Fee payers and Closures

[Stargrower]

Has anyone made a decision/plan about charging fee payers if you close?  It's great that we'll all get the summer term's funding, but this still leaves us with a big shortfall and we would be unsustainable.  We have never charged when we are closed - e.g.bank holidays, snow days etc. but I have to take a different approach now, but don't know what to do or what to tell parents.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

PS, sorry had to put this in Lounge/Golden time as everything else was "greyed out"

[finleysmaid]

We will not charge if we are closed...however i have already had a couple of parents tell me they are going to pay anyway! you could do what some of the theatres are doing and ask them to consider paying due to exceptional circumstances...or come up with some sort of discount/benefit. I have had theatre tickets cancelled for London but they are giving me a voucher for 110% off next time...no refund but encouraging future booking  The other tickets i have have asked me to think about donating the money.

[Mouseketeer]

We have decided that we won’t charge fee payers for the summer term, the decision was much easier for us when we knew we could keep the funding, we will lose approx £500 a week from fee payers which I know is minimal to settings like nurseries with much higher fee payers.

 

[lynned55]

No we are not charging - but also will not be refunding for this term at all.

It's going to cost us around £5/700 per week. But hopefully the church wont charge us any rent and it is what it is.

I dont feel I can pay staff for not working, with the funding we will be covered for at least 4 months, and then charge parents who are maybe not being paid.

Also- we have around 13/14 returning in September- I dont want to loose their goodwill. However come Sept - if we cannot get anymore monies in we are going to be in dire straights, no spare money at all. I've told staff that we are using all spare cash flow and reserves to do this- so any redundancies will get nothing.

Having said all that 2/3 of our income is from funding- possibly more next term as more children move onto funding, so we are not heavily reliant on fees- goodness knows what groups who do rely on this fees will do. Chancellor is announcing more financial measures re SSP tonight- really hope it is raised now. £92 per week is laughable really. 

[louby loo]

We will be offering 'make-up' sessions for our fee payers losing out this term - next terms fees will be done from once we reopen.

Luckily for us we haven't go too many fee payers, and we won't be paying full rent - so this covers that shortfall. All funding will be used to pay staff.

[Mouseketeer]

6 hours ago, lynned55 said:

 

Also- we have around 13/14 returning in September- I dont want to loose their goodwill. However come Sept - if we cannot get anymore monies in we are going to be in dire straights, no spare money at all. I've told staff that we are using all spare cash flow and reserves to do this- so any redundancies will get nothing.

Hopefully tonight’s announcement re covering retaining staff up to 80% will help you out lynned?

[Mouseketeer]

On 20/03/2020 at 17:33, louby loo said:

 

We will be offering 'make-up' sessions for our fee payers losing out this term - next terms fees will be done from once we reopen.

 

I’ve had our first parent ask for a refund for last 2 weeks of spring term, as you Louby our intention was to offer make up sessions, though this child goes on to 4 days funded  next terms so refund is probably the only option but then you  get into the ‘if you refund one....’.

has anyone else refunded yet and if they were paying through HMRC voucher scheme is there a way to refund it there? 20% of the fees weren’t actually from the parent really we’re they? 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Mouseketeer

[lynned55]

I dont think you can refund, can you? With childcare vouchers you are not allowed to.Direct to parent I mean. We had to once- it had to be 'applied' for and then refunded to the voucher company- who in turn refunded back to parent but- bit more complicated than that as you then get taxed on it (the parent I mean) 

[Mouseketeer]

15 hours ago, lynned55 said:

I dont think you can refund, can you? With childcare vouchers you are not allowed to.Direct to parent I mean. We had to once- it had to be 'applied' for and then refunded to the voucher company- who in turn refunded back to parent but- bit more complicated than that as you then get taxed on it (the parent I mean) 

Thanks lynned, I thought it would be a refund back to their childcare tax account somehow (best find the log in,) the committee will have to make a plan about others now, either pay all back (no one else has asked but you can bet they’ll soon find out), I’m going to suggest 3 days or less can have extra sessions to make up when re-opened (which is pretty much all the others). We usually give session credits for the odd snow day. How have others approached this?

[finleysmaid]

We have given everyone  a credit note...to be used for any of our services (including after school care) up until december if they paid their fees for last term. We have not made any new bills up since the closure. we have 2 parents who are behind in payments so they must pay for the services they have taken.

[Mouseketeer]

Thanks FM, we don’t do after school care or that would of been a great option even for the ones on 30hr funding.

[finleysmaid]

do you charge for anything then?

[Mouseketeer]

1 hour ago, finleysmaid said:

do you charge for anything then?

50p a session consumables but that will take a few years to pay off 😂 the main problem ones are the ones who were fee payers but now going in to funding but not using any hours above funding to credit them.