What is Tax-Free Childcare?
Working or self-employed parents earning over £183/week and less then £100k/year can pay through Tax-Free Childcare, where the government will top up £2 for every £8 paid by parents, up to £2000 per child per year.
Parents will need to set up a childcare account to pay into, either by bank transfer or card payment, and the top-up amount will be added directly to this account by the government.
How can I pay tiney?
It's important to note that paying into your Tax-Free Childcare account will not automatically send any payment to tiney: this is done in a separate step.
First, you'll need to find tiney from the list of payees. Tiney are set up with Tax-Free Childcare to receive payments on behalf of all tiney childminders, so you will need to search for tiney's details rather than those of your childminder.
You can search using the name tiney, our Ofsted number CA000038, or our postcode E16 2DQ, and can then add tiney as a saved childcare provider.
Payments can be set up as one-off payments on a specific date, or recurring payments, which can be amended before they are sent. Since most families are invoiced by calendar month, meaning that each invoice amount will be different, many families use one-off payments instead of the recurring option.
When setting up a one-off payment, make sure to check the date the payment will be sent. The portal may often suggest as default a date in a month's time - so always double-check that the payment will be sent on the date you want!
How will tiney know the payment is for my child?
Payments made from a TFC account will automatically include a unique code for each child, made up of their first initial, 3 letters from their surname, 5 digits, and TFC: e.g. a child named John Smith would have a code like 'JSMI56789TFC'. Tiney can match these payment references to the relevant child and mark invