We've updated how tiney fee charges appear in your wallet. Instead of a single charge at the end of term, your Summer 2026 tiney fees are now broken into four monthly due dates. The total amount you owe hasn't changed — only the payment schedule.

For example, in Summer 2026 are split across the following dates, weighted to reflect how much care typically happens each month:

Your total fee across all four instalments is the same as it would have been under the previous single charge.

Any payments you've already made toward your Summer 2026 fees are credited to the earliest instalment first. So if you've already paid some or all of the April or May amounts, you'll see those marked as paid in your wallet.

If you've received funded hours payments from your local authority but haven't yet made a payment toward your Summer 2026 tiney fees, please review the charges in your tiney wallet and pay toward the instalments that were due in April and May.

Summer 2026 is a transition period. To give everyone time to adjust, we will only consider Summer 2026 charges officially overdue after 31 July 2026 — the final instalment date.

From Autumn 2026 onwards, the default will be one instalment per month from the start of term, and charges will be considered overdue based on their individual monthly due dates. An exception applies where your local authority pays on a different schedule.

This change is based on feedback from the tiney community. A single end-of-term charge can be hard to budget for, and we want to avoid a situation where childminders face a large payment all at once.

The monthly split is designed to mirror how much care takes place each month of the term, which also lines up with how most local authorities pay childminders — in monthly instalments.

In Spring 2026, 78% of the community paid their fees in line with their local authority payments, and this structure is designed to support everyone in doing the same.

Yes. The split is applied to each child's funded-hours charge separately, so each child has their own four instalments rather than one lump charge. If you log in and look at your charges, you'll see more lines than before — but your total across the term is exactly the same. The amounts in our email are the combined totals across all your children for each date.

The dates are guides for when paying lines up with the LA payment many childminders receive each month. We won't actively chase any of these payments until the end of term. For Summer 2026, no charges will be considered overdue until after 31 July 2026.

No. The total is exactly the same as before — we're splitting it into four smaller payments across the term instead of one lump charge in August. Any payments you've already made toward your summer fees are credited to the earliest instalment first.

The 20/30/30/20 split is designed to roughly mirror how much care happens in each month of the term, which lines up with how most local authorities pay across the term in monthly chunks. We know not every LA works that way — if yours pays on a different rhythm and the timing is tricky, get in touch through the chat in the app and we can talk through your options.

Your existing payment plan is completely separate from this change. Those instalments cover charges from previous terms; the split we're introducing here only affects your Summer 2026 funded-hours charges. You'll see both running alongside each other — they don't replace or interfere with one another, and you don't need to do anything to keep your existing plan going. We're also working on an in-app feature to make regular payments easier to manage across both, coming in the next few weeks.

Yes — if you'd prefer to pay everything at once, you can do that through your tiney wallet. The instalment dates are there to make it easier to pay in line with when you receive LA payments, but there's no requirement to follow that schedule.

If your local authority hasn't paid you yet for a given month, you don't need to pay that instalment before receiving those funds. No Summer 2026 charges will be considered overdue until after 31 July 2026. If you're concerned about a delayed LA payment, contact us through the chat in the app.

Log in to the tiney app and go to your wallet. You'll see each child's fee broken into the four individual instalment charges, with their due dates and paid/unpaid status shown clearly. If you've already made payments, you'll see the earliest instalments marked as paid.

Our support team is always available through the chat in the tiney app. You can also suggest FAQs we should add — we'll keep this article updated as new questions come in.