studentmanagement.nz by Fill The Gap
Student management for early childhood education, built in New Zealand

Know your returns are right before you submit them.

Enrolments, attendance, adults on duty, funding and licensing records in one system, with one record for each person. Every Ministry return is worked out from what really happened at your services, and we make sure it’s compliant.

Start a conversation See how returns work

Early access for New Zealand early childhood organisations. Built and supported in New Zealand by Fill The Gap.

RS7 · FUNDING PERIOD ENDING 30 SEP
Kererū Rise Early Learning
Education and care · All day
Ready
Children
48
Funded hours
6,412
  1. ✓
    Every day’s register complete · 84 days, corrections kept with reasons
  2. ✓
    Absences checked against the funding rules · 2 children flagged for review
  3. ✓
    20 Hours ECE hours within the limits · 6 a day, 30 a week
  4. ✓
    Staff hours by qualification · from the roster and sign-ins
  5. ✓
    Each funded hour traced to a child and a day · with the rule that applied
  6. ✓
    Return ready to submit · locked and kept once submitted
Example service, made-up figures. Every step above is one the system runs.
Sound familiar

Where do your returns actually come together today?

The register is on paper or in one system, staff qualifications in another, and the funding return is rebuilt in a spreadsheet the week it’s due. When the numbers don’t match, someone goes back through the days by hand.

Today
Attendance_Term3_FINAL_v2.xlsx Register: photo of the paper sheet, on someone’s phone “Who was on duty on Tuesday afternoon?” RS7: totals don’t match the register First aid certificate (expired? nobody’s sure) The same parent, entered three times Folder: consent forms, at the centre Census week: staff hours rebuilt by hand The one person who knows how the return works
With studentmanagement.nz

One record.

Every child, parent, staff member and adult on duty is held once, with every role they have. The register, the roster and the qualifications all feed the same returns, so nothing is rebuilt the week it’s due.

  • Returns worked out from the register, not typed in
  • Every figure opens to the records behind it
  • Expiring checks and certificates flagged before they lapse
Compliant returns

Funding you can stand behind.

The RS7, the ECE Census and the Teacher Data return come from the same records your services keep every day. You see how each figure was reached before you submit it.

01

Worked out from the register, never typed over.

Funded hours come from attendance, enrolments and bookings. Staff hours and qualifications come from the roster and the staff record. Nobody re-keys a total.

02

Every figure opens to its records.

Each funded hour opens to the child and the day behind it, with the Funding Handbook rule that applied: absences, 20 Hours ECE limits, and the rest.

03

Locked when submitted, kept for seven years.

A submitted return is kept exactly as it was. Corrections keep the original and the reason, so an auditor sees what was sent and why.

We keep it compliant. When the Ministry’s funding rules, the licensing criteria or the law change, we change the system, and every release is checked against them. You don’t have to track the rule changes yourself.

Do the sum yourself

We won’t tell you what you’ll save. Count what returns cost you now.

Checking registers, chasing missing days, matching staff hours to qualifications and rebuilding totals all take time, at every service and again at head office. Put in your own numbers.

Checking the register, chasing missing days, attendance and staff records for the return
Collecting, checking and reconciling every service’s figures. Three rounds a year
Hours a year 924

That is 23 working weeks a year spent rebuilding numbers your records already hold.

Your inputs, your answer. Weeks assume 40 hours.
What it does

Everything a service records, in one place.

Built to the Ministry’s requirements for a student management system and to the licensing criteria, for education and care, kindergarten, home-based and parent-led services.

  1. Children and whānau

    Each child with their whānau and who may collect them, health notes, court orders, consents and medicine authorities, in the form the licensing criteria require.

  2. Enrolment and bookings

    Signed enrolment agreements, booking patterns, 20 Hours ECE and make-up days, with fees recorded against each enrolment.

  3. Attendance

    The day’s register, a sign-in screen at the door where parents use a PIN, sign-in from a parent’s own phone, and a printed paper register for when the internet drops.

