child" functionality when working through invoices. You can read more about the Invoices feature on our website.

Children who sign into Tapestry themselves via the Child Login feature and who have had observations published for them in the Cherry Garden assessment framework will now be able to watch and interact with their Cherry Garden trees/flowers. The animation is a lovely way for them to see their progress and clicking on the leaves will reveal the observations, which act as a memory jog for all the brilliant things they've been doing. If you're not familiar with Cherry Garden, you can find out more on the Cherry Garden feature page.

Those of you using the Online Register will now see figures at the top of the page for the number of children currently expected (based on your Booking data) and the number of children currently attending (based on who has been signed in within the online register).

Today we have released the 3rd major part of the Tapestry Management System – Invoices. It joins Booking and Registers and is available on all Tapestry accounts at no additional cost. From now you’ll be able to set prices for your sessions, assign funded hours to each child’s regular schedule, and generate invoices based on your booking data. Here are the things you’ll be able to do, in a bit more detail: Set fixed, or hourly prices for each session. These can be a set cost for all children or based on age. Set up the types of funded hours you offer. Define how much you receive from your LA per funded hour (this will be useful for later features, but won’t impact the prices you charge per session now – funded hours are always completely free) Allocate funded and unfunded hours to each child’s Regular Schedule and see how much will be charged for each session. Have invoices generate with the click of a button – the costs they include will be based on your booking data and account for any changes since you last invoiced, so also include any necessary adjustments. Add line items (additional fees and refunds/reductions). Set invoice statuses (unsent, sent, paid, overdue) and add notes. Export PDF copies of each invoice View a list of all invoices or for just 1 child at a time. This is available on the browser version of Tapestry, in the ‘Booking’ section. To find out more and see some pictures, take a look at the Invoices Feature page. If there are any tweaks or additional functionality you would particularly like to see as part of the invoices section, or even if you just have some general feedback on it, please get in touch by emailing us: customer.service@eyfs.info.

We're excited to announce Custom Report Templates as our latest new feature! If you’re using an assessment framework that doesn’t come with a pre-made Tapestry Report Template e.g. a bespoke framework, or if the template you currently use doesn't quite meet your needs, this is one for you! Managers can create report templates to their own specification using any of the predesigned sections the Tapestry team have created or flexible text boxes to be titled how they choose. Staff can then use those templates when writing reports. Some key benefits: flexible reporting to suit any framework or flagsets access to predesigned modules to make the creation of a custom report quick and easy custom headings and sections to suit your individual requirements helps your school/setting go paperless as staff and relatives can access and contribute to them via their Tapestry account. You can create as many as you like, and as always, this comes at no additional cost. Find out more about Tapestry reports on our Reports feature page.

The latest update to the Android/Fire app update is here (version 5.0.0)! This is for those of you using the Tapestry app on Android devices and Amazon Fire devices. This release includes: The Online Register (currently in beta) - check and record absences, leave notes and sign children in and out on your Android mobile device. Care Diary for Relatives - relatives can now easily see Care Diary entries and add comments via the app. Reference material - the Development Matters reference material is now available to view in the app for when you need a quick memory jog. General improvements You can find out more about the above features on the Tapestry Online Learning Journal website. Some of you will be automatically upgraded to it and some of you will need to upgrade yourself from the Play Store and Amazon Appstore. Please note that the release will be rolled out over the next week, so if you can’t see the latest version just yet, please check back in a few days. This is the last version that users on an Android version lower than 5 (Fire OS 5) will be able to install. It is also the last one we’re fully supporting for devices on an Android version lower than 8 (Fire OS 7), meaning that while you will be able to download it onto those devices, you are more likely to experience small issues.

This is a small change but hopefully a useful one! Staff and relatives can now edit their own comments on Observations, Memos, and Reflections. This means they can correct any typos without having to delete the whole comment and readd it. The original comment will be recorded in each account’s History section so managers can still see the original comment if necessary.

Introducing Tapestry’s Online Register (beta)! This is the next major feature in our management system. It will show you the children you are expecting based on the regular schedules, extra bookings and absences you’ve added in the Booking section, and allows you to easily mark them in and out or as absent. You’ll also be able to: See the notes you’ve made on the bookings and add additional ones. Mark additional, unexpected, children in. Filter and sort the children list. Check past registers. Export any of your registers to PDF for your records. We’re not quite ready to release it on the apps yet, but we know many of you will be keen to explore, so we are releasing it as a ‘beta’ to start with. This means that whilst the released functionality has been fully tested and you are welcome to start using it, you may see some tweaks over the next few months - most notably, it becoming available on the apps. If there are any tweaks or additional functionality you would particularly like to see, or even if you just have some general feedback on it, please get in touch by emailing us: customer.service@eyfs.info. As a side note; if you would like to start using it on a tablet straight away, you can do so from your chosen browser. You can speed that up a bit by creating a link to it for your device’s home page. See how in this video. You may also notice that the side menu for booking has changed a little bit. This change should make register easier to access and help you to easily distinguish between the printable and the online registers.

