Doddle is a family assistant that sits in your group chat. It reads what the school sends, puts the dates in both your calendars, and when a day has nobody down for it, it asks your partner. Not you.
The newsletter lands at 4.47 on a Friday. One of you opens it. From then on that person holds the date, the kit list, the £14.50 and the job of finding out who is taking the INSET day.
Doddle does the reading and the asking instead. Everything the school sends goes to you both. When a day needs a person, it asks the group. If nobody answers it follows up for a few days, then puts a name against it. The nudge comes from Doddle, so it never has to come from you.
Every evening at nine: what tomorrow needs and whatever is still not sorted, sent to you both.
Forward the newsletters, or let Doddle watch the inbox they land in. ParentMail, Arbor, ClassDojo and plain email all work.
One group: the two of you and Doddle. Ask it "who's doing Thursday?" and you get an answer instead of a five-message thread.
Dates go into the shared calendar once you've said yes. Anything that needs a person gets asked and settled in the chat.
Trip letters, the Friday round-up, the PDF you keep meaning to open. It finds the dates, the deadlines and how much you owe.
Loaded from your school's own published dates and checked against your working week, so the awkward Monday in June comes up while there's still time to sort it.
Drop-offs and pickups, day by day, with a name against each. When someone's away, it works out which days just lost their cover and asks.
Sign-up windows, kit, the week football is off for a fixture, and whether a club is term-time only.
Twelve weeks before each school holiday it starts asking what's covered, and stops the moment you've told it.
Send it to the chat mid-thought. It goes on the list, gets an owner, and comes back at the right time.
You set up the shared calendar years ago. The problem was never the calendar. It was that one of you did all the typing and the other never opened it.
Then £25 a month after launch. Beta families who give us fifteen minutes of feedback keep a founding-family rate for their first year.
About the price of one babysitting evening a month. Cancel any time; no card needed to join.
Only the school and club emails you point it at. It never touches the rest of your inbox.
Every date it finds is proposed in the chat first. It goes in the calendar when you say yes.
Your family's messages and calendar are yours. They are not training data, for us or anyone.
Say "forget everything" and it deletes the lot: emails, calendar entries, everything it knows about you.
No. Doddle is a member of your family group chat. During the beta that chat runs on Telegram. It's free, takes two minutes to set up, and you don't need to use it for anything else. WhatsApp is on the roadmap. There is nothing new to learn. You talk to Doddle the way you'd message anyone.
Both of you are in the same chat with Doddle, so everything it reads from the school goes to both of you, and its calendar is the one you both see. When a day has nobody down for it, Doddle asks the group with one-tap buttons, chases whoever hasn't answered, and after a few days puts a name against it. The asking comes from Doddle, not from you. In our house that turned out to be the whole point.
Yes. It's built for the UK school year: autumn, spring and summer terms, half terms, bank holidays and INSET days. It loads your school's own published dates and checks them against your working patterns, so a closed-school Monday is raised weeks ahead, not on the morning.
Doddle reads the emails those systems send to your inbox, so newsletters and notifications arriving through ParentMail, Arbor, ClassDojo and the rest are handled the same way as any other school email.
A shared calendar shows what somebody has already typed in, and that somebody is usually the same person. The newer UK apps that read school emails are a real step on, but they're apps one parent opens, and if a day still needs a person, that parent is still the one who asks. Doddle lives in the chat you both already use, writes to the calendar you both already have, and does the asking itself.
It proposes rather than acts, so a wrong date is a "no, Wednesday" in the chat, not a wrong entry in the calendar. If it isn't sure, it asks. Tell it something once, like "swimming's off until half term", and it remembers.
Nothing while the beta runs. After that, £25 a month per household, both parents included. Families who join the beta and give us fifteen minutes of feedback keep a founding-family rate for their first year. Joining the waitlist is free and doesn't need a card.
We're taking a small group of families into the beta. Leave your email and we'll write once, when your place is ready.
We'll write when your place is ready. If you said yes to a call, look out for a note with some times in the next few days.
I'm a dad in Kent with two young children and an inbox full of school newsletters. I built Doddle for our family first. It has run our house since the spring, and it is the thing that finally moved the asking out of our marriage and into the group chat. Now I want to find out whether it's any use to yours.