Fees

[Guest]

HI guys i know we are from differing areas but what are you goona charge in Sept?

 

we need to be viable and with rising staff costs hall and snacks we need to put up fees

we are a sessional group operating from a church hall

 

would love your input

[Inge]

we kept ours at same as funding.. but with the way funding is going down in some areas this will /may no longer be possible , I know that is what the setting is doing this year again.. with change at same time as the funding does so from April!

 

 

but we didnt have under 3s which may affect the rate you charge because of the additional staff needed.

 

so all in all, not much to help

 

 

Inge

[lynned55]

Ok, we are same set up as you, are in the SE fairly close to London- so our costs/outgoings are maybe some of the highest.

Oops nearly forgot the answer!

We are open for 3 hrs and are funded for only 2.5hrs. So funded children will be paying 1.80 for the additional 30 minutes & for unfunded children the 3 hours will be 9.75. This is a rise of 20p & 50p. As we dont take children until they are 2 yrs & 9 mths, most of ours are almost 3 or above when they come in so we dont charge extra for the 2 yr olds, if its of any use our funding has just gone up to 8.68 per day

HTH

Edited April 4, 2009 by lynned55

[Guest]

after reading this maybe we aren't charging enough we only charge £6 per session...

[Guest MaryEMac]

At the moment we only charge £5.50 a session but from september we will be charging £3 per hour which will bring our fees in line with the funding. We take them from 2yrs 9mths so the most they pay will be for a term.

 

Mary

[blondie]

we charge £8 for three hour session - we are putting this up in september to between £9 - £10

[Shiny]

We currently charge £9.00 per session (2 3/4 hours)

 

In September it will go up to £9.25 - £9.50 havn't decided yet. Funding is £9.28 per session from April.

[salm]

Ok, we are same set up as you, are in the SE fairly close to London- so our costs/outgoings are maybe some of the highest.

Oops nearly forgot the answer!

We are open for 3 hrs and are funded for only 2.5hrs. So funded children will be paying 1.80 for the additional 30 minutes & for unfunded children the 3 hours will be 9.75. This is a rise of 20p & 50p. As we dont take children until they are 2 yrs & 9 mths, most of ours are almost 3 or above when they come in so we dont charge extra for the 2 yr olds, if its of any use our funding has just gone up to 8.68 per day

HTH

sorry for being dim but you are charging more than your hourly rate for the funded children and you are not supposed to do that???? your nonfunded children get charged £3.25 p/h but your funded children are getting charged the equivalent to £3.60 p/h

[Inge]

we were allowed to charge a fee at whatever rate we considered appropriate for additional care.. so long as we could show the funded children were not subsidising the unfunded session, this can result in differing fees and in our case we were able to charge as such...

 

we did actually charge more for lunch club /half hour as we needed to cover the costs and not all children stayed.

 

Inge

[Alison]

its not always practical to base your fees on what everyone else charges although its important to know what the going rate is,

 

do you know how to do a break even analysis?

look at all the out goings and divide that by how may children you will realistically get in a session, we can have 26 children but realistically we only tend to get about 18 so I work out the expences and divide it by 16 to allow for a possible dip in numbers, so far we are keeping afloat quite nicely on £6.50 a 3 1/4 hour session for the none funded children.

[Guest]

omg.. we only charge £4.50 a session!

[Cait]

Well we're only 5

[Guest]

we charge at the min same as the funded children but this is not enough

we offer a high quality excellent service

 

funded money has not increased enough so we feel now that the rate has to be higher

 

we have never charged for the extra 1/4 hour but will probably do so now

 

i dont think that i would charge the same as others settings in our area but we dont want to out charge ourselves so to speak

 

thanking you keep them coming

[Alison]

omg.. we only charge £4.50 a session!

 

our main 2 1/2 hour session is only £4.50 (so dont panic!) but we have lunch club which is an additional £2 the majority of parents choose to take it so these days I tend to say £6.50 per session

[Guest]

i only charge £6 a session and if they wish to extend session to inlcude lunch time then we charge an extra £2.

[Inge]

We always felt the biggest thing to remember when charging fees was to ensure costs were covered, which included the fact that if you had NO funded children and ALL had to pay fees would you cover all the costs...

 

reason for this?

 

if you cannot cover costs on the fee income alone (this is for the total children on your role, not just unfunded ones) then the funded children are effectively subsidising the non funded ones... and we had to ensure that this did not happen....

 

this would include all costs from insurance wages rent etc etc.

 

In our case we could not cover the cost on less than the funding provided , in good times when full (after christmas usually) we would have to make enough profit to overcome the lack of income in Sept.

 

Inge

[lynned55]

sorry for being dim but you are charging more than your hourly rate for the funded children and you are not supposed to do that???? your nonfunded children get charged £3.25 p/h but your funded children are getting charged the equivalent to £3.60 p/h

 

Really? The way I see it is the non funded are being subsidizd by the funded. Our charges to the funded children were based on the funding we get for them, we should be increasing to £1.74 but as this is a silly amount i twas rouned up to £1.80. Our non funded are paying for 3 hours, our funded for 30 minutes only, if they dont like it then thy can remove their childen after 2.5 ours. I checked with our EY's before we started charging the extra 30 mins and they ok'd it. If they hadn't then we would just have gone back to opening for 2.5 hors, which wouldn't have suited anyone. This is something we have been doing for over 3 years now and you are the fiirst to tell me I am doing it wrong. As we currently have no non funded children none of it matters anyway.

 

As for comparing fees it's vey difficlt isn't it? Some groups may have very little outgoings compared to others, for instance we pay a rent but pay no utility bills. I would imagine a lot of private grops do. We're lucky in our rent is a lot lower then other grouos around our way who are paying 4 times what we are,also where you are situated in the country is a factor as well. It certainly seems to be as regards amounts for funding, look at variations there?

[Guest]

I charge £8 per 2 1/2 hour session. our funding is going up to £8.60 now so will up my charges for September. we have the problem that in September some of our children will go onto the 15 hours and the rest will stay on the 12 1/2 hours. so have got to come to a happy medium for them. Has anybody put in the equations that children under 3 need a 1 to 4 adult ratio so hence cost more to look after.

We are in negoitiations at the moment with our Borough over the bringing in of the 15 hours as it is not mandatory until 2010 and they would like us to PHASE it in for September but our Networks voted against it so it remains to be seen what will happen at our next meeting.

[laura]

I also didn't think you could charge more for the funded children than non-funded. Our funded children pay £1.75 for the half hour which is the same rate as our non-funded. To make it equal to our actual 3 hour session cost we should charge them £1.80 but didn't as it wasn't allowed.

[Guest]

well after much thought we will continue to chrage the same as funded children so it will be £3.76 per hour