Welcome to your Mana journey! As leaders at your centre, you play a key role in bringing Mana to life. Setting things up properly now means less admin later, smoother workflows for your team and more time to focus on what matters most: supporting children’s learning and growth.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to get your centre Mana-ready.

To get the best out of training, we recommend you complete all actions in this guide before your centre’s training session.

To start, let’s bookmark the Mana help centre, your one-stop shop for all of your ongoing Mana support needs: https://help.makemana.com/en/

You will see these icons used throughout the guide:

✅ Green tick: key action to complete

📖 Book: read more for further support

💡 Light bulb: guidance on further support

⚠️ Exclamation point: take note

Step 1: Join your centre in Mana

To get started, you’ll need to join your centre’s Mana account.

Option A: If you’re new to Mana, you’ll create your account from the invite email sent by your centre.
Option B: If you already have a Mana account, you’ll simply sign in and accept your centre’s invitation from your settings area.

Option A: Accept your invitation to join Mana as a new user

💡 Already have an account? Jump down to option B

You will receive an email titled Join [your centre's name] on Mana
Within this email there will be a purple button titled Sign in to Mana: click on this button
You will be asked to provide your email address to commence creating your account in Mana.
⚠️ Create your account using the same email address that you were invited to Mana with so that you can immediately access the team you have been added to.
Set up your password for using Mana
⚠️ Your password to Mana will need to be 12 characters long and include an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter and a numerical digit.
You will be asked to verify your email account.
Go to your email and open the email sent to you by LoveHeart Security and tap the link to verify your email address.
💡The verification email may take a few minutes to arrive but if you can't find the email check your junk or spam folder
Back in the Mana app, you can now tap Confirm Verification to continue.
Next, you'll be asked to accept your invite to join your teammates. Tap accept to continue.
Next, you will be asked to provide your First Name and Last Name.
Lastly, you can select your teaching philosophy.
After you provide this information, you will be taken to your Docs page. Welcome!

📖 Read more: How do I accept my invitation to Mana

📖 Read more: How do I set up my Mana Account

Option B: Accept your invitation if you already have a Mana account

💡 Don't have an account? Scroll back up to option A

⚠️ Make sure you log into Mana with the same email address that you were invited to the centre with to view and accept your invitation.
⚠️ If you were invited to Mana with a different email address, you should either:
Create a new Mana account using the email address you were invited with; OR
Ask your Manager to re-issue the invitation to your preferred email address

If you were invited to Mana with the same email address that you used to sign up for Mana with, log in to Mana as normal
Click on your profile icon.
Select Settings
Under your personal tab, select Invitations
Click Accept next to the invitation

Switching between your Mana profiles

💡 You can switch between your Personal, Team, or Parent account at any time:

Click on your profile icon.
Select Switch.
Choose the account from the drop-down menu, or search for it using the search bar.
Click on the account to switch.

📖 Read more: How do I accept my invitation to Mana

Step 2: Bulk upload your educators and children

Use the bulk upload option to add all children and educators to your enterprise account quickly and accurately. This saves significant time, ensures no one is missed and prepares your centre for immediate use of Mana.

✅ Add all of your children to Mana via a bulk upload

📖 Read more: How to bulk upload Children into your Centres

This includes a bulk upload csv template

✅ Add all of your educators/teachers to Mana

📖 Read more: Manage your team members

Step 3: Centre Setup

✅ Confirm your educators have accepted their invites to join Mana

📖 Read more: Manage team members

✅ Set up your centre’s rooms in Mana and assign children to rooms

📖 Read more: How do I create a room/group and add children?

✅ Set up your centre’s stages for journeys (note: 'journeys' in Mana signifies your cycle of planning, or individual learning plans)

If your organisation has an approach they are rolling out for stages in Mana, ensure to align your centre's journey stages to that customised approach before you commence creating journeys.
📖 Read more: What are stages in a journey?

✅ Decide whether to assign children to educators, or ask educators to mark their key children themselves

💡If you decide to assign children to educators, you need to enable key educator management in Mana.

📖 Read more: Manage key educators

⚠️ Note: if you enable this, educators will not be able to assign children to themselves, this will need to be done by management. If you decide that educators should assign children to themselves, they will be guided on how to do this in their activation material.

Step 4: Centre Personalisation

✅ Finally, personalise Mana to your centre:

This is where the magic starts to take place! Personalising Mana to your centre makes the platform more meaningful and effective. Every centre has its own routines, culture, and priorities: when Mana reflects that, educators see information that feels relevant, families feel more connected, and the Mana supports your way of working.

📖 Read more: Configure team settings