How Home adapts to your registration status, the Welcome tour, first-child confetti, the Quick Safety Check card, and what the FAB's Book Session and Ask KinderAssist actions actually do.
Home is the first tab you land on every time you open KinderStart. It isn't a static launchpad — it changes shape depending on where you are in your childminding journey, and on a registered setting it's where your day actually starts: safety checks, quick logging, and anything that needs your attention first.
KinderStart tracks your account against three states, and Home shows a different layout for each one:
If you haven't yet submitted your Ofsted (or Care Inspectorate/CIW) application, Home leads with a "Target: Become a Childminder" progress bar showing how many of your registration tasks are complete. Tap it to open the full Registration Tracker. Below it, a Current Focus section surfaces your in-progress task plus the next one up, so you always know what to do next without hunting through all four phases.
Once you've submitted your application, Home switches to a celebratory "Application Submitted! 🎉" tile with your estimated visit window (14–20 days), alongside a three-step mini tracker — App Checked, Ofsted Call, and The Visit — that fills in as you log each milestone. Below that, action cards for a Room-by-Room Audit and Mock Interview Questions help you get your home and yourself ready before the inspector arrives.
Once you're registered, Home becomes your daily operations screen: the Quick Safety Check hero card, any alerts that need attention (unsigned contracts, expiring certificates, unclosed attendance), your children for today, and the FAB quick-actions menu described below. Pull down on the screen at any time to refresh everything.
The first time you log in, a Welcome sheet appears with a 👋 and a short introduction to KinderStart. You have two options:
Either way, this only appears once — KinderStart marks your first login complete as soon as you close it.
The first time you add a child and your setting goes from zero children to one, KinderStart marks the moment with a five-second confetti burst across the Home screen. It's a one-time thing — adding your second, third, or any later child doesn't retrigger it.
On a registered setting, a hero card at the top of Home prompts you to complete your Morning Safety Check or Close Down Check for the day — tap it to work through the checklist without leaving Home. See the Health & Safety guide for what these checks cover and how they differ from your periodic Health & Safety Audit.
The floating + button in the bottom-right corner of Home opens a menu of nine quick actions without you having to open a specific child's diary first: Attendance, Log Meal, Naps, Bathroom, Sun Cream, Add Learning Entry, Noticeboard, Book Session, and Ask KinderAssist. The first seven are covered in detail in the Daily Diary guide — the last two are dashboard-only entry points worth knowing about:
Use this to schedule one or more extra days for a child outside their normal contracted schedule — for example, covering a parent's hospital appointment or a one-off swap. Pick the child (only children with an active, signed, manual, or pending contract are selectable), add one or more dates, set a start and end time, and optionally leave a note. KinderStart shows the child's existing rate as you book and flags whether it's booking against an ad-hoc contract or an extra day on a standard one.
Opens KinderStart's built-in AI assistant — ask it a regulatory or compliance question and it answers with citations from sources like the EYFS Statutory Framework, the Ofsted Inspection Handbook, HMRC childminder guidance, and the Care Inspectorate Scotland, CIW, and HSC Trust standards, so you're never left guessing which framework a rule comes from.
Home adapts as your business grows — from a registration checklist, to a submitted-application tracker, to the daily command centre you'll open dozens of times a week once you're up and running.
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KinderStart strives for accuracy. Competitor features and pricing comparisons are based on publicly available information as of May 2026. Details are subject to change by respective providers.