Attendance calendar
Families see planned days, transport pickups and any closures in a single calendar.
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Customer Self-Service App for Adult Day Centers
A customer self-service app for adult day centers lets families report an absence, request an extra day or check the van pickup without waiting for the office to open. SIZ Group would design and build it for iOS and Android so every change reaches the transport and kitchen teams the same day.
01
Why family requests reach an adult day center at the wrong hour
A family that uses an adult day center often works full time while juggling a parent's transport, medication and meals. Their questions come early in the morning or late at night, when the front office is closed. A self-service app lets them change a day, report a doctor's appointment or ask about lunch without waiting for a callback.
Accurate attendance matters to the whole center. Each absence is a meal prepared for nobody and a van seat that could have gone to someone else, while a late booking strains the route. The app keeps requests in one place and makes each change visible to the transport and kitchen teams on the same day.
02
The first release and the features worth building first
The first release should cover the requests that fill the front office inbox: viewing the attendance schedule, asking to change attendance days, reporting an absence and checking a pickup time. Each request arrives in the center's queue with the participant's name, the date and the reason given.
Daily photo updates, group activity sign-ups and online payments can come later. Photos of participants raise consent questions, and payments depend on how each participant is funded, whether privately or through a state program. Keeping phase one to daily requests lets the team learn the flow first.
- Attendance calendar showing planned days and transport pickups
- Absence reports sent before the morning van leaves
- Extra day and respite requests routed to the intake coordinator
- Holiday closure notices shown on the calendar
03
A step-by-step walk through one family's change of plans
A daughter whose mother attends on Tuesdays and Thursdays wakes on a Wednesday to find a doctor's appointment on Thursday. She opens the app, selects Thursday and taps the absence option. She picks the reason, the app confirms the van will skip that stop, and the request is logged.
The transport coordinator sees the change on the route board before the van leaves, and the kitchen adjusts the meal count. The daughter gets a confirmation and a reminder to book the day back, with a link to request a Friday visit. Later that afternoon she reads the day's activity summary, which notes the music session her mother enjoyed.
What you get
Key features
Absence reports
Report a missed day with a reason, and the change reaches the van route and the kitchen before the cutoff.
Extra day requests
Ask for an added day or a respite stay, and the intake coordinator is notified straight away.
Daily activity summary
A short written summary of the day's activities and meals, shared only with that participant's family.
Forms and documents
Upload physician forms and updated medication lists, and see which documents the center still needs.
04
Fitting in with the software adult day centers already run
Many centers keep attendance in a specialist package, plan schedules in a spreadsheet and send invoices through an accounting tool such as QuickBooks. Some also use a route planner for the van. We would read attendance and route data from those sources when the vendor exposes it, so staff are not retyping the same list.
When a source offers no clean feed, a nightly file of attendance and routes can bridge the gap, provided the office signs it off first. The center then chooses how far to take the integration once it has used the app for a while.
05
Seasonal attendance swings and the weeks that stretch the team
Attendance follows the seasons. Holiday weeks, summer vacations and winter illness all cause spikes in absences and last-minute changes. Families also ask for extra days when a caregiver travels or when a hospital stay pushes a plan back.
The app should be ready for those weeks. It can show planned headcount for the coming weeks, make closure dates obvious well ahead of time and send a reminder before a holiday break. In busy absence weeks the transport team needs a quick view of who is still coming, and the app should give it to them without extra taps.
- Planned headcount for the coming weeks, shared with the kitchen
- Closure dates shown on the calendar well ahead of the day
- Route changes flagged to the van team as they happen
- Absence trends reviewed each month by the director
06
What drives cost and timeline, and how to keep scope under control
Cost is shaped by how many kinds of request families can make, whether the app ships to both phone platforms or also needs a browser version, and how deeply it reads attendance and billing data. Mobile apps start at $4,500, and the scoping call turns those choices into a fixed figure.
We hold the first release to the request list agreed during scoping and send any new idea to a later list with its own estimate. Post-launch support handles wording updates, new request types and store releases, so the center can adjust the app when its programs change.
Will families still be able to call us?+
Yes, and they should. The app is for routine changes outside office hours. The front office sees every request the app logs, so staff can respond by phone when a family prefers to talk or when a change needs a conversation.
Can the app help with medication questions?+
It can collect medication updates and send them to the nurse, but it does not give dosing advice. Medication records stay in the center's clinical system, and the app says so clearly. Urgent health concerns should go to a doctor or to emergency services.
How do family members who share a phone stay separate?+
Each family member can have a separate login linked to the participant, and the center sets which features each person sees. Removing someone's access takes effect straight away, which matters when family circumstances change.
Does the app work for private pay families and funded programs?+
The app itself is the same for both. Billing rules differ, so the first release shows attendance and requests, and payments can come later once the center has confirmed which funding rules apply to each participant.
What do you need from us before we start?+
A list of program days and hours, the request types your families send, the software you use for attendance and billing, and sample forms with personal details removed. With those in hand, the scoping call can price the work properly.
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Let's make it happen
Make attendance changes easy for families
Book a free scoping call and we will put the scope and price in writing before any build work begins.