Security is everything for the IT professional, and anything that’s security and related to technology probably falls into your territory.
Someone sent me a link to KidCheck and I was definitely intrigued (especially since they offer a “Free” version). They even have built it so it can work with ministries and churches.
With this service you can:
- Reduce your workload and increase security (no double entry!)
- Parents can create and update their own info (so you don’t have to)
- Eliminate the expense of pagers with built-in SMS text messaging
- Build rich reports for visitor follow-up, attendance and more
- Afford it. Can you say “Free?“
Check out this overview vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XH_W4xaqVA
Nick Shoemaker says
w00t w00t!
Glad to see this on here! Alex and his team are awesome (and personal friends of mine)!
This is an company that lives what they preach. Alex, a former LAPD officer, is a key part of the security team at our church (so is his wife).
The whole company serves at their local churches as well as working with churches (and child care facilities, et cetera) on a daily basis!
Thanks for highlighting them John!
benrwoodard says
Even the “free” version looks incredible. We might have to give this a shot this summer during our VBS.
Jeremy Davidson says
I played around with KidCheck about a month ago and absolutely loved it. Our church and school switched to ACS On Demand for our check in systems about two years ago. Comparing the two systems, KidCheck is hands down a much simpler system to set up and to use.
The user interface is much nicer in my opinion as well. Another plus is that it works with all of my current hardware. The badges look great and I really like the features you can build into them.
We currently run six check in machines across our campus and a KidCheck system would cost us more per month to use, but it’s ease of use and to maintain may push us towards a change.
The KidCheck support has been excellent too.
A great system if you are in the market.
Katherine says
Jeremy,
Do you still use ACS as your database? We currently use ACS for all of our programs and individual profiles and contributions, but are looking at using KidCheck for check-in. I’m curious about importing the data from KidCheck to ACS. Is this possible and does it work well?
danielcberman says
I personally am not in childcare ministry with my church, but there are several questions that come to mind after watching this video.
If parents have historically not been reliable enough to update the people who handle their childcare, with revised contact details how would giving them a web interface increase reliability and information accuracy?
Second, while I am sure the team behind KidCheck has only the best of intentions, what if someone manages to compromise their system? The locations, and schedules of thousands of kids and their parents is potentially revealed in a tabular form. (Yes they say its encrypted, but you have to store the key somewhere…And money is one thing, replaceable. Your kids not so much.)
Third. The video demonstrates the childcare worker placing a sticker on the back of each kid with a barcode. What do kids like to do with stickers? What sort of procedures are put into place when kids start switching tags with each other?
jason cooper says
We use Kidcheck since December of 09. It is better than what we had, but no system is fool proof. You still have to be vigilant and can’t rely solely on the computer to do the work…
For us it isn’t free. we run multiple checkins…
Some parents input their own information from home, but many did not, requiring time on Sunday am for many to do this….something we did 3 weeks ahead of go time in the foyer, and still didn’t get everybody until they were forced to use it the first week we went “live” with it…It will never be fully “self maintained” as many parents will forget or neglect to update their info.
Overall, though, a good product! Just don’t think it will solve all your problems…
Clair Berry says
Our church is looking into a system right now to check kids in and out at church. How do you guarantee that the kids goes to the right parent at check out? Check in looks great but how do you match the parent to the kid?
Clair