As a babysitter: your booking

What it's about

If a family has invited you, you get your own view in patchio – clear, stripped down to what matters, with no access to the rest of the household. Here you'll find everything you need for the evening, can tick off tasks, and leave a short log once the evening's done.

Accepting an invitation

You get a link by messenger, text, or email. Open it, sign in with your patchio account (or create one for free) – and you're straight in. The link only works once, and only for your account.

Your tile view

Once you're signed in, you land on your personal babysitter page (/babysitter). Everything's arranged as tiles – built for your phone. Tap a tile, and it opens as a full-screen view with all the details. “← Back” takes you back to the overview.

These tiles can appear:

• My bookings – when you're next booked in (sits right at the top)
• Emergency & contacts – direct call buttons, the address, the first-aid kit, poison control
• Children – one tile per child you've been given access to, with a photo and name; tap through for health notes, care notes, and what's on today
• Meal plan – what's on the menu today, with the name of the recipe or dish
• Today's events – what's coming up this evening
• Tasks – your checklist for the evening (with a time, if the family added one)
• Notes & tips – anything the family wants to tell you about tonight
• Evening log – your short write-up for the family

patchio hides any tile with nothing in it – so you only see what's actually there for your evening.

“My bookings”

At the top, you'll see when you're next booked in. Tap the tile, and you get a list of your upcoming bookings with date and time. If the family's added a repeating booking (say, “every Wednesday”), you'll see the next dates from it. If nothing's planned right now, it says “no booking planned”.

Emergency contacts – one tap away

In the “Emergency & contacts” tile, you'll find the emergency numbers on file, the household's address, where the first-aid kit is, and the poison control number for the country the family lives in. Under the address, “Open in maps” starts your navigation app with that address – you don't have to type it in anywhere. Tap a phone number directly – your device dials right away. You don't have to type in a number. Emergency contacts from the children's profiles also appear in each child's detail view.

Ticking off tasks

The checklist shows every task the family has set for you. Tap a task to mark it done. The family gets a notification with your first name and sees the tick, along with your note, in their overview for today – within about half a minute.

Evening log

At the end of the evening (or partway through), you can write a short evening log – how the evening went, what the children got up to, anything worth mentioning. The family gets a notification with your first name and can read the whole text in their overview. If you add to it later, they hear about it again (at most once every 10 minutes).

If you've already saved something today, your text is back in the field the next time you open it. You can add to it and save again without the old text quietly disappearing. For patchio, “today” ends at midnight German time: an entry just after midnight already belongs to the new day.

Works offline too

Your booking view also works offline. Once you've loaded it with an internet connection, emergency contacts, the children's info, the meal plan, events, and tasks stay available – even if the connection drops somewhere on the way, or in the basement. A note then appears at the top: “Offline – as of …”, so you know how current the data is.

Ticking off tasks and writing the evening log both work offline too. patchio remembers your changes and sends them automatically once you're back online – you don't have to type anything in again.

What you can't see

Your view is kept deliberately lean. You don't have access to the family calendar, other household members, shopping lists, the parenting schedule, or Manage sections. Health information and emergency contacts are read-only – you can read them, but not change them.

In practice

The babysitter arrives at 17:00 and opens patchio on their phone: at the top, the “My bookings” tile with today's booking. They tap “Notes & tips” – it says “The younger one's asleep by 20:00, the older one by 20:30 – please don't forget to brush teeth.” The children's tiles show the two profiles with care notes, the meal plan shows the evening meal, and “Tasks” has three items, two of them with a time. At 20:45 they tap “Evening log” and write: “All good, both asleep.” You see the update on your phone straight away.

Related topics

• Invite & manage babysitters