Getting started
While it finishes, this page walks you through everything — installing, the one Windows warning to expect, and your first ten minutes in the app. Nothing here needs computer skills. Every step says exactly what you'll see and exactly what to click.
Didn't start? Click here to download Daybook DMS again — it's about 140 MB, and takes a minute or two on most connections.
It's called DaybookDMS-Setup.exe and it's in your
Downloads folder — or click it in the bar at the
bottom (Chrome) or top-right corner (Edge) of your browser.
Double-click it.
A blue screen appears saying “Windows protected your PC”. This is not a problem with your download. Windows shows it for any new software from a publisher it hasn't seen many times before — and as a small BC company, that's us for now.
If you don't see “More info”, the warning may look slightly different on your version of Windows — look for any link or button that lets you continue or run the file.
The Daybook DMS installer opens. You can simply click Install and then Finish — the standard choices are right for almost everyone. It takes under a minute, and a Daybook DMS icon appears on your desktop and in the Start menu.
Daybook DMS sets itself up in three short screens the first time it opens. One of them matters more than everything else on this page, so it gets the big box.
The first screen says “Your records are now
encrypted” and shows a 25-character code in five groups,
something like K7Rde-3MNP4-…
This code is shown once, and only once. It is what unlocks your records if this computer ever dies, is stolen, or Windows has to be reinstalled. Daybook DMS cannot show it again later, and nobody — including us — can recover your records without it. That's what makes the encryption real.
Please don't photograph it onto the same computer, or save it in a file on the desktop — the point of the code is that it survives the computer.
Next, Daybook DMS asks you to set a 4–8 digit PIN — this is how you'll unlock the app each morning. Pick something that isn't obvious (it will politely refuse 1234 and the like), and answer three security questions so you can reset the PIN if you ever forget it.
Last screen: your centre's name, your name, and a colour scheme. Add your logo if you have one handy — or skip it and add it later in Settings. Click Finish setup and you're looking at your dashboard — completely empty, and that's correct. There's no sample data to clear out; the numbers stay at zero until your own children and staff go in.
From this moment your 30-day free trial is running: every feature, no restrictions, nothing to activate.
Click Children in the sidebar, then Add Child. Name and birthdate are enough to start — allergies, contacts, photos and documents can all be filled in as you go. Add two or three now; add the rest whenever there's a quiet moment.
Under Payroll, add your educators. Once they exist, staff clock in and out on the timeclock — and Daybook DMS starts watching your staff-to-child ratio against BC's requirements automatically, live on the dashboard.
The fastest way to learn it is to use it for one real morning. Check children in as they arrive. That single habit feeds the ratio, the dashboard, and eventually billing — it's the heart of the app.
Daybook DMS backs itself up automatically every day — but those copies live on the same computer. At the end of your first week, plug in a USB stick and use File → Back up now… Keep the stick somewhere safe. Two minutes, once a week, and no broken laptop can ever take your records with it.
No — it's telling you Windows doesn't recognise the publisher yet. Windows shows this for new or small software companies until they've bought an expensive code-signing certificate and built up reputation. Click More info, then Run anyway. If you'd rather not, we completely understand — book a walkthrough and we'll do the install together.
Let it scan — it will find nothing, and scanning is exactly what antivirus should do with any new download. If it quarantines the file outright, choose “allow” or “restore”, or temporarily approve the file and re-run it. This happens for the same reason as the Windows warning: the installer isn't code-signed yet.
Nothing went wrong; that's a fresh install working exactly as intended. Daybook DMS ships with no sample data at all, so the dashboard shows zeros until you add your first children. The screenshots on our website show a centre that's been using Daybook DMS for a while — that's what yours grows into.
Any reasonably modern PC running Windows 10 or 11, with about 500 MB of free disk space. Daybook DMS is light — if the computer can run a web browser comfortably, it can run Daybook DMS. One computer serves the whole centre.
Only the download itself needs internet. The installer is self-contained, and once installed, Daybook DMS runs entirely offline — attendance, billing, payroll, everything. It only touches the network to check for updates.
The program installs into your own Windows user account (no administrator password needed). Your records live in a separate, encrypted database on the same computer — installing updates or even uninstalling the program never touches your records.
While this computer is alive and well: nothing changes, the app opens normally with your PIN. But if the computer dies and you have no recovery code, your backups cannot be opened on a new machine — by you, by us, by anyone. That is the honest price of encryption that actually protects the children's records. Write the code down the day you install, and the problem never exists.
Daybook DMS asks for a licence key and becomes view-only until it has one — you can still open, read, print and export everything, but not add new records. Nothing is deleted, ever. Buying a licence is an email: we send you a key, you paste it into Settings, done.
Daybook DMS checks for updates when it opens and offers them with one click — you'll never have to come back to this website to stay current. Updates never touch your records, your settings, or your licence.
The normal Windows way: Settings → Apps → Daybook DMS → Uninstall. If you gave the trial an honest try and it wasn't for you, we'd genuinely like to know why — one sentence helps.
Email us and a real person will walk you through it — screen-share, phone, whatever suits you. Helping you install is part of the product.