Daily Nanny

Review by eFreeware

If you employ a nanny, or you are one, the day usually produces more information than any single text thread can hold: hours worked, a photo from the park, whether the baby finished the bottle, what time the afternoon nap started. Daily Nanny is built to gather all of that in one place, with the parent and the nanny sharing the same record. It is free, it is published by Dave Coffin, and it has been on Google Play since September 2017.

The appeal is the overlap. A messaging app handles conversation but not pay; a spreadsheet handles hours but not photos or notes about medicine. Here the developer has put four jobs side by side, and both adults in the arrangement see the same entries rather than comparing separate versions of the day. I would expect that shared view to be the main reason someone installs it.

It sits in the Communication category, which undersells it a little. Messaging is one of the tools inside, but so are shift accounting and a daily tracker for the children, and those are the parts that distinguish it from simply texting the nanny.

Four tools in one shared record

The app covers shifts, photos, messages and a child tracker. Shifts handle time and money: a nanny clocks in, can add shifts that already happened, and sees what is owed for the hours recorded, with overtime worked into the total once the hourly and overtime rates are entered. Parents can also log shifts, record payments and see a payment history.

Photos are uploaded by either side and shared automatically with everyone involved. Both parents and nannies can comment on them, and the developer suggests adding a grandparent in another part of the country to the same loop. Messages run as a single group thread rather than one-to-one chats, so care-related conversation stays together instead of scattering across private messages.

The tracker is the fourth piece. Nannies and parents can both record daily details about a child such as naps, bottles, meals and medicine, and parents receive push notifications when something notable is entered. The developer describes the app as the best way for the two sides to stay in touch, which is marketing language, but the four functions do cover most of what a working day generates.

Shift tracking and the money side

For anyone paid by the hour, the shift tools are the part that matters most. You enter an hourly rate and an overtime rate, and the app does the arithmetic and keeps a running total of what is owed. Past shifts can be entered after the fact, which suits arrangements where the clock-in happens elsewhere rather than in the app at the start of the day.

The parent's side is deliberately separate in emphasis: tracking shifts, marking them paid and holding on to a record of payments made. That gives both people the same underlying numbers, which is where informal arrangements usually break down. The most recent update lets shifts be added for individual children, useful in a household with more than one child where hours are split or billed differently.

What I like about this design is that it stops the pay conversation from being a monthly reconstruction. Marking a shift paid is a record of a payment.

Photos, messages and the daily log

Photos are simple in the way that matters: one of you uploads, everyone invited sees it, and comments sit alongside. Adding a relative who lives far away is a stated use, and because sharing is automatic once someone is invited, there is no separate step of forwarding pictures to the people who want them.

The messaging thread keeps care-related talk in one group, which avoids the usual split between what was said to one parent and what the other never saw. Alongside it, the tracker records the small events of the day, and parents get push notifications when something notable happens. The developer notes that notification preferences can be customized, so the volume of alerts is something each person can adjust to their own tolerance.

Nannies enter the children they care for and can invite as many people as they want to receive notifications; parents enter their children, invite the nanny and start collaborating. That invite model is what makes the app a shared record rather than a personal diary, and it is also the reason both sides need to be willing participants.

What it takes to run smoothly

This is a two-party app, and that shapes everything. It works when the parent and the nanny both use it; a record kept by one side alone loses most of its value. Setting it up means entering children, rates and the people who should be notified, and the pay tracking only produces a meaningful total once those rates are in place.

The app is free to download and shows no ads, and it does offer in-app purchases. The rating sits at 3.4 from 132 ratings, which is middling for a tool that people rely on for money and child records.

Notifications are central to how the parent's side works, and the preferences are customizable, so the app is not asking you to accept a fixed stream of alerts. Even so, anyone who dislikes being notified about everyday events will want to look at those settings early rather than after the first busy week.

Suited to households with a regular arrangement

The clearest fit is a family with a nanny working set hours, where pay includes overtime and where both adults are willing to keep one shared record. The combination of hours, rates, photos and daily notes matches that arrangement closely, and the ability to invite grandparents or other relatives extends it to people who want updates without being part of the day-to-day.

It also suits nannies who want their hours and overtime documented rather than remembered, since the app keeps the running total and the parent can mark shifts paid against the same record. Households where care is occasional, or where the two sides prefer to keep their communication in ordinary text messages, will find less here to hold on to.

The 3.4 average suggests a mixed reception among the 10,000-plus people who have installed it. I would read the recent reviews before committing to it as the place where pay gets recorded.

A shared log worth setting up together

Daily Nanny is a free, ad-free app that puts shift pay, photos, group messages and a child's daily details into one shared space for parents and nannies. The shift tools, with hourly and overtime rates and a payment history, are the strongest reason to choose it over a plain messaging thread, and the ability to add shifts per child after the latest update makes it more flexible for households with more than one child.

It is for families with an ongoing nanny arrangement and for the nannies themselves, ideally both installing it at the same time so the record starts out shared. If you want a single place to settle hours and overtime while keeping the day's small events and photos in view, this is built for exactly that.

The in-app purchases are the one thing I would check before relying on it, and the middling rating is worth weighing against the convenience. Set up together, with rates entered and notification preferences agreed, it addresses a real gap between messaging apps and payroll spreadsheets.

What's new in version 7.6.0

Now you can add shifts for individual children!