17 years helping British businesses
choose better software
OWNA
What is OWNA?
OWNA is an All-In-One Child Care Management Software for child care centres in the UK & EU. Our dedicated apps enable compliance with the legal bodies in each country, allowing centres to achieve better results in assessments and ratings. Join over 2,000 centres by signing up to OWNA's FREE app today, and find out how simple child care management can actually be!
Who Uses OWNA?
Directors, owners and educators looking for an easy, all-in-one solution to tackle service management, family engagement and CCS.
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OWNA
Reviews of OWNA
Smooth transition, will never go back
Comments: Extremely Positive! OWNA support have been kind, accessible and super helpful! OWNA aligned with our personal sustainability goals (paperless) and has every feature we need. Highly Recommend!
Pros:
OWNA is easy to navigate and is a one-stop shop! It honestly has it all! From planning and programming, linking learning stories and observations, sharing information amongst management and staff, and so much more. Our families love the 'cheat sheet', finding it easy to navigate with this assistance, and now engage with our content/documentation so much more than ever before. Everything is ONLINE! Going paperless is easy with OWNA.
Cons:
The only hiccup - transferring families from our old software left emergency contacts behind and only took primary caregivers. it took a lot of work to get those contacts all included in each child's profiles. Several years on, this isn't a problem as new families enter the details right into the system.
Alternatives Considered:
The Hills Little Learners Review
Comments: Amazing.
Pros:
In my many years in the ECEC Industry and using a many different apps for the indurty, OWNA has by far exceeded my expectations as it offers so much. Not just fr the educators documenting but also for Admin and enrolments. Having everything on one app makes it so much easier to stay on top of things and also for families which can see everything from their child's day to our QIP, centre poilcies etc. It has been a very welcomed change to our service and the eudcators and myself really love using this daily
Cons:
It can be glitchy at times and we may have to close the app, re open for it to work. Sometimes the educators lose their work if the app glitches if they are in the middle of writing an observation and it stops working, it doesnt automatically save to draft.
Alternatives Considered:
CCS, Billing, Direct Debit
Comments: Great tool for parents interaction. Horror tool for managing billing, charging parents and direct debit is extremely cumbersome, tedious taking my time away from working on my business and spending more time in my business. I do not have confidence with OWNA in using it do discuss billing issues with our parents.
Pros:
Parents interaction, parents communication
Cons:
Billing, Direct Debit, processes, lack of automation, lack of formal parent statement day by day
OWNA Response
4 years ago
Sorry to hear about your experience Ted. Have you tried coming to our training sessions on CCS, billing, direct debit etc.? There's a ton of good info in there that I think would help you and your parents with getting a better experience of the software. - Jack
Alternatives Considered:
Best move ever!
Comments: We are just starting to realise many benefits - which include time saving features. We have also been able to move a lot of our paper based practices to OWNA, which works in well with our sustainability practices. I love that the support team are always on hand, and work hard to resolve any issues - including our user-knowledge, or lack thereof!
Pros:
Moving over to OWNA has been incredible. We are still not using all the features, but definitely moving towards this. OWNA has and will enable us to move all our processes into the same software, rather than using different platforms for different functions. It literally has just about all we need and more. The platform is simple, clean, and functional. The team at OWNA are so responsive to needs and suggestions, and seem to work around the clock to ensure that their program does everything we need (and want) it to do.
Cons:
There are definite issues with the accounts side of the software, and flaws that need to be ironed out.
OWNA Response
4 years ago
Thanks for the feedback Trisha! Happy to hear you're enjoying the software. As always, feel free to send your feedback to the support team re: accounts and see how we can iron this out. Thanks again - Jack
Alternatives Considered:
IF YOUR NOT USING OWNA YOUR MISSING OUT
Comments: heaps less admin time as normal daily tasks are simplified and completed in less than half the time with OWNA software compared to old school applications. enhanced programming capabilities, and Families LOVE the transparency of OWNA!
Pros:
This product is extremely user friendly and the software integration when we first swapped over was so simple the customer service team handled majority of it. our centre loves the transparency of the app, families love it, we are able to provide enhanced programming cycle compared to all other apps on the market.
Cons:
i would like to see some additional report features added. for example a 1.8% tool, and customisable booking sheets. however in saying this OWNA has shown a strong commitment to continuous improvement and every time we take a new idea to them they run with it and within weeks/months we see it implemented in the app. i hate Fat Zebra they are hard to work with compared to other direct debit companies.
OWNA Response
4 years ago
Thanks Lauren - you're right we are passionate about helping operators, and we're stoked to hear your enjoying the experience. As I'm sure you know, we'll take this feedback on board. In fact, the 1.8 tool was built over the weekend an should be ready to use now, so thanks for bringing that up! - Jack