The first monitoring screens are now available for your Bespoke frameworks. They focus on the number of times you have assessed each part of your framework, whether that be just by selecting specific parts, or by using your scales. As with most of our tracking screens, you will find one screen for individual children and one to see lots of children all at once. You will be able to access the relevant observations on both of them. You can find out more about Bespoke Frameworks on our website.

We have updated the time we send the 'daily' and 'weekly' email notifications. From today, they will go out between 3:30pm and 8:30pm GMT rather than in the early hours of the morning. The option for 'immediate' email notifications remains unchanged.

Children with the status 'Enrolling' can now be linked to memos, meaning staff can send information and updates to relatives before their child officially starts at the school/nursery/childminder.

This latest management system update is to enhance the printable registers. It includes: An option to export weekly registers as well as daily ones. The ability to include the times of each booked session for a child (e.g. 9am-12pm, 12pm-3pm, 3pm-4pm). The ability to include date of birth, booking notes (for daily registers only) and additional blank rows for unexpected children. Some new additional sorting options: youngest to oldest, oldest to youngest, and arrival time. A new ‘layout option’ section which allows you to determine your preferred default layout options and what you’d like to be included in your printed registers. These are all things that have been widely requested by our users, so if there is more you’d like to see, please do get in touch by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info.

Adding Care Diary to the apps is something we’ve been working on for a little while now, so I’m very excited to announce that the first release of it is here! If you are a staff member/manager on a Tapestry account and using an Android or Amazon Fire device, when you next update the app to version 4.2.0 you will see a new section in the bar at the bottom of the page – Care Diary. That will take you to a brand new set of pages allowing you to add, view, edit, and approve Care Diary and Accident entries. As you can on the browser, you’ll be able to make individual or group entries (with tweaks for specific children as needed), and collect signatures for accident forms. This is currently only available on Android and Fire devices and only for staff. If you use Tapestry as a parent/carer, or if you’re using an iOS device, you will still need to use the browser. An iOS update won’t be too much longer though, and we’ll be starting on the parent/carer version not long after that comes out. N.B. Note that the new version is released in phases by Android, so it might take a couple of days for the update to be available for you.

Those of you who have already started using our new Booking system will notice some additional functionality from today: When setting up or editing rooms, you can now add the minimum and maximum age of children in this room as well as the maximum capacity for the room at any one time, and the staff ratio. The Daily and Weekly Booking screens will show you how many staff are required for specific periods of time and whether you’ve hit your maximum capacity for children booked into a room. A calendar for each child’s bookings and absences on their Booking Dashboard page. You’ll be able to see a weekly and monthly view of that. To see what else you can do with the Tapestry Booking section, take a look at the 'Booking feature page' on tapestry.info.

The Tapestry Documents feature has been updated to allow you to say which relatives you’d like to be able to see each document. This means you can upload things for specific classes without risking the relatives of children outside of those being confused by them or having to search through all of your resources to find the ones relevant to them. It will relate to each file, rather than whole folders, and you can set the children whose relatives you’d like to see the files as part of the adding or editing file details process.

Following the success of the ‘Cherry Garden Framework’ (Branches 1-10), we have now implemented the ‘Cherry Garden Bridging Framework’. This is Branches 11 and 12 for Mathematics and English. This separate framework can be turned on from the Assessments section of the Control Panel. It has been designed for children with learning differences and focuses on criteria that would be expected for a typically developing child in year 1. It comes with the Baseline and Statement screens that those of you who have used the original Cherry Garden Framework will be familiar with, as well as a ‘Best Fit’ screen which is a variation on the ‘Target Setting’ screen. Assessments can be made as part of observations on the browser and on the apps.

A new iOS app update is now out (version 4.4.0). This is for those of you using the Tapestry app on Apple devices e.g. iphones and ipads. There aren’t any new features this time, it is purely for feedback improvements.

We are very excited to announce the first part of Tapestry’s management system – Booking. Once you’ve configured this new section with your setting’s opening hours, closures, session times, and rooms, you’ll be able to start recording which days and times your children are booked in for. You can set up regular schedules for each child as well as add extra bookings and record planned absences as needed. You’ll find screens to help you keep an eye on occupancy and for downloading daily registers, as well as providing you with information you’ll need for invoicing. We are fully committed to developing our management system further and have already started work on future releases. You can expect these to come out in phases and to include more screens to help with occupancy planning, a full billing and invoicing section, and digital registers.

Managers will now receive a notification when there are children's profiles on their Tapestry account that have been 'inactive' for 6 months. If you receive that notification you should consider whether you need to still be storing those children's personal data and whether it is in line with the data protection law of your country and your own policies. If you don't need to keep the profiles any more, you can mark them for deletion.