Things we understand from the call
Fourteen things about how you run, in plain terms. Nothing here is a feature yet. This is just what we took away.
How they become features
Those fourteen understandings become the features below, split into the ones the first build has to have, and the ones that follow.
Must have
9 featuresThe first build is not worth doing without these. They are the rota itself, and the rules that keep it right.
The rota builder
Builds the first draft from your shift patterns and the children you expect, then your manager edits around it.
The ratio and rules engine
Your ratios plus your own rules, checked on every rota, automatically.
The hard block, with override
A rota that breaks a rule cannot be published. Sally can approve a logged exception when real life needs it.
Downward age mixing
Works out where an older child can sit in a younger room at the tighter ratio to save a wage.
Qualification and certificate tracking
Holds every certificate with its dates and stops counting someone the moment one lapses.
Famly integration
Pulls the children you expect per room per day, and your staff and qualification data, straight from Famly.
Cross-site staffing
Share staff between the seven sites, with their hours following to the right cost pot.
Cost against target and payroll export
Costs the rota as you build it, shows it against your 55 per cent target, and exports the hours to BrightPay.
The app and permissions
A web app on laptop and phone. Each manager edits their own site, you and Sally see all, and each site's cost stays private.
Nice to have
4 featuresReal value, but the product works without them on day one. They follow once the builder is earning its place.
The staff app
A profile each, holiday requests, and like for like shift swaps that are qualification aware, with a manager's approval.
Holiday management
Flags anyone who has not taken their quarterly allowance, and warns when the maximum are already off. Booked leave feeds the builder.
Safeguarding and agency visibility
A designated tick shows your safeguarding and SENCO cover for the day, and the rota shows how many agency staff are in.
The full reporting suite
Reports on hours, absence, cost and how full each room is against capacity, so you can see room for more children.
The product, split into three
At its core, InRatio turns your child numbers and your staff into the right rota, and keeps it right. We recommend building it as three products. Each does one job well, each can stand on its own, and together they cover the whole picture.
The forecasting tool
The core · build first
The heart of it. It takes your child data from Famly and your employee data, and builds the rota: the right people, in the right rooms, at the right cost. This is the forward planning side, the part that takes the days today.
It is built in layers, from the essentials outward:
- The builder and the rules engine, with the hard block and age mixing
- The staff app: profiles, holiday requests, shift swaps
- The costing against your 55 per cent target, and the pricing detail
The on-the-day tool
The live side · build next
Every morning brings sickness and last minute changes. This is for your managers to run the day, not plan it.
- Mark who is off, and move people between rooms and sites
- Pull the clock-in data from the Famly QR codes
- Check what actually happened against the planned rota
- Send the real hours to payroll, and red flag anything slipping out of ratio
The certification flagger
The bolt on · stands alone
The simplest of the three, and the one that can stand completely on its own. It works on your staff data alone:
- Who holds what qualification and experience
- Who is running low, or about to expire
- A single clear view, with a flag before anything lapses
It feeds the forecasting tool, so the rota only ever counts someone whose certificates are valid, but it earns its place on its own from day one.
The versions, simplest to most advanced
You do not have to build all of it at once. This is a ladder. Each version is useful on its own and a stepping stone to the next. You start cheap and simple, prove it works, and climb only when it has earned it.
A smarter spreadsheet
Formulas and colour coding in your existing sheet. A room turns red the moment it is under ratio in any time band, amber when a qualification or certificate condition is not met, with a running count of who you need against who you have. You still build the rota by hand, but the sheet catches the mistakes the instant they happen.
Where it stops: it cannot read child numbers from Famly, the age mixing is awkward to express in plain formulas, and it gives your staff nothing on their phones.
A purpose-built Excel workbook
A proper tool, engineered from scratch rather than formulas bolted on. A structured staff list with qualifications, certificate dates, contracted hours and home site, a clean rota grid per site, the full rule engine, and a dedicated age-mixing calculator that tells you when combining two rooms saves a person. Built to handle all seven sites.
Where it stops: data entry is still manual, there is no live Famly link or staff self service, and a spreadsheet cannot truly block a broken rota or keep an audit trail.
A phone app on top
The workbook stays the brain, with a proper app over it. Staff see their own rota on their phone. Managers get a cleaner build screen and a live ratio status. Holiday and swap requests live in the app with manager approval, rather than in texts and memory.
Where it stops: an app built this way warns more easily than it truly blocks, and the live Famly link, the auto build and payroll export are all stronger in proper custom software.
The full forecasting tool
The real thing, custom software in your own environment, with a login and nothing to install. The rota builder with pattern auto-fill and manual edit, live ratio and qualification checks per room per band, the hard block that will not let a broken rota out, with an authorised override and an audit log, multi-site staff sharing with hours attributed correctly, payroll export, and the Famly link pulling child numbers.
Everything you asked for, as one product. The audit trail alone is a recognised Ofsted mitigation.