  4. Adults on duty

    Who’s on duty against the required ratio, as the day goes, with the person responsible and first aid cover shown.

  5. Funding

    Funded child hours worked out under the Funding Handbook’s rules, with the rule shown against every day it changed the answer.

  6. Returns

    The RS7, ECE Census and Teacher Data return, prepared from your records, checked, tracked and reconciled, ready to submit.

  7. Licensing records

    Incidents, sleep checks, excursions, drills and hazard checks, food and policy reviews, and home-based visits.

  8. Staff

    Qualifications and certification, safety checks with their expiry dates, rosters and timesheets.

  9. Many services, your words

    One organisation with many services, each in its own place in your structure, using your own words for centre, kindergarten or campus.

  10. Adult learning

    For organisations that also train adults: learners, enrolments, workshops, assessment and marking, qualifications and awards, and marker payments.

  11. Reports

    Your own reports, run on screen, copied into a spreadsheet or downloaded. Every run is logged.

  12. Auditor access

    Read-only access for an auditor, for a set time, that your services can see.

One person, many roles

One record for each person, whatever roles they hold.

A parent can be a child’s caregiver, an adult learner working towards a qualification and an adult on duty, all at once. studentmanagement.nz holds them once. The qualifications they earn as a learner count straight away when they’re on duty, and the funding follows from the same record.

One parent · one record Caregiver Adult learner Adult on duty Authorised to collect First aid certificate
One record for each person, so a change of phone number or a new qualification is entered once, everywhere Possible duplicates are flagged before a new record is made
Every change logged, with who made it and when, and who opened each child’s record Entries are added, never changed or removed
12,000 children signed in across 400 services in under nine minutes, a busy morning’s drop-off for a large organisation Load test, 17 October 2026, with made-up data
Who it’s for

Built for New Zealand early childhood organisations.

It fits best if you run more than one service, and your returns come together in spreadsheets.

Early access. We’re opening studentmanagement.nz to early childhood organisations in stages. We set each one up ourselves, with its own services, words and roles, and early-access organisations help decide what comes next.

Kindergarten associationsMany kindergartens, one set of returns to stand behind
Education and care groupsAll-day and sessional centres, with staff hours by qualification
Home-based networksEducators, visiting teachers and their visits, in one place
Parent-led servicesFunding that depends on the qualifications of the adults on duty
Puna Reo and immersion servicesThe Teacher Data return, from the staff record
Organisations that also train adultsEarly childhood and adult learning on one record for each person
Security and privacy

Children’s records deserve more care than anything else you hold.

studentmanagement.nz is built and released the way we build systems for our clients, with a security review in every release.

Encrypted field by field

Names, dates of birth, contact details, health notes and court orders are each encrypted in the database. The keys are kept outside it, and each person only gets the keys their role needs.

Your data walled off

Each organisation’s records are kept apart by the database itself, and a test on every change proves no organisation can see another’s.

Invitation and a second factor

People join by invitation only and sign in with a password and a code from an authenticator app. Idle sessions end after an hour.

Every view and change logged

Who changed what, and who opened each child’s record, is kept in a log that’s only ever added to.

Support you can see

When our support team needs to look at a record, access is read-only, for a set time, and shown to your organisation.

Backed up and recoverable

The database runs across two data centres, with 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and we rehearse restoring it.

Where your data lives. Records are stored and processed in Amazon Web Services’ Sydney region. Your organisation stays responsible for its information under the Privacy Act 2020, and we hold it for you under a signed agreement that says how. We develop with made-up data, and no personal information goes into AI tools.

Next step

Tell us how your returns come together today.

Thirty minutes, free, with no pitch. Walk us through how a funding round works across your services, and where the spreadsheets are. You will leave with a straight answer on whether studentmanagement.nz fits, and when it could.

hello@studentmanagement.nz