For New Zealand early learning services
The service’s whole day, in one calm system.
Kindra is student management software for early learning in Aotearoa. The roll and the ratio, whānau, consent, staff records, funding figures and invoices, built around a room full of children and wifi that comes and goes.
In development with one early learning provider as a design partner. Not yet generally available.
Kindra in a minute
How a day runs on it.
Read the transcript
In a busy centre, the roll is on paper and the ratio lives in someone's head.
Kindra, from Salix, puts the roll, ratios, families and compliance in one place.
Kaiako sign tamariki in with a tap, and if the wifi drops, the tap waits on the tablet until it's back.
The ratio moves as children arrive, and tells you how many more adults you need.
At the door, families can sign their own child in with their own PIN.
Parents see only their own child, in a phone browser, and can report an absence.
A photo of a tagged child can't reach the whānau journal until their family has given consent.
Medication is recorded against the parent's authority, and a dose outside it is refused.
Staff certificates keep their real expiry dates, and are flagged well before they lapse.
Attendance becomes RS7 funding figures to check and export, and for now, you still submit them.
And privacy is enforced in the database itself, not just on the screen.
Kindra, by Salix. The roll, ratios, whānau and compliance, in one calm place.
What the screens show
- A paper sign-in sheet with uncertain times, and the ratio worked out in someone’s head: 3 kaiako, 24 tamariki, how many under 2?
- A centre overview: 24 tamariki here now, within ratio, 2 staff records expiring soon, 3 messages from whānau.
- The roll while the centre is offline: two sign-ins saved on the device and marked not sent yet, then sending when the connection is back.
- The ratio card moving from within ratio, to at the limit at 3 kaiako and 25 tamariki, to a breach needing 1 more adult at 26.
- The door tablet: a parent picks their child, then themselves, and enters their own PIN.
- A parent's phone: their own child signed in, pānui and messages, an absence reported for Thursday, and other children not visible.
- A journal photo with a tagged child, held until consent is recorded, then published once the family says yes to journal photos and no to website photos.
- A medication authority for set dates, two doses given and recorded, and a dose after the last authorised date refused.
- Staff records with the expiry date from each document and who sighted it, two flagged as due soon.
- RS7 preparation figures for September, 3 incomplete days shown and not estimated, a CSV export, and a card saying Kindra does not file for you yet.
- Three families at one centre, each seeing only their own child, and any other centre unable to read a single row.
- The end card: Kindra, by Salix, for New Zealand early learning services, kindra.co.nz.
The day
Built for the room, not the office.
Not a school system with the word “child” swapped in. The things a kaiako does fifty times a day, and the records a service has to be able to show.
The roll, even when the wifi drops
Kaiako sign a child in with one tap, and out with one more that records who collected them. If the connection goes while the roll is open, the sign-in is held on the device, counted straight away, and sent when the connection returns or the next time the roll is opened. Nothing is entered twice, and a sign-in the server refuses is named, never silently dropped.
The ratio, as it changes
The adult-to-child ratio sits above the roll, split by age band, and moves as kaiako sign children in and out. It warns when the next child would need another adult, not after the limit has passed.
Allergies where you will see them
A child with an anaphylaxis plan is flagged on their record, in the children list, and on the roll where kaiako sign them in. Conditions, medication authorities and consent decisions are recorded once and shown to the people who need them.
Whānau see their own child
Parents use a browser on their phone to see their own children's records and nobody else's: attendance, pānui, learning moments and messages with the service.
Photo consent is a gate
A photo cannot be posted of a tagged child whose whānau have not consented; the system refuses it rather than relying on somebody remembering. Consent for the learning journal and consent for your website are separate decisions. Keeping an untagged child out of a group photo is still up to staff.
Staff records that warn first
First aid, police vetting, safety checks and practising certificates, each with the date on the document and who sighted it, flagged well before it lapses.
The office
The paperwork, from what already happened.
RS7 and ECE Return, prepared
Attendance becomes your RS7 figures, and staff records and hours become your ECE Return. Incomplete days are shown as incomplete: where the records cannot support a figure, Kindra names the days rather than estimating, and you can see how each figure was reached, per day and per child.
Invoices that stay as issued
A draft invoice can be edited and an issued one cannot. Changing what a family was billed is a new invoice, not an edit.
One login, every service you work at
A person who works at two services uses one account. Records at one service are never visible from another.
Privacy
The part we built first.
A service holds more sensitive information about a three-year-old than most businesses hold about anyone: who may collect them, what they are allergic to, and what a court has ordered.
Two boundaries, not one
Service from service, and family from family inside a service. A parent is a role within your service, so being signed in never means being able to see every child.
Enforced in the database
Row-level security in Postgres decides what each request can read, underneath the application. A bug in a screen cannot widen it, because the screen is not what holds the line.
Tested on every change
An isolation suite acts as an owner, a manager, a kaiako and a parent and checks that each cannot reach what they should not. It runs against a real database on every change we merge.
A log that copies nothing from the record
Who changed what, and when, is kept as the names of the fields that changed, never their contents. The log answers a reviewer’s question without becoming a second copy of the record.
Under the Privacy Act 2020 the early learning service is the agency that collects a family’s information. Salix Limited holds it as the service’s agent under section 11, so the information is treated as held by the service, and we do not use it for our own purposes. The full privacy statement says what is collected and where it is kept.
What it does not do
The answers we would rather give now.
Software a service relies on for something it cannot do is worse than no software. These are the limits, stated before you ask.
It does not file your returns
Kindra prepares RS7 and ECE Return figures for you to enter in the Ministry’s ELI Web. Sending them electronically needs the Ministry to accept a vendor for integration, which Salix Limited has applied for.
It does not certify your compliance
A ratio is only as good as what is recorded: a visiting child nobody records is not counted. Kindra is where your evidence lives, not an authority on what it should say.
There is no self-serve sign-up
Every service is set up with us, so the privacy boundaries are in place before the first child’s record exists. That is why there is no free-trial button on this page.
It is not generally available yet
Kindra is being built with one early learning provider, two licensed services, as a design partner, which has shaped it but does not yet run on it. No service operates on Kindra today. The Android app is on Google Play, and there is no iPhone app yet.
How it starts
A conversation about your service.
A conversation
How many rooms and sites, what your day looks like, and what you use now. We will say plainly if Kindra is not a fit yet.
A walk through, on demo data
We show you Kindra with invented children, never another service’s records, so you can judge it against your own week.
Set up with us
Your service, rooms and people are set up together, under the same database rules that keep every service apart, from the first record.
Get in touch
Write to hello@kindra.co.nz. For a service set up on Kindra, support is at support@kindra.co.nz, with hours and response targets on the support page.
To report a security issue, write to support@kindra.co.nz with enough detail to reproduce it. We will confirm receipt, and tell you what we found whether or not it turns out to be a fault.
The Android app
For kaiako and managers at a service set up on Kindra. Accounts come by invitation, so until your service invites you the app opens to a sign-in screen. There is no iPhone app yet.
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
The company
- Made by
- Salix Limited
- NZBN
- 9429053674067
- Incorporated
- 15 May 2026
- Country
- New Zealand