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Recording fees...how r u doing it ?


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Mouseketeer. If your fees drop on the child's birthday - does that mean you change your staffing rota and the number of staff in or do you do that on a termly basis? Surely that is what those parents are paying for - the same as the funded 2 year olds. We charge the same hourly rate for all children despite 'encouragement' from county.

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Totally agree with what you're saying lsp, and no staffing stays the same, but when the committee are making the decisions they don't want to pay anymore than they have to, and I do see that if your child turns 3 early into a term it is a fair bit more to continue paying 2yr rate (£1 per hr diff)......I think the answer is to put the unfunded 3's up to 2yr rate :-D

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It's one of the real problems of having committee of parents - conflict of interests. At our last AGM the most vocal parent was insistent that fees should not be increased. In the end they agreed on 10 pence an hour increase but then this impacted on wage increases. They only wanted in increase for staff that they had to ie minimum wage.

 

Just to add, not all parents and not all committees.

Edited by lsp
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It's one of the real problems of having committee of parents - conflict of interests.

We always review our fees at our committee meeting in June ready for the September term this means that most of the committee are leaving anyway (most of our ch only stay 1 year) so it doesn't affect them or if they are staying their child will probably be funded - that way they make the best decision for the setting ;)

Last year the committee did quite a hike on the fees (put up by £1 per hr) and I was a little worried thinking I'd be the one getting the backlash but not a single parent said anything and it's taken the fundraising pressure off a little which can only be a good thing.

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  • 1 year later...

Just rekindling this thread as I am currently looking to move from a paper based system to excel as we cannot afford management software at present.

 

I have absolutely no idea where to even begin and was going to ask if anyone would be kind enough to share their record systems for some inspiration?

 

Thank you in advance

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just rekindling this thread as I am currently looking to move from a paper based system to excel as we cannot afford management software at present.

 

I have absolutely no idea where to even begin and was going to ask if anyone would be kind enough to share their record systems for some inspiration?

 

Thank you in advance

 

I use two systems. One is an excel spreadsheet to record what days each child attends and whether they do lunch. If they're funded or not, whether we're eligible for EYPP etc. This then automatically tells me what to complete in our Headcount submission to the LEA and then calculates the invoice amount. We mainly use this for financial forecasting though as it helps us understand our income for the year, and how that is split between fees and funding.

 

For generating invoices for parents, we actually use a completely free online too called Brightbook. https://mybrightbook.com/

 

It's brilliant and best of all, completely free! It generates the invoices (and emails them), then tells me when they're overdue etc.

 

I'm happy to upload an version of the spreadsheet that can be played around with, and screenshots of how we've configured brightbooks if you'd find that helpful?

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I'm happy to upload an version of the spreadsheet that can be played around with, and screenshots of how we've configured brightbooks if you'd find that helpful?

I'd find it really helpful. Esp the spreadsheet.

Thank you for the offer

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Hi again :)

 

Brightbooks setup.pdf shows how we've set up product categories to create our parent invoices. It really is a fabulous little free tool, so definitely worth setting up an account and having a play to see how it could work for you.

 

Template.xlsx is a blank file for you to play around with. I love excel, and I love creating formula, so it may be a bit geeky to some of you! I've added some comments to show which bits you need to complete - if you have a play, you'll see that the rest of the spreadsheet auto-populates.

 

You can edit the information on the 'data' tab to include your own funding rates, term dates and inset dates etc. However, please note that this is set up for how our LEA allocates funding throughout the year, and you may find that it won't work in your location. If you know a little about excel though, it shouldn't be too hard to update the formula so that it's calculating the way you need it to.

 

Very happy to answer any questions - just let me know!

Template.xlsx

Brightbooks setup.pdf

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Thanks Sarah. Have downloaded and will have a play tomorrow.

Although I had planned to definitely start using Brightbooks in Sept- it has just occurred to me that with the start of the 30 hours and with us only being open for 26 hours we arent going to be invoicing many parents beyond the Sept term! By Christmas most of ours will be 3.

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