INTEGRATIONS

Wired into the tools nurseries already use.

ParentLink ships with first-party connectors for Direct Debit, card payments, transactional email, SMS, HMRC funded codes, and a read-only REST API. No "Coming soon" — every integration listed here is live in production today.

Try free for 14 daysSee all features
All live — none are roadmap stubs Per-nursery credential isolation GDPR + RLS-gated
01
PAYMENTS

Real Direct Debit and real card processing, not a basket-handoff.

GoCardless for recurring Direct Debit (the default UK childcare rail — Famly + Cheqdin both lead with it at ~£4 cap per payment, vs Stripe's per-transaction fee on ~£900/mo nursery fees). Stripe for one-off card payments (trial deposits, holiday-club extras, late-charge invoices). Both providers can run side-by-side at the same nursery.

GoCardless Direct Debit
Recurring DD against parent bank accounts. Hosted onboarding flow → magic-link mandate setup. Webhook-driven status (active / failed / cancelled). Per-mandate retry button on the Worklist. Mandate admin view in Manager → Finance. See the £-saving calculator vs cards →
Stripe cards
One-off card payments via Checkout. Per-nursery test + live mode keys (no shared platform account). Webhook-verified completion. Used for deposits, extras, ad-hoc invoices. Failed payments roll up alongside DD on the Worklist.
TFC reconciliation
HMRC Tax-Free Childcare payments land as BACS with a 13-digit reference. Upload your bank statement; the matcher proposes child-by-child applications. One click marks the matched weeks paid via TFC. No public HMRC API exists — this is the polished manual workaround.
Bulk mandate setup
Migrating from Famly or Ovivio? Upload a CSV of parents and ParentLink mints a Direct Debit setup link for each one — match is by email, parents with an active DD are skipped, and you get a results CSV ready to mail-merge.
02
MESSAGING

Email and SMS from ParentLink — or from your own providers.

Email goes out from ParentLink’s shared sender by default, in your setting’s name. On Pro, plug in your own Resend or SMTP account so mail comes from your own domain. Text messages can use ParentLink’s account or your own Twilio, Vonage or MessageBird.

Per-nursery email provider
Plug your own Resend API key (or any SMTP-compatible provider). Sent from your domain (DKIM + SPF on your DNS). Manual mode generates the email body for staff to paste into their inbox if no provider is configured — never blocks the send flow.
SMS — Twilio, Vonage or MessageBird
Per-nursery Twilio credentials → SMS for visit-confirmation modals, doc-send chase-ups, late-pickup heads-up. Off / Managed (shared platform sender) / Own (your Twilio) — switch at Settings → Messaging. UK + Ireland senders auto-normalise to E.164.
Web push notifications
Standards-compliant Push API (VAPID-signed). Parents opt in; new diary entries, photos, and urgent messages buzz the phone — Web Push in the browser, Firebase push in the Android app.
Send modal
A unified Send modal for any outbound message: email + optional SMS, with provider auto-detection ("Send via Resend", "Send manually — copy body"). Visit confirmations get a mailto: fallback so you can always escape the platform.
03
READ-ONLY REST API

A public /v1/* API — most competitors gate this behind Enterprise.

Mint a bearer token, scope it to the data you want exposed (children / attendance / invoices / rota / waiting-list), and you've got a clean REST surface for any external system. Per-token rate limit, per-call audit trail, SHA-256 hash at rest, one-time secret display. Designed to feed Xero, Slack, or your bespoke reporting dashboard.

