Learn More About myWhānau

Everything At Your Fingertips

Our reliable family assistants structure your myWhānau calendar to include all the detail you need to be in control, and to keep your household running like clockwork.

What do we mean by this? Let's say your child is heading to a school camp in two weeks. We will record 4 separate calendar entries:

The day the information is published with the detail and any links to forms to fill;
A reminder on the day of the deadline for when the forms are due and also with links;
The week before camp, a calendar entry with a reminder containing an action checklist for camp clothing, equipment, etc; and
The actual day of the camp with any instructions for the day.

In An Easy To Read Format

Your time is precious, so we ensure all entries are clear and concise.

Say the school emails you a 10-page newsletter, which you may miss in your inbox or not have time to read. We will enter in your calendar "READ: School Newsletter" with a direct link to it.

On our end, our trusted family assistants, will read the newsletter and extract all relevant events to your child. For example, "ACTION: Book Parent Teacher appointment" will be included in your calendar, along with the booking deadline, and the actual date of the appointment.

In your phone, the shaded entries are your child's events. The white entries are for the parent/carer to action.

Your myWhānau Calendar Is Comprehensive

It doesn't matter if the school or activity use paper notes, emails, portals or apps to publish information. Your thorough family assistant will track it all in strict confidence - all except verbal communications, of course!

For us to provide you the best comprehensive service, you may need to give us consent to access your child's school portal on your behalf. Every school's portal will have its own terms & conditions and, if necessary, we can help you get the written permission from the school.

Your Family Information Is Strictly Confidential

We only use your information to best provide you our service, and will not disclose or sell your confidential information to any third party. All myWhānau calendars use 2 Step verification for added security.

For extra peace of mind, we sign legally binding contract with you when you engage our service. This contract states that we agree to use all reasonable endeavours to protect your confidential information from any unauthorised disclosure; that we will only use your confidential information for the purpose for which it was disclosed and provided to us by you, and not for any other purpose.

Read our full privacy policy here, and our services and confidentiality contract here.

You Have Control With No Lock-In Contract

You have full control and admin rights to your myWhānau calendar and all its entries and can add entries directly if necessary.

You can cancel your subscription at any time by giving us 5 business days notice. We understand it would be stressful to lose access to the events in your calendar that we had already created for you - so we hand over access to your myWhānau Calendar when you leave.

2nd Step

When a place is available we will send you the joining form and the services and confidentiality contract. These need to be completed within 2 weeks please. After 2 weeks we will give another family the place.

3rd Step

We will arrange a time to set up the tracking, show you how to load the calendar and how it works. Technology can be a hassle so we hold your hand every step of the way.

4th Step

We will send you a text or email when your calendars are live with published events. You can then load the calendars onto other family members.

5th Step

Of course your family's activities will change so please keep us up to date. We work in partnership with you. In the members hub you will find change forms.

Any other questions?

Why is there a joining fee?

When you join your family assistant needs to spend a significant amount of time loading your calendar(s) with all published events for the full year. This fee is a one-off fee.

Why are you called myWhānau?

myWhānau takes inspiration from the Maori word whānau. Its closest translation in English is extended family and it is wonderfully inclusive. This is our mission too - at myWhānau we believe that the responsibility of the majority of household chores shouldn't fall on the shoulders of just one person. We can help by taking off some of the pressure and by enabling and empowering your family to help more too.

How many calendars do my family get?

Each child has own their individual calendar and the relevant events are then shared with the aggregate calendar that the parent or carer has access to. This means each child can have access to their own calendar and be responsible for knowing what events they have on. This also means that you can tell quickly from your calendar what is something for you to action or is your child's event.

Can you have more the one person with access to the Parent myWhānau calendar?

Yes - as many as you want. We just need to pre-approve who has access please. We can then ensure that they also get the next week's summary as well as another relevant communication.

Can I personalize the reminder timing so it suits me?

Sure thing. During the set- up meeting you can let us know what works for you and we can set it from the beginning.

