Start with the school day, not the feature list
Map the journeys that happen at your reception before comparing products. Include a parent arriving for a meeting, a contractor returning over several days, a supply teacher, a delivery driver and a guest who has been invited in advance.
For each journey, record who approves the visit, what reception must verify, whether a badge is needed, who should be notified and how the person is accounted for when they leave. This exposes gaps that a generic sign-in tablet may not cover.
- Can reception see expected and unexpected visitors in one view?
- Can the system distinguish visitors, contractors and volunteers?
- Can staff pre-register a guest without giving them access to school systems?
- Does sign-out update the live on-site list immediately?
Treat safeguarding as a workflow
A safeguarding field is only useful when it changes what happens next. Decide whether an expired check should stop a visit, require an escort or prompt reception to contact the safeguarding team. The system should make that rule visible at the moment of arrival.
Look for a clear history of who checked a record and when. Access to sensitive notes should be restricted by role, and ordinary hosts should only see the information needed to receive their guest.
Test the emergency view
Ask vendors to demonstrate an evacuation, not just a sign-in. The on-site list should be quick to open on a phone, show the host and arrival time, and remain usable away from the reception desk. A printed fallback may still be part of the school's local emergency plan.
Run a short exercise during the trial. Sign in several visitors, mark one as departed and confirm that the assembly-point list is accurate. Include temporarily absent staff and contractors if your procedure requires them.
Check privacy and ownership
Ask where data is hosted, which subprocessors are involved, how backups are protected and how the school exports or deletes its records. Agree a retention schedule instead of keeping every visit indefinitely.
The contract should clearly identify the school as controller and the supplier as processor where that reflects the arrangement. Your data protection officer should review the lawful basis, privacy notice, access model and any use of identity documents or special-category data.
Use a scored trial
Shortlist two or three systems and test them with the people who will use them. Give more weight to safeguarding, emergency access and reception speed than to cosmetic features.
- Reception can complete a routine arrival in under one minute.
- Hosts receive useful notifications without repeated alerts.
- The live on-site list matches real occupancy during a drill.
- Administrators can export, correct and delete records.
- The supplier can explain support, resilience and incident handling clearly.