About BeehiveKin
BeehiveKin is record-keeping software for childminders and small settings registered in England. It holds the childcare contracts and their signatures, the statutory EYFS consents, the daily register and the learning journal, on a phone rather than in a drawer.
Who writes the guides
Iram Tahir is a registered childminder in England. She runs KSM Bees in Coventry and keeps its records in BeehiveKin. She was the first person to run a whole setting on it, which is why the guides are written from the position of somebody who has to keep the paperwork rather than somebody who sells software: what the rule says, what it means on a Tuesday morning, and where the official wording is so you can check it yourself.
Guides published so far:
- The Ofsted report card for childminders: seven areas, five grades, and what to have ready
- Making Tax Digital for childminders: your date, your records, and the 10% that goes
How we write about rules
Every claim about Ofsted or HMRC links to the GOV.UK page it came from, with the date it was published. Sector guides disagree with each other on the detail, and some of them are written by competitors, so anything you plan to act on should be read at source. Where a rule is contested, or where a consultation might change it, the article says so rather than picking the tidier answer.
We also say what BeehiveKin does not do. It is not accounts software, it does not file anything with HMRC, and invoicing and occupancy are on the roadmap rather than in the product today.
Where your records are held
- Database: MongoDB Atlas, Ireland (eu-west-1).
- Files, meaning PDFs and photographs: Amazon S3, London (eu-west-2).
- The application itself: Railway, EU region.
Ireland is in the European Economic Area, which the UK’s adequacy regulations cover. We name it rather than claiming UK-only hosting, because a childminder asked by their local authority where records are held should be able to answer correctly. The privacy notice has the detail, and the data processing agreement is the one your local authority may ask you for.
Reaching a person
Email community@beehivekin.com. Accounts are opened by hand at this stage: you ask for access, somebody reads the request, and a signup link follows. That is slower than a signup button on purpose, because every setting that joins is one we have spoken to.