Beanstack Tracker Reviews

Our library is using Beanstack for their summer reading program since the building is physically closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our entire family is participating. We decided rather than have all four of us have our own account, we would create one account and have four “readers” in the account. What is frustrating is that BeanstackTracker doesn’t let you add a “default” person to your device. For example, every time I open BeanstackTracker , my 13-year-old’s “profile” loads rather than my own, creating the unfortunate opportunity for me to add my books, reading minutes, or completed Activities to his “reader account” rather than mine. At the same time, my 16-year-old’s iPhone, opens to MY account rather than his, and my wife’s iPhone opens to my 16-year-old’s. So it would be nice if Beanstack could add an option to set a default user, or at the very minimum open BeanstackTracker to the last reader account that was previously opened.

Also, I wish you could edit previously added books. For instance, I tried adding a book by scanning the ISBN. However, it wouldn’t scan, so I added it manually. Later, when I discovered I was scanning the book incorrectly, I wanted to redo it, but that would have required me to delete the book and re-add it, thus losing my minutes and pages read.

The most obvious feature does not exist. It was perplexing to try to add new books I just picked up from the library before sitting down to read them with the kiddos. Essentially one is stuck picking a start date or the default today is entered. As for the books we read and forgot to scan we have to go through the same process then back date each book it is almost not worth it. I decided to write them down and found it was faster and can take the list to the library to show the same process. They laughed too. All the parts are here in BeanstackTracker just add a button for scan ISBN then add to library of books. Then at least the book is available when the kids pick it out of the stack to read it. Additional add a calendar view to add book I read this week for quick logging. I am not doing this for badges as much as teaching my daughters to keep notes on their progress for themselves.

Feel free to contact me directly for detailed feedback if you are the developer I am happy to help.

So much for feedback the new version is horrible, the user interface is so limited. Most of all the product design team clearly does not use BeanstackTracker everyday and night we have just about given up... tonight we have to re-Enter every book because they do not show up in the recent list... what a complete let down the new version misses he most obvious fixes.

As of writing this, the last update was over three weeks ago, and that is where I started having issues. I have used BeanstackTracker for over two years and I like the simplicity and also the ability to enter books that I may get as a promotional thing or because I am a beta reader for several authors. With the addition of a calendar to track reading streaks, though I already read almost daily, I was more incentivized to actually use BeanstackTracker everyday for tracking. Since the update, which was supposed to have fixed bugs regarding the tracking, It has not registered several days that I have entered and thus I now longer have a long reading streak in BeanstackTracker . You can select days in the past to say you’ve read but the calendar doesn’t register them. I am no longer incentivized by this feature. I have already met my summer reading goals for my local library challenge, but for those that want to participate in challenges, the issues with BeanstackTracker may cause them to lose out on rewards or to possibly become disinterested in the program because BeanstackTracker that they are using isn’t working or isn’t user friendly anymore. Not sure what BeanstackTracker developer is doing, but since this hasn’t been fixed in three weeks I’m not sure if they realize the update actually caused more problems than fixed them.

I like how easy it can be to track reading and I look forward to installing this on my children’s iPads now that they are old enough to track things themselves.

A lot of issues that I had last year with BeanstackTracker seemed like they are getting cleaned up to be a little better. It isn’t the best app ever, but it’s free and encourages my kids to read.

A bit frustrating is my youngest daughter’s account. Over a year ago I registered her for a 1000 books before kindergarten challenge. She is finished with kindergarten and I simply want to remove the old challenge. It is listed as “ongoing” though so it doesn’t have an end date, like last year’s summer programs. So now she’s just registered for this program forever?? I have been all over BeanstackTracker trying to find a way to remove that old challenge and there isn't anything. Why can’t I remove a challenge just as easily as I registered for new ones? And I have to apparently leave this feedback in a review because there’s no “contact us” type of section anywhere in BeanstackTracker either.

We have been using the Beanstack app along with the Badge Book. Mostly everything works great. But there are 2 problems!

One, if we read in the late evening it assigns the following date to the reading. For example we read from 10:20-11:00 PM on May 30th and when I select done it records that we read from 10:20-11:00 on May 31st. I don’t know exactly when the cutoff is for it to log reading as the next day but this messes up our challenges for badges. And if BeanstackTracker knows the time how come it doesn’t know the date?

Two, the last day of each month (last day of challenges) don’t count for the challenges. So we read for 40 minutes from 10:20-11:00 on May 30th. It logs it as May 31st (see issue one) and doesn’t count it as reading towards May’s Challenges. It is 1:30 am on May 31st and we don’t have access to continue to work on May challenges or to complete any of May Challenges activities. If I tried to go into any activities for any challenges dated May 1st-31st it won’t load them. They show as grey lines. This happened for April as well.