What if I don't want the rest of my family to have access to the myWhānau calendars?

This is your call. However we strongly recommend that all family members have access especially each parent/carer. The reason why is to enable and empower your family so that you don't always feel like chief secretary, so you don't feel like it is always on your shoulders.

If your child has special requirements, too young or they don't have a phone, then of course you don't need to give them access. Your calendar will have their events so you have complete control and visibility.

What if my child doesn't have a mobile phone

You have a couple of options, either don't give them access to the calendar instead you can have access to their events via your aggregated calendar or you can load the calendar on to their desktop.

How do you ensure the calendar is accurate?

We have a thorough checklist that we follow whenever we enter an event to ensure it is 100% accurate 100% of the time.

There may be occasions where your child's activities have changed and we do not have this. We ask please that you keep us up to date; in the Members Hub there is an activity change form and instructions in adjusting your email tracking. We work in partnership with you.

I like to have a printed version of the calendar so I can stick it on to the fridge.

Absolutely. You can access your google calendar via the app or desktop and print out schedule - whenever you want. Or even better we do this for you every Friday and send you a pdf of the your current schedule, with the formatting all done. Of course it will only be correct at the time of distribution.

What about Saturday sports cancellations? Do you track these?

Because these cancellations often occur at the last minute, we do not track or enter these cancellations into the calendar. We will update the changes if there is a general cancellation or amendment during the working week though. In the event's notes section we put the date that we entered the information and when we update the information.

How 'live' is the calendar?

Our office hours are from 9am - 7pm. If an email or event is published outside these hours we will update the calendar as soon as possible the next day. The speed of how quickly we enter the event from when we receive it does depend on the volume at the time. If we can see that it is urgent, then we will prioritise these first.

Will my work be able to 'see' calendar?

No - because this is loaded as a separate account onto your phone they should not have access. However we recommend that you please confirm this with your work.

Does this work for children who go between 2 households and with multiple primary caregivers?

Yes it actually works really well as all carers get access to the Parent calendar and you are not relying on one carer to do all the heavy lifting and entering in the events.

What if there is something super sensitive that I don't want to be tracked?

We can build in exclusions into the auto-forwarding. If you are sending an email to school that you don't want us to see the response just add personal in the subject heading and we won't get it. Or if is regarding a support plan we can also exclude for that.

If we are sent an email that we believe contains highly sensitive information, we will let you know that this email has not been read, entered in the calendar and been deleted immediately from our end. In the set-up meeting we can discuss and implement any of these exclusions to give you piece of mind.

I don't want to load this calendar on to my phone's calendar - I want it to be separate.

If you phone's default calendar is not google calendar, then we recommend you download the google calendar app and load your myWhānau calendar here.

Can I put on hold the subscription over the holidays?

As we find that schools and activities still communicate during the holidays, and we also use this time to ensure your myWhānau calendar is updated with next term's events, we do not allow subscriptions to be put on hold over the holidays.

If you have special circumstances like leaving the country for an extended period of time (ie over 6 months), then please contact us directly to discuss.

Can I add an event into the myWhānau calendar myself?

Yes you have full admin rights and are also able to modify events if you choose. If the event you are adding is something to do with your child's activities then you can just flick it to us and we will do this for you.

Do you keep my credit card details on file?

In order to process you recurring payment, your credit card details are in an encrypted format utilising our PCI-compliant payment gateway provider, Stripe. This means neither our myWhānau staff or Stripe have access to view your credit card number, or its details.

Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry. To accomplish this, Stipe makes use of best-in-class security tools and practices to maintain a high level of security at Stripe.

All credit card numbers are securely encrypted at rest with AES-256. None of Stripe’s internal servers and daemons are able to obtain plaintext card numbers; instead, they can just request that cards be sent to a service provider on a static whitelist. Stripe’s infrastructure for storing, decrypting, and transmitting card numbers runs in separate hosting infrastructure, and doesn’t share any credentials with Stripe’s primary services (API, website, etc.).

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