Bearer tokens
Mint at Settings → API tokens. Returns the raw "pl_…" secret ONCE; SHA-256 hash at rest. Per-token scopes, expiry, rate limit (1-1000 requests/minute), revocation. Stripe / GitHub-style prefix so leaks are scannable in source code.
Five endpoints
GET /v1/children, /attendance, /invoices, /rota, /waiting-list. Pagination via limit (1-500) + offset. Invoice endpoint exposes per-child finance roll-up (total due / paid / outstanding) — not raw JSONB. Edge-function authenticated; nursery-scoped at the token.
Audit trail
Every call records IP + user agent + status + duration in api_token_calls. Manager can detect compromise + clean up dormant tokens. Rolling-60s count drives rate-limit enforcement — no separate counter to drift.
Outbound webhooks
HMAC-signed POSTs the instant an event fires — child.signed_in / signed_out, enquiry.created, incident.logged, invoice.paid. Add an endpoint at Settings → Webhooks, pick your events, verify the signature. At-least-once delivery with retry + backoff and auto-disable on a dead URL. Push beats polling. Full docs at /developers.
04
REGULATORY HOOKS

HMRC funded codes + curriculum frameworks, jurisdiction-aware.

The funded-hours world is a per-nation maze: HMRC for England 30 hours + TFC; Funded ELC for Scotland; Wales LA codes; NI EA references; Ireland's ECCE and NCS schemes, with Tusla as the regulator. ParentLink keeps the funded-entitlement picker filtered to your nursery's jurisdiction, the verification lifecycle on the HMRC pattern, and the curriculum picker on whichever framework Ofsted/CIW/CI/ETI/Tusla actually expect.

HMRC 30-hours verification
Format-validates 11-digit codes; verification timestamp + portal deep-link; Worklist criterion when verification is older than 90 days (HMRC's reconfirmation cadence). Note: the public HMRC childcare-service API was deprecated in 2018, so this is a polished manual-portal workflow, not an automated check.
Curriculum frameworks
EYFS (England) / CfW (Wales) / CfE (Scotland) / NIPC (NI) / Aistear (Ireland) — picker scoped to your jurisdiction, observations + journals follow the right framework, inspection-prep view rolls up the right standards.
Funded entitlement engine
England 15h universal / 30h working parents / 15h eligible 2-year-old / Scotland 1140h ELC / Wales / NI Pre-School Education / Ireland ECCE + NCS. Each child can inherit the nursery default or override per-child. calcWeeklyBill respects the cap.
Audit log
Every consent change, role grant, refund, mandate setup, and force-advance writes to audit_log with actor + before/after, kept for 24 months.
FAQ

Common questions

Do I need my own GoCardless account?
Yes, by design. Per-nursery credentials means payments land in your bank account, not a shared platform sweep. Set up free at gocardless.com; paste the token at Settings → Payments.
Do you take a cut of payments?
No. ParentLink's subscription is the only revenue we take. GoCardless's standard 1% + 20p (capped at £4) and Stripe's standard card fees go directly to them — we don't layer anything on top.
What's the API rate limit?
Per-token, 1-1000 requests per minute (you set it when you mint the token). The default is 60/min. The edge function counts rows in api_token_calls within the trailing 60-second window before allowing each new request.
Is there an outgoing webhook?
Yes — live and in production. Subscribe at Settings → Webhooks to child.signed_in, child.signed_out, enquiry.created, incident.logged and invoice.paid. Each delivery is HMAC-signed (verify with the per-endpoint secret), retried with backoff, and a dead endpoint auto-disables. Full docs + a verification snippet at /developers.
Can I migrate from Famly or Ovivio?
Yes. The Children import takes a flexible CSV (we map most Famly + Ovivio columns automatically). The Bulk Direct Debit setup at Settings → Payments takes a parents CSV and mints a GoCardless mandate-setup link for each parent in one shot.
What if my parents already have a TFC reference?
TFC is bank-statement reconciliation — there's no API. Add the 13-digit reference on the child profile; upload your bank statement at Reports → TFC; the matcher auto-pairs received BACS with the matching child for one-click confirmation.

Plug it in. Stay in control.

Per-nursery credentials, scope-gated API tokens, manual-mode fallbacks. Try the integrations free for 14 days — no credit card required, your data exported on request on cancellation.

Start free trialSee pricing