Review and approve a submitted form
When a parent submits a form, it lands in your review queue. Approve it, or reject it with a note so the parent can fix and resend.
When a parent submits a form, it lands in the Awaiting your review tab on the Documents page. From there you can approve, reject with notes, or just take a look at what they entered.
Find submissions waiting for you
- Go to Documents → Document Requests.
- Open the Awaiting your review tab.
- Each card shows the form, the family, and the child it's about.
If nothing is in that tab, there's nothing waiting on you — assignments still being filled show up in Outstanding instead.
Open a submission
Open any card in Awaiting your review. The submission page opens with:
- All field values the parent entered, laid out as a clean list.
- Electronic signature: the parent's name, the date and time, their IP address, "signed by drawing" when they drew their signature, and a fingerprint (SHA-256) of the signed PDF. This is your audit trail if you ever need to prove a parent signed something.
- View signed PDF — opens the stamped PDF in a new tab. This is the parent's signed copy of your original document with their values stamped in the right places. Save it for your records.
Approve
If everything looks right, click Approve. The status changes to Approved, and the parent gets an email confirming.
The signed PDF stays available forever from the submission page and from the parent's Documents inbox under their Completed group.
Reject with a note
If something's missing or wrong (allergy field is blank, wrong signature, photo release option not selected), type what needs fixing in Notes (required when rejecting) and click Reject and request changes. The parent receives an email with your wording so they know what to fix.
When the parent goes back to the form, they see your reject note inline at the top, can edit any field, and resubmit. The new submission lands in your review queue again.
Both the approve and the reject emails go out under your daycare's name with your own account email as the reply address, so if the parent hits Reply to ask a question, it lands in your inbox. That exchange is not saved in NestliCare; if you want it on record, answer through Messages instead.
What "approved" actually means
Approving a submission is your record that you've seen what the parent submitted and you accept it. It doesn't trigger anything else automatically. The signed PDF remains the legal artifact; the audit data on the submission (signed name, IP, timestamp) is preserved indefinitely.
If a parent later disputes a signature, the audit trail is your evidence: name, IP, exact timestamp, signature method, and the PDF fingerprint.
What the parent sees after approval
- An email from your daycare saying the form was approved
- The form moves to their completed documents in the app
- They can re-download the signed PDF anytime
Tips
- Reject early, reject specific. If you reject for a vague reason, the parent will resubmit with the same problem. Mention the exact field ("Please add your child's pediatrician phone number — section 5").
- For tuition disputes, do not rely on the structured value. Some forms ask the parent to enter a tuition amount; some don't. The legal binding is what's in the signed PDF, not the value field. The PDF wording always wins.
Troubleshooting
I approved the wrong submission by accident. There's no Undo button. Send the family the form again from its template card and approve the new one when it comes back.
A parent submitted a form, then re-submitted before I reviewed. The latest submission is what you see. The earlier draft is preserved in the database for audit. Approve the latest one.
The audit trail shows an unfamiliar IP. That's the parent's external IP at submit time. If they were on coffee shop wifi, it'll look unusual. Not a security issue by itself.