Rawdati: kindergarten accounts in one app for parents and staff
Product status: a Paymentery product, live on Google Play, with the iOS version coming soon to the App Store. A management and accounting system for kindergartens and one mobile app for parents and staff on Android and iOS, with a web panel. Paymentery designed, built, tested and publishes it under its own name.
The problem the system solves
Small kindergartens often track attendance, daily notes and tuition instalments across paper, spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups. Parents only learn what is due or how their child's day went by calling or visiting, staff repeat the same work by hand, and management sees the term only from an office computer.
Most school apps are made for large schools, are in English, or cover one part (messaging or fees). Rawdati is Arabic-first, made for small kindergartens, and joins the daily side (attendance, class diary) and the money side (instalments, receipts, payroll) in one app. Sign-up is free in the app with email, Sign in with Apple or Google: an owner gets their kindergarten at once, and a teacher or parent tries a practice kindergarten with example data until their kindergarten adds their email.
What was built
For parents
Each child's balance: invoice, paid amount and due date, colour-coded by status; an instant notification for every payment, invoice, absence or announcement, and one tap opens what it is about: the receipt, the child's page or the announcement text; and receipts and statements as PDF.
Parents also follow their child's day: today's attendance and the attendance rate, the class diary with photos and homework, the teacher's notes and praise, and the installment plan with a reminder before each due date, and they can report an absence and its reason from the app.
For kindergarten staff
Everything in the web system is available in the app according to permissions: collecting payments with an instant receipt, protected against duplicates and overpayment; students, enrolment, fees and rolling them into a new term; income and expenses with a photographed receipt; payroll with a preview of every net salary before approval; reports and the financial summary; and staff, sign-in accounts, terms, classes and buses.
Added after launch: one-tap class attendance with an attendance report, a class diary with photos, notes for each child, installment plans, typed payroll deductions, a charts dashboard compared with the previous term, PDF and Excel export for every report, and 'view as another user', which lets the manager see the app exactly as a staff member or parent does, read-only and recorded in the audit log.
The management and control panel
The manager has a full panel on their phone: students with each one's payment status (paid, due, overdue by days, under review) and search by name, ID or parent mobile; finance with income, expenses and categories; the overdue report; payroll with its deductions; and staff with their roles.
The analytics dashboard charts income, expenses, net, collection rate and attendance against the previous term. Roles and permissions are set per job, including 'view as another user', which lets the manager see the app exactly as a staff member or parent does — read-only, for 30 minutes, and recorded in the audit log.
Works on every device
It works on phones, iPad and foldables: on a wide screen the navigation moves to a side menu and the content keeps a readable width, and the open screen is kept when the device folds or rotates.
Security and integrity of the figures
Fine-grained permissions per role are enforced by the server on every request, and each kindergarten is isolated from the others. Payments are never deleted: only a manager can void one, with a written reason and their password, and the parent is notified; every correction is written to an append-only audit log. A manager signing in on a new phone receives a code on their verified email, and the phone is then trusted.
The sign-in token is kept in the device's encrypted storage, the app excludes its data from cloud backup and blocks screenshots of account screens, with a biometric lock. No ads and no tracking.
Engineering
One set of business rules for web and app
A Laravel server with a 159-route API for the mobile app that shares the same business actions as the web panel (payroll, saving a student, voiding a payment), so the two never disagree on a number. Every financial operation carries an idempotency key, and the term can be switched from the phone.
An Arabic-first Flutter app
One codebase for Android and iOS, right-to-left, readable offline with a clear notice. Every screen was designed in Figma before development.
Tests before every release
More than 430 automated tests across the server and the app cover permissions, the financial flows, notifications and sign-up, run automatically on every change, followed by testing on real devices.
Delivery stages
- Analysing what small kindergartens need and the invoice, payment and payroll rules.
- The API shared with the web panel, with its tests.
- Design in Figma, then the Flutter app for parents and staff.
- A new web panel for management and parents.
- Testing on real devices and closing every gap between web and app.
- Open sign-up (email, Apple, Google) and the practice kindergarten, then publishing to the stores, notifications and iPad and foldable support.
Outcome
A product anyone can try for free: an owner starts their kindergarten from the app in minutes, a parent sees the balance, receipts and attendance on their phone, staff run the whole kindergarten, and the numbers are protected by an audit log and permissions. The app is live on Google Play, with the iOS version coming soon.
Want a system like this for your business?
Describe the users and the problem you want to solve. Scope and the right technology are reviewed before work starts.