Hello, I’m a full time mom of five😱 BeanstackTracker has given me the ability to track summer reading without the old pen and paper😁 We can be on the go and still remember all the books that have entertained us all summer long. The scan is easy to use. Most books are quickly logged. The book that is not found with the ISBN can still quickly be logged. It’s amazing to see how many stories have past through our home. My kids will finally get their party at school for reading this summer.😃 They will go back on BeanstackTracker and write down everything or I will encourage the school to get connected 👍 love this

We have been using this for 3+ years now. We love how it can track for multiple members of the family. Barcode scanner has been improved and usually finds our books. We still have issues with the calendar and streaks logging correctly. Sometimes if you ‘quick log’ a book it doesn’t count it as read or logged. If you don’t select ‘finished book’ it doesn’t count it. This makes things really hard to go back and correct when my kids don’t enter the books the exact way. I wish you could select on the calendar the date and it would show you which books were read and by who. That way I could check everyone’s logged books at the same time. Some days I have had to enter a book multiple times for 1 day to count but it is timely to go back and double check. Also the bar graph is not very useful the units are all off and don’t accurately measure what my kids have read.

This would be a 5 star app if logging reading wasn’t such a pain. 1. No matter how many times I pick the correct profile before starting the reading timer it always logs it to the wrong profile. My son and I are both doing reading challenges and I’m constantly having to delete my reading from his profile after using the reading timer. I click MY profile then MY book and then start reading session and when I finish it’s logged MY book on his profile along with the minutes read. 2. If I leave BeanstackTracker when logging a new book to check who an author is or the number of pages in the book it makes me start all over again logging the book details. Also the same thing happens if we need to check the internet for an answer to one of the library activities. 3. I wish there was a way to just synch what we’re reading to BeanstackTracker right from our kindles.

I’m enjoying using BeanstackTracker to track my baby twins’ reading, but I’d love to see it improve a bit more. I’d like to have more books be able to be scanned by the ISBN, as it takes some time to type the title and photograph the book (and then that still doesn’t connect the ISBN to that book in the future, so you have to either re-enter the book or find it in past books read!). Also, I’d love to just easily be able to enter an estimate of total minutes read during a session instead of entering minutes per book. Honestly, the whole app could benefit from quicker (1-2 screen) entries - the quicker the better, especially for parents of very young readers who have lots of small, shorter books that are being read (and not a lot of extra time with said little ones)!! And I’d love to be able to easily view the total number of books read per child on some sort of home screen.

Love that my library is using an app now for books tracking! Love the barcode scanner too. Updates are needed: if a book has a reading log, we need the option to hit a checkmark or swipe to say it’s completed. Example: My library did a program by pages in the summer, so we didn’t mark any books as completed since we were re-reading a lot. Now we are doing a program with lifetime books completed and I have to enter a new log to have the option to mark a title as completed. Also: you have to tap in the exact right spot to add text, it’s not intuitively the whole line or the title for logging past readings. That’s frustrating.

I feel like there are lots more ways to make it easier to log and edit. Every log should be able to count for pages or time or books completed vs picking one and that log can only be used that way. Etc. keep working on it! Love the concept!!

Changing my rating from 1 star to 4 because I received a response and solution to the issue mentioned in my previous review. Very pleased with BeanstackTracker ’s customer service.

Original review: We’ve been using BeanstackTracker every day for over a year and just recently the start and end page tracker disappeared and now there’s only an option to put in how many pages you’ve read. PLEASE BRING BACK THE OPTION TO PUT IN THE PAGE YOU STARTED ON AND THE PAGE YOU ENDED ON!!! I’m giving it a one star until this is fixed because it’s crucial to being able to track reading. Yes, I know there’s a “pages read” input option, but it was better the way it was before since that number was calculated by BeanstackTracker based on the page you started on and the page you ended on.

So, before we get started I would like to state that the following is just a few suggestions, and not in any way meant to discourage BeanstackTracker from being used. Cons: so first of all BeanstackTracker is great! I would say it is 3 1/2, but I rounded up. I think the biggest problems with BeanstackTracker are the wording. If kids are trying to log stuff it better be Clear. Not to mention the + button. I think right when you log in there should be a big green button saying log instead. BeanstackTracker shouldn’t have tabs, and SHOULD have better instructions. Pros: this makes online book clubs fun! It is fairly easy to access from any device, and it has good parental controls. If you are unsure about getting BeanstackTracker? I would say go for it! Have a nice day!😊
-Tigger

BeanstackTracker is ok. We’ve used Beanstack for logging our summer reading for the past three years and this year, I’m not sure the improvements are improvements. The ISBN scanner has only worked for about five books (out of 30 or more). When I enter the ISBN, that hasn’t worked either. The search for a book function is gone from previous versions and so, when I am forced to enter the book title and author information, no picture of the cover is shown/available; and I have to figure out how many pages are in it. I do like that we can log and track reading for parts of chapter books so that it doesn’t look like I’m not reading anything, when in reality I’m 499 pages into an 800 page book. My conclusion is that something is wrong with BeanstackTracker ’s ISBN data base access. Fix that AND bring back titles searches.

