Babysitter
Invite household help & plan jobs
What it's about
Not every helper comes for the kids. Household help cleans, irons or preps meals, and you want to tell them what's on this week without them installing an app. That's what the second type of helper in Manage → Babysitters & household help is for: household help. They use patchio in the browser (app.patchio.de), and all you send them is a link.
Invite someone as household help
- Open Manage → Babysitters & household help and tap Invite someone.
- Pick Household help at the top. The “Share children” section disappears.
- Enter their email address and tap Invite.
patchio sends an invitation email with no mention of children. If it doesn't arrive, copy the link from the open invitation and send it yourself, for example by messenger. They have to sign in with exactly the email address you invited. The link is valid for 7 days.
What household help sees
| Visible | Not visible |
|---|---|
| My bookings: when they're scheduled | Children, health and care info |
| Jobs: their list, with times, to tick off (with a note) | Emergency contacts and poison control |
| Note for the booking: your messages to them | Calendar and events |
| Booking note: their feedback to you | Meal plan, school |
| Address: your address with a route link | Finances, directory, all other household data |
This isn't just hidden in the app: the server won't hand over any child data to household help, even on a direct request.
Assign jobs
Tap Job next to the person and enter a title, for example “Clean the bathroom”. You can add a time and a note. The job shows up in their view straight away, and they get a notification. When they tick it off, you hear about it with their first name.
With Note for the booking you write a message to the person (household help doesn't see notes sent “to everyone”), such as “The key is under the mat, please do the hallway too”. You enter the address under Emergency info; household help only sees the address from there, everything else in the emergency info stays for babysitters. If you want them to be able to reach you, put your phone number in a Note for the booking.
Plan bookings
You set up bookings just like for babysitters, once or weekly (for example every Tuesday from 9 to 1). They see them under My bookings.
Regular jobs per booking
On a weekly booking you can keep a list of Regular jobs, for example “Clean the bathroom” and “Ironing”. On each booking day, patchio creates that day's jobs from it automatically, so you don't have to type them in every week. The jobs appear as soon as you open the overview or the household help opens their view. A job is only created once per day, even if several people look at the same time. If you change a regular job, it applies from the next day; days that have already been created stay as they are.
Switch an existing person
If someone has already been invited as a babysitter, you don't need to invite them again. Tap Switch to household help next to their name. patchio asks first, because access to children and open tasks about children are removed in the process. Any open invitations to that person are withdrawn. Switch to babysitter does the reverse; you then share children with them again.
The type applies per household. The same person can be household help for you and a babysitter for another family. If you need both, for example a nanny who also cleans, keep them as a babysitter.
Pause and remove
Works like for babysitters: Pause freezes their access, Remove blocks it straight away.