Setting up the Management System

Welcome to Tapestry’s Management System!

In this tutorial, we’ll go over the steps needed to get started, from setting up your sessions, to choosing your invoice format. If you are new to the Management System, you will be greeted by the Setup Wizard when you first access the system. 🪄:

The setup wizard is here to help you set up the basics, so you can get stuck into using the management system.

There are three actions you need to complete on this page in order to be able to proceed, as well as four optional actions. It is likely that you will have already added children to Tapestry as part of your initial setup, so the first option will be ticked. If you would like guidance on adding children however, you can take a look at our tutorial for adding children to Tapestry.

As you make your way through the setup wizard, you will see options to return to the Setup wizard, so you can continue with the checklist.

Once the first three options in the setup wizard are complete, you will see the option to start using the Management System. Clicking this will take you to the Room views, and you will be able to access the Config Menu. You can continue with the setup checklist before doing this if you like.

The rest of this tutorial covers the Config Menu. The Config Menu is where Managers on Tapestry can set up and amend the details that power our Management System.

Click through the tabs at the top to find out more about each menu item, or use the button below to move onto the next tab: Setting your closures and school holidays.

Please note the Config Menu in the Management System is different to the Configuration menu, which is part of Tapestry’s main navigation.

If you have never used the Management System on your Tapestry account before, you will see the Setup Wizard, which will guide you through the steps you need to get started. If you would like to learn more about the Setup Wizard, check out the Getting Started tab.

This is where you can set, edit and delete any closures or holidays coming up for your school or setting. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Closures & School Holidays.

Closures are a way of showing your setting is completely closed to all children. No booking that lands on a closure day will go ahead and it will not be expected that any child will attend, and will therefore not be charged for.

School Holidays can be added so that you are able to configure children to only attend during term time or not. You can find out more about how these holidays are used below.

Adding a Closure

Click the ‘Add’ button on the right and choose Closure. You will need to enter the name of the closure and the start and end date.

If you have a closure that is only for a half day for example, then you can deselect the Whole Days box, and then enter in the relevant start date and time and the end date and time. Once you’ve done that you’ll need to click Save.

If your closure covers the whole day, then no bookings or extras will be charged for.

If the closure only covers part of the day, then bookings (regular or extra) may be partially charged for if some of them fall outside the closure time. Extra Charges on a partially closed day will always be charged for, as there is no time associated with them.

Adding a School Holiday

To add a School Holiday, select the option from the ‘Add’ button. As with closures, you will need to enter the name of the holiday and the start and end date. Please note that holidays can not cover part of a day. When you’re ready, click Save.

You will be able to tell Tapestry if any of the children at your setting attend during school holidays, as part of setting their Regular Schedule.

If you have a child that doesn’t usually attend during school holidays, but needs to come in for an ad-hoc day, you can book them in via an Extra Booking. Their regular schedule will not be charged for, but the extra will be.

Viewing and amending your closures and holidays

Your closures and holidays will be listed on the page in chronological order, with the newest at the top. You can use the buttons at the top of the screen to filter the view, and tick the ‘Hide past closures/holidays’ to see only your upcoming ones.

You can edit or delete your closure/holiday using the pencil or bin icons on the left hand side.

You’ve now set your closures and school holidays. Click the button below or tap on the next tab to see how to set your Opening Hours.

Here we’ll go over how you can set (and change) your opening hours for your setting. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Opening Hours.

The opening hours you configure for your setting are used as guidelines to create schedules for children and booking in extra sessions. You can override the opening hours on an individual basis if you want to book outside of regular opening times.

Changing the hours or days your setting regularly opens also won’t alter any existing schedules you’ve set up for children, so you may want to create new ones to match your new opening pattern if you make any changes.

Viewing, adding and editing opening hours

The Opening Hours screen will let you tick what days you are open, and tell Tapestry what hours you are open on those days.

Click any of the Opens* and Closes* boxes to bring up the time picker. Leave any days you are usually closed unticked.

You can change these by clicking into the boxes containing your times and choosing a new time from the time picker.

Use the buttons below, or the tabs, to either continue and learn how to add sessions, or to go back and add closures and school holidays.

In this section, we will cover how to add sessions to your Tapestry account; sessions form part of our Booking system. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Sessions.

Once you’ve created sessions, you will be able to create schedules for children, and tell Tapestry when they will be attending. These schedules will then form the basis for any invoices you create via Tapestry Invoicing.

Adding a new session

Once in the Sessions section, you will see any sessions you have already listed. You can add a new session by clicking the Add Session button in the top right.

