Every childcare center has a stack of PDFs they can’t get rid of. State enrollment forms. Health appraisal records. Field trip permission slips. Medication authorization forms. These documents exist because licensing requires them — and no amount of software is going to make them disappear.
What software can do is make them a lot less painful to collect.
Today we’re excited to share Kinderly’s document editor — a built-in tool that lets you turn any PDF into a fillable, signable document, and send it to families as part of your enrollment packet.
Drop Fields Right Onto the Page
Open any PDF in Kinderly and you’ll see a simple toolbar of field types:
- Text — for names, dates, addresses, and any free-form answer
- Number — for ages, phone numbers, and numeric fields
- Checkbox — for yes/no questions and multi-select lists
- Dropdown — for fields with a fixed set of options
- Signature — a legally valid drawn e-signature
- Initials — for pages that require a quick acknowledgement
- Label — add your own instructions or headings anywhere on the page
- Separator — visually group sections of a long form
Click a field type, click where it should go on the page, and you’re done. No special software. No sending the PDF to a vendor. No waiting.
Works With the Forms You Already Have
If your state has a required enrollment form — like Missouri’s Child Care Enrollment Form — you don’t need to recreate it from scratch. Upload the PDF, place fields over the existing blanks, and families fill it in on their phone or computer. You get back a completed, signed copy that looks exactly like the original.
The tab order panel lets you control the sequence families move through the fields — so pressing Tab always takes them to the next logical field, not somewhere random on the page.
Connected to Your Enrollment Packets
Once a document is set up, add it to any enrollment packet with one click. It sits alongside your other forms and steps — families work through everything in one guided flow, and you get notified the moment they finish.
You can also require a document to be completed before a family can move forward in the packet, making sure nothing gets skipped.
No More Printing, Scanning, or Chasing
The old workflow looks like this: email the PDF, wait for it to come back, hope it’s signed in all the right places, scan it, file it somewhere, repeat for every family.
With Kinderly’s document editor, that whole loop collapses into a share link. Families complete everything digitally. Completed documents are stored automatically in the family’s record, where you can find them any time — no filing cabinet required.
If you have PDFs sitting in a folder that you’ve been meaning to digitize, now’s a good time. Open one in Kinderly and see how long it actually takes.
Questions? Write us at hello@mykinderly.com.