TagBack

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How TagBack works

The label, the station and the app, and what each one does for families, schools and nurseries. Three parts, one job.

The TagBack lost property station with its front drawer open, holding a tagged jumper and water bottle

In our first post we shared why we built TagBack: a class chat full of missing jumpers on one side of the gate, and a lost property pile that never got smaller on the other. Now let's look at how it works, and how it's designed so that parents, schools and nurseries all come out ahead.

Designed for everyone on the school run

Lost property is a network problem. The child who dropped the jumper, the pupil who found it, the member of staff who picked it up, the office that stored it and the parent who's been looking for it all need to be connected, and today they aren't. TagBack connects them with three parts.

1. The label: a code, and nothing else

Every TagBack label carries a unique code and a QR code. That's all.

  • No name, so nothing on the label identifies the child or the family.
  • No battery and no GPS, so there is nothing to charge and nothing that can track anyone.
  • Washable and iron-in, guaranteed for 500 washes and expected to last 1,000. Worn or faulty labels are replaced free.

For bags, bottles and lunch boxes there's a hard tag: tough moulded silicone, with a locking strap and a carabiner clip in the box. The label only means something inside the TagBack app, paired to a parent's account.

2. The station: it reads, stores and tells

A smart lost property station sits in the school's entrance or lost property area. It needs one 3-pin socket and the guest Wi-Fi, no cabling and no IT ticket.

  • Drop it in. Anyone who finds an item drops it through the slot or hangs it on the rail.
  • It reads the tag on its own. No scanning by staff. The item is logged in seconds.
  • The family is told by app notification and email within a minute.
  • Collected with a PIN. The parent, or at secondary the pupil, keys their PIN on the touchscreen. Staff can sign an item out with one code and a reason. Every removal is logged.

Untagged items go in the same place and are handled the usual way. The school's part ends at the station.

3. The app: everything in your pocket

The TagBack app is free for every family, on iPhone and Android, and it's for parents only. Children never have accounts.

  • Join your school with its code and add your child.
  • Pair labels in seconds by scanning the QR code and naming the item.
  • See every labelled item and where it is.
  • Get the message the moment something is handed in, then collect with your PIN or confirm in a tap.
  • Pass tags on with second-hand uniform in two taps: "No longer mine", then "This is now mine".

For parents: label once, get it back every time

  • A starter kit is £50: 15 iron-in labels and 2 hard tags, a full uniform plus a bag and a bottle.
  • An annual kit of 10 labels is £40, or £30 a year on auto-renew.
  • Went home in the wrong bag? The other family taps the tag, which opens an anonymous chat between the two of you. Share details only if you choose to.

For schools: free, and we pay you

  • Your first station, installation, training and support are free, for good. Most schools only ever need one.
  • We pay the school a royalty on every label sale, termly, to the school or the PTA, or towards labels for families on benefits.
  • A dashboard shows what's in the station, oldest first, with reports by item, class and year. Our API can tell form tutors which pupils have items waiting.
  • Everything for the DPO and safeguarding lead is supplied: a data processing agreement, a DPIA and privacy notices.

For nurseries: Teddy Tags

Little ones lose more than anyone: cardigans, coats, comforters, spare clothes. Teddy Tags is TagBack for nurseries. The same labels with a teddy on them, chunky one-piece bag tags with no small parts, and a compact station for the cloakroom. Free for the nursery, and when a child moves on to school their labels and app account go with them.

The flow, from label to home

  1. Label. Parents buy a kit in the app and iron the labels in.
  2. Lose. It happens. A jumper comes off at PE and stays there.
  3. Find. A pupil or member of staff drops it in the station.
  4. Tell. The family gets a notification within a minute.
  5. Collect. PIN at the station, and it's logged.

Everything is encrypted, hosted in the UK or EU and available only to the family and the school. Label it once. It comes home.

In the next post we'll introduce the people behind TagBack: Choosing the team, and why it mattered that the people building this had lived both sides of the problem.

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