The AI Assistant

Asking questions about your center in plain English — what it sees, what it doesn't, and when to double-check.

For directors, staff and families

Where to find it

Open More → AI Assistant; staff and families both have it there, and it's in Search too. If it's missing, AI features are turned off for your center.

The screen says Powered by Claude · AI answers can contain mistakes, and both halves matter. Type into Ask anything… or tap one of the suggested questions, which change with your role.

What it's good at

• Quick questions about today — how many children are in, who hasn't been picked up, who's on the clock, how the rooms are filled.
• Drafting — a note to families, an outline for a daily report, circle-time ideas, the wording of a tricky message. You still edit; it saves typing.
• Money at a glance, for directors, assistant directors and admins — what's outstanding and what's past due.

It's weaker at anything that needs the full record. It works from a limited snapshot — up to 30 children, 20 staff and a handful of recent incidents — so at a larger center a which children answer can leave someone out, and a question about this week's incidents may only see the last few.

The snapshot is taken when you open the screen. If the day has moved on since — a wave of pick-ups, say — close the assistant and open it again before you ask.

What it sends

Each question is sent with only the information it needs:

• Counts always go — children enrolled and present, the room breakdown, staff on the clock. Counts identify nobody.
• Names go only when the answer needs them. "How many children are here?" sends counts; "Which children haven't been picked up?" sends the list of children.
• Billing and licensed capacity are only fetched for directors, assistant directors and admins. A teacher's or family's question can't reach them, and a family's questions only draw on their own children.
• Names are replaced with placeholders by our server before a request reaches the AI model, and put back in the answer you see. That covers children, staff and parents or guardians. If the children's names can't be checked, the request is refused rather than sent. If only the staff or family names can't be looked up, children's names are still replaced but staff and family names may go through, so name people only when the question needs it.

The assistant uses Claude, running on Amazon Web Services' Bedrock service — the AI processor listed in our privacy policy. Your center's data isn't used to train any AI model.

Conversations aren't saved: leave the screen and the chat is gone. The Was this helpful? thumbs aren't sent to us, so if an answer was wrong in a way that matters, email support.

Children left out of AI

A family can turn off AI for their children in the app: More → Settings → Data & Privacy → My child's data, then under What you can turn off, tap Turn this off on AI features that read this child's information. It applies to every child on their account, and it can't be undone from the app.

What it changes depends on the feature:

• The AI Assistant and Smart Search leave that child's details out of what they send. They still count in totals.
• Every other AI feature — Quick Log, curriculum help, message translation — keeps the child's name out of the answer: it's replaced on the way out like every other name and never put back. Anything else written about the child, without their name, can still be sent.

If RoundUp can't check who has turned it off, it leaves every child out rather than guess. A family who can't use the app, or you on their behalf, can also email privacy@roundupece.com.

Checking its answers

Treat an answer as a lead, not a record. Before you act on one — phoning a family about a pickup, chasing an invoice, telling a licensor anything — check it on the screen that holds the real data: Attendance, Billing, Health.

Quick Log in daily reports

Teachers also meet AI in daily reports, where Quick Log turns one spoken or typed sentence into draft entries to review before saving. See Daily reports in the teacher guides.

Deciding whether to use it

For most centers it earns its place as a faster way to ask "who's still here?" at the end of the day and to get a first draft of routine messages. It isn't a record-keeping tool, and staff should know that from day one.

If your center would rather not use AI features, a director can turn them off under Settings → Configuration → AI features. Off stops the assistant, Quick Log, curriculum help and message translation for the whole center: RoundUp refuses every AI request for it, and if it can't check the setting, it refuses those requests too. Scanning a paper sign-in sheet, a check or a printed menu (Amazon Textract reads the text) isn't covered by this switch. Either way, tell staff and families what you've decided. It's a fair question for a parent to ask.

More: All director guides