I’m really disappointed that BeanstackTracker does not work. Had no problems until today and cannot get it to open. It spins. To make reading important these apps need to work. If I could give it a negative I would. I will continue to read but no longer interested in wasting my time trying to get useless apps to work. And interesting that there is no response from the developer. Enforces my low opinion of the lack of care. Update, response from the developer that means “I” would need to submit a ticket to have them research the problem with their product. Again, I’m not going to submit a ticket. I’m too busy to spend time trying to get a developer to fix this issues with their own product. I’m not a beta tester. Score remains the same. The product spins and will not show any data. Worked fine for a couple weeks and then stopped.

BeanstackTracker is everything I need all in one. It records the book I am currently reading, lets me track minutes read and page by page (optional), and was easy to connect with my public library’s summer reading program. I have two readers under my profile and am able to track each person’s progress. My favorite part is the built in timer. I can scan the book I am beginning, check the details, and start my reading session. The timer keeps track and even gives me an option to pause when my child interrupts. When I’m done, I simply press done and submit my time.

BeanstackTracker is absolutely fantastic!! I can log my younger daughter’s reading and awards, monitor my older daughter’s reading and awards, and keep up with my own. My older daughter can also log and keep up with her own reading and awards. It is very intuitive.
Books can be logged in various ways, and there are many routes to get to an individual’s record.

The only part that does not work very well is the timer. It cuts off when the iPod or iPhone “automatically” stops and does not save the time for the book being logged for time spent reading.

Generally BeanstackTracker works and is easy to use although there are times when it will not recognize ISBN numbers. It seems that it logs according to EST because at 9pm PST it starts adding books to tomorrow. I also keep maxing out the number of books for the day which then bounces them to tomorrow. For example I read 18 books to my daughter today, and it says I have read 15 today and 3 tomorrow. Last time I went over the ‘maximum’ it then adjusted the max the following day but did not adjust the logging.

Overall I really like BeanstackTracker and it is a great way to track for the summer reading challenge but hope the developer is able to chase out the remaining bugs.

I’m using BeanstackTracker through my library for the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge. It’s great for logging books quickly and keeping count! I love that I can scan in most ISBN codes.

However, if you want an accurate log, there are some issues. I’ve logged a past reading and it attributes the reading to the wrong day. If you’re trying to track number of books a day, you may have issues. This evening, I read two books and logged them, but the chart in Highlight -> Completed -> Week shows 0 for today. Sometimes this corrects itself if I close BeanstackTracker , but not always. The log number is always right, but the other data interpretations are often off.

I love BeanstackTracker . With four kids it’s easy to track the books and their reading. The only downfall I have is the timer. Every time I log a book and start a session if our phone or tablet goes goes to sleep the tracker stop and BeanstackTracker closes out. I understand I can change my setting in the phone to not go to sleep but I or the kids forget to go back and change it after reading which leads to dead tablets sooner. But I love BeanstackTracker none the less just wish it worked better for the timer because my kids love the timer. They can independently read and know that they’ve completed their goal.

We visit a couple different libraries. It’s nice to be able to log the books from each one, and to participate in different summer reading programs. I also like the ease of logging for more than one kid. My 4-year-old loves scanning each book and clicking “start” and “finish”, and then seeing all of his progress. The only thing preventing a 5th star would be the annoyance of having to manually log books that don’t show up when scanned, and noting the number of pages (Really? Early reader books rarely list numbers on the pages!). Other than that, I really like it.

I love how convenient it is to log reading minutes for our summer library reading challenge. I especially love how I can log minutes for all the kids and myself when we are reading aloud all together. It is frustrating, however, that I am not able to do the same thing for activities and destinations.

The summer library challenge includes not only reading, but also activities and visits to sites in the community. While I can log reading for multiple members of the family at the same time, I am unable to do the same for site visits and activities for all the members of my family. Since all my kids come with me, and there are six of them, it’s very, very tedious to have to enter all the site visits individually for each person.

Hope this can be fixed for next year’s challenge! It will make tracking our participation in the library summer challenge much more fun. :)

I have ADD so a lot of the time, I lack the motivation to read and easily lose the motivation to complete books. With BeanstackTracker’s features that track the time spent reading, averages your pages read per session, and the progress you’ve made in the book I’m motivated to finish any of the books I’ve read. I liked the program when it was made available for my library’s patrons last year for their summer reading program. I had no idea it was actually this permanent and I can’t wait to continue to use it through the year!

I like a lot of things about it, and most effective is being able to add all members of my family while logging a reading session, but I wish I could do that when logging a past reading session instead of having to add the same book to each members individual log, I also wish that when I mark a book as completed to send to archive it would do that for each member that is part of that reading session, again instead of having to archive each one separately for each family member later. But I love how easy it is to keep track of all the books we read together as a family!

You can’t just log the number of books you read each day...and maybe I’m weird, but we can go through a LOT of children’s books in one day, and logging each one individually is DUMB. And if you’re backlogged because you have better things to do than track which books you’re reading with your child? Oh boy. Forget about it.

Add a feature for logging the QUANTITY OF BOOKS, not just minutes. Some reading challenges/ programs at our library about about the number of books read, not the time.

I’ve honestly only given BeanstackTracker 15 minutes of my time trying to figure it out, and it just isn’t good for what it is supposed to do.