Invite & manage babysitters

What it's about

The babysitter module gives you a safe, clear way to bring people from outside your family into an evening – without giving them access to your whole household. You invite them, decide what they can see, and write down everything they need to know for tonight, right in the app.

Before you start

• The Babysitter module must be turned on under Manage → Modules (admins only).
• You need the Manage babysitters permission (admins have it automatically; members can be given it by an admin).

How to invite someone

Open Manage → Babysitter, enter the person's email address, and choose which children to share. patchio then automatically sends an invitation email with the onboarding link to that address. The person needs a patchio account (free) – once they open the link, they land straight in their personal babysitter view for your household.

Important: the person has to sign in with exactly the email address you invited, or the invitation can't be accepted. The link is valid for 7 days.

If the email doesn't arrive (spam, say), you can click “Resend” on the open invitation, or share the link yourself by messenger or text with “Copy link”. “Show QR code” turns the link into a QR code: hold it up to the person, and they scan it with their camera and land straight in onboarding – handy when you're in the same room. “Withdraw” makes an invitation invalid.

Giving access to children

After you invite someone, you decide which child profiles they can see. Only the profiles you've shared appear in their view – siblings and other household members stay invisible.

Assigning tasks

You can assign the person tasks for the evening (say, “check homework”, “brush teeth”). The tasks appear as a checklist in the babysitter view, and can be ticked off there.

You can optionally give each task a time (say, “19:30 – brush teeth”). Tasks with a time appear first, in order, followed by the ones without a fixed time – so the person knows what's due when.

Planning bookings

For each active babysitter, you can add bookings – when the person should come. In the Bookings section, you set:

• One-off: a single date, with a from/to time.
• Weekly: on fixed weekdays (say, every Wednesday), with a start date and an optional end date. Without an end date, the booking continues indefinitely.

You can add a short note to each booking. The babysitter sees upcoming bookings in their “My bookings” tile. Bookings are purely informational – they don't (yet) control when the person can access data.

If something changes, tap the pencil next to the booking in the list and adjust the date, time, rhythm or note – no need to delete the booking and create it again. When you create or change a booking, patchio checks whether it overlaps with another booking for the same person, and tells you on which day if it does.

Care notes per child

Alongside the health information, you can record care notes for each child, where you share access to them. Three fields help the person through the evening:

• Sleep – bedtimes, routines, ways to help them settle
• Food – what and when they eat, allergies, preferences
• Comfort tricks – what helps if the child cries or won't settle

The person sees these notes in the child's detail view in their tile view – read-only.

Household emergency info

In the Household emergency info section, you record, once per household:

• Address – shown to the person as a tappable directions link: a tap opens their maps or navigation app with your address (useful for emergency services or a delivery)
• First-aid kit – where it is
• Note – anything else for an emergency

patchio shows the poison control number automatically, matching the country (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). The country comes from your household's public-holiday region (Family → Household & settings → Public holidays). If no region is set there, the person sees all three numbers. The person finds all of it bundled in their “Emergency & contacts” tile – with large call buttons.

Writing “note for tonight”

Under Manage → Babysitter, you can add a free note for the evening: anything unusual, bedtimes, notes on a meal. The person sees this note prominently at the top of their view.

Booked in today: your overview

At the top of Manage → Babysitter you'll find “Booked in today”. For everyone who's booked in today or already has something for today, it shows:

• today's booking time,
• your “note for tonight”, with the time you sent it,
• the tasks with their status – ticked off with the time, or still open – plus any note the person added,
• the evening log in full, with the time it was written and last updated.

The overview refreshes itself every 30 seconds, as soon as you come back to the page, and whenever you tap “Refresh”. “Today” means the calendar day in German time. Only people with the Manage babysitters permission can see it.

Pausing and removing

• Pause: the person can still sign in, but no longer sees any household data – handy when you want to freeze access temporarily.
• Remove: access is locked immediately. The invitation link and every linked permission become invalid.

What the babysitter can see – and what they can't

Privacy note: health information and emergency contacts are shown read-only, and only for children you've explicitly shared. The person has no access to any other household data.

Notifications

You get an in-app notification, and optionally an email, when the babysitter writes the evening log or ticks off a task. The notification names the person by first name – so with several babysitters you know who it's from. If the person adds to their log later, you hear about it again, at most once every 10 minutes; you can read the full text any time under “Booked in today”. The lock screen only shows a neutral hint, with no name and no content.

The babysitter gets a notification when you update “note for tonight”.

Related topics

• As a babysitter: your booking
• Manage modules
• Roles & permissions