You will see a pop-up that will allow you to fill in the details for the session, including its name, any description, and the times. New sessions default to being ‘Active’, which means they can be added to schedules. You will also see an option to add a pricing to your session.

You won’t be able to assign an inactive session to a child so we recommend just using this feature to make a previously used session type inactive, or to add a new session type you haven’t started using yet.

If you want to add a price to the session, click the + Add Pricing button. You can choose to either set a price that’s per session, or per hour, and also set prices depending on a child’s age (0-2 years, 2 years and 3+ years).

When you’re happy with the details for the new session, click Save.

Editing and removing sessions

You can edit any of your sessions by clicking on the pencil icons next to them. This will bring up the Edit Session pop-up, which will be pre-filled with the sessions existing settings. You cannot delete sessions – if you wish to remove a session from being used, you will need to edit the session and make it Inactive.

Removing a session will not take it off children’s existing regular schedules, but it will no longer be selectable for new schedules.

If you change the name of a session, all existing bookings and all new bookings will display the new name. Changing the start and end times will only affect new bookings you make.

If you want to change the price for a session, you can schedule a Price Change. To do this, click the +Add Price Change button at the bottom of the edit session pop-up.

From here, you can choose the date the new prices will take effect, and the prices that the session will change to.

All new invoices generated on/after this price change will reflect the new price.

You can also delete any prices by clicking the red bin icon.

Viewing your sessions

As you add your sessions, you will see them appear in your sessions list. The list will show you an overview of the times each session run between, and the prices allocated to each.

If you want to see sessions that are inactive, you can use the toggle at the top of the screen.

Now that you’ve added your sessions, you can go ahead and see how to add/edit your Extra Charges on Tapestry; these can be applied to children’s schedules alongside sessions, to reflect regular extra costs.

If you haven’t already, you can also go back and add your Opening Hours, using the buttons below or by clicking between the tabs.

In this guide we’re going to go through how to add Extra Charges to your Tapestry account. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Extra Charges.

Extra Charges can be added to a child’s regular schedule alongside Sessions, so you can include recurring additional charges.

Adding an extra charge

If you have added extra charges previously, these will be listed on the main page. To add a new extra charge, click the + Add Extra Button in the top right. This will bring up the ‘Add Extra Charge’ pop-up.

Fill in the details for your extra charge, and choose whether it will be Active or Inactive. New extra charges are active by default, but if you are adding a new charge that’s not yet ready to use, you can make it inactive to begin with.

Set the price for your extra charge, then click Save Extra Charge.

Viewing and editing extra charges

Once saved, your extra charge will appear in the list, with the newest at the top. You can click the pencil icon to edit any of your extra charges.

Just like with changing the price of sessions, if you want to add a new price to an existing charge, you will see the option to add a price change. Click this to enter a new price, and choose the date that this price will start being used.

If the date you select is within an invoiced period, this may cause adjustments to appear on your next invoices, to make up for the difference in price.

Once you’ve added the extra charges you need, you will be able to apply them to children’s schedules, or add them as one-off charges. Once regular schedules for children are up and running, you will also be able to see an overview of what charges are being applied in a given week by looking at the Extra Charges Overview Screen.

And you’re done! You can use the buttons below, or the tabs, to head over to add/edit your Rooms, or go back and have a look at how Sessions work on Tapestry.

In this tutorial we’ll look at how you can create, edit and delete Rooms; rooms can make your bookings easier to manage as you can view bookings for each room separately. You can also view the total number of bookings in each room to help you manage capacity and staffing. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Rooms.

Adding new rooms

To add a new room, click the + Add Room button in the top right, and this will bring up the new room pop-up.

You can now choose the details for the room in the pop-up. It will need a name, but you can optionally give it a colour and a description to help differentiate it from other rooms.

You are also able to choose an age range for the room, but you can leave this blank if the room will have a mixed group.

The last thing you can do is set the ratio; tell Tapestry what the maximum capacity is for the room, and record how many children per staff member there needs to be.

Viewing, deleting and editing rooms

Once you’ve saved your new room, it will appear on the page, at the bottom of the list (if you already have existing rooms). You will be able to see the capacity you’ve set, as well as the staff ratio.

From here you can view the room, delete it or edit it.

If you choose to view a room, you will be taken to that room’s overview. You can find this same view in the main menu by going to Management System > Rooms > Room Name.

To see occupancy in a particular room in real time, you will need to allocate children to rooms, then create their regular schedules. To learn how to interpret the daily and weekly booking screens you can take a look at our guide to the booking overview screens.

