Half-day sessions - two kids, one spot
Mark a child as mornings only or afternoons only, so two children can share one full-time spot in the same day and your rooms count who is actually there at once.
Some programs run around a half-day school schedule: one child leaves for morning PreK while another, back from the afternoon session, takes the same spot. On paper you might have 16 enrolled children and only 13 physical spots, and both numbers are right, because they are never all there at once.
Half-day sessions let NestliCare show that honestly. You mark a child's schedule as mornings only or afternoons only, and the Enrollment page counts the morning and the afternoon separately. A room's occupancy becomes "who is here at once", not "who passes through today".
Turn it on
The option is off by default, so schedule forms stay simple for programs that never split a day.
- Go to Settings and open the Features tab.
- Near the bottom, under Advanced, switch on Half-day sessions.
Only the organization owner can change this setting.
Mark a child's half days
- Open any child's schedule, from Families & Children, the Enrollment page, or a room card's edit.
- Select the days they attend.
- A new line appears: They attend: All day / Morning / Afternoon. Pick one, and it applies to every selected day.
- For a child whose pattern varies, choose Set each day and set each weekday on its own, for example mornings Monday through Wednesday and all day Friday.
Days you leave as All day behave exactly as before. Everything about a child with no half days set is unchanged.
How to read the displays
- On day strips and schedule pills, a half day fills half the circle: the left half for mornings, the right half for afternoons, the way the day itself runs.
- A room's occupancy for a day is the busier half. A morning child and an afternoon child on the same Monday count as one spot, not two.
- The week rhythm chart on each room card shows the same counting, so a day only reads over capacity when more children than seats are genuinely present at once.
Good to know
- Half days are about scheduling and capacity. They do not change billing: plans bill as they always did, and hourly or per-day plans bill from actual check-in and check-out times.
- Checking a child in outside their scheduled half still works, exactly like checking in on an unscheduled day. The schedule guides the counts; it never blocks the door.
- Editing a child's days from the mobile apps keeps their half-day settings intact.