Have you added your Funding Types yet? If not, you can use the buttons below, or go to the next tab, to find out how to add funding types, that you can add to children’s schedules for reference.

If you haven’t already, you could also go and add any Extra Charges to your account, to add regularly charged for items to children’s schedules.

This screen is where you can enter the different types of funding your setting receives and their rates. Whilst you can apply funding types to children’s regular schedules, the rates are just there for your own reference. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Funding Types.

You can add the funded hours themselves as part of adding children’s regular schedules. There you can apply funded hours, down to the minute, to specific sessions on a child’s weekly schedule.

Add a new funding type

Start by clicking the + Add Funding Type button to bring up the new funding type pop-up.

Here you can add the details of the funding type you receive from your Local Authority. Give the funding type a name, and tell Tapestry what the rate is, and from what date it applies. When you’re happy the details are correct, click Save.

Viewing, editing and removing funding types

Your funding types will appear in a list, with the newest ones added at the bottom. You can click the pencil icon to the right of any of them to edit them.

You can add a new rate to your funding types by clicking Add Rate at the bottom of the pop-up, and then typing in a new rate and the date that will start from.

This change of rate will not affect your invoices in any way, as funding types are purely for your reference.

Now that you’ve added your Funding Types, we can take a look at how you can structure your PDF Invoices, and you can choose how you would like them to appear for Bill Payers.

If you haven’t already, you can also go back and add Rooms to Tapestry.

This screen is where you can tailor what information is displayed on all invoice PDFs generated on your account. You can also choose to include other information, such as detailed breakdowns of costs and balances brought forward. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Invoices.

Your invoice header and footer

The first thing you can choose is whether you want to use your setting logo (set in Configuration > Contant & Other Details) in your invoice header. You can put custom text in your header and footer, such as your setting’s payment details, due dates and other information you wish for bill payers to see.

You can assign Bill Payers to a child in several places across Tapestry; when linking relatives to children, from a child’s Finance dashboard and also during the invoice generation process.

Additional Details

Due Dates

You can set the due date for your invoices here. Rather than setting a specific date, you can tell Tapestry how many days after an invoice is generated it should be due.

Balance Brought Forward

You can also choose to show a child’s balance brought forward and total now due on all invoices generated from the moment you configure this option. To do so you only need to tick/untick the checkbox. Click on the ‘Show Example’ button to see an example of what this would look like.

Regular Schedule Summary

Another thing you can do is choose whether a summary of the child’s regular schedule is included on PDFs, and whether those rates are shown. Click on the ‘Show Example’ button to see an example of what this would look like.

Detailed Breakdown Section

The last thing you can include is a detailed breakdown section on PDFs , and whether those rates are also shown. Once again you can see an example of this using the ‘Show Example’ button.

The options you select on the invoice format page, once saved, will appear on the next PDF invoice you generate. New changes to your invoice format will not affect PDF invoices already sent to Bill Payers.

In the last tab, we will cover how to add Discounts to Tapestry; these can be applied to specific children, so that you can give their Bill Payers a percentage discount of your choosing.

Head to the previous tab to see how to add your Funding Types.

In this tutorial we will be going through how to add and edit discounts to use within Tapestry’s Management System.

As a setting, you may have different discounts you want to apply to different children. This could be from sibling discounts to staff discounts. You can find this section by going to Management System > Config > Discounts.

Let’s get started!

Add a new discount

Any discounts that have already been added will appear on this page. To begin, click on the Add Discount button in the top right.

In the pop-up box, you can add the details of the discount, including what the discount will be as a percentage. You can also choose to make the discount Active or Inactive; discounts are active by default, but if you are adding a discount before you are ready to use it, you may wish to add it as inactive initially.

You can also choose what the discount will apply to:

Bookings on regular schedules
Extra bookings
Extra charges (scheduled and ad-hoc)

Select the options as required.

Viewing and editing discounts

Your discounts will be listed on the main screen, with the newest at the bottom. You can edit any of the discounts by clicking the pencil icons on the right.

Any changes you make to the discounts will affect the next invoices of the children who have this discount applied. Existing invoices will remain unchanged.

Discounts can be applied by going to an individual child’s dashboard, and adding the discount on the Finance page.

And that’s it!

You can use the buttons below or the tabs to go back and add your Invoice Format if you haven’t already.

If you have already set up everything you need from within the Config menu, why not go ahead and explore children’s Dashboards?

Getting started with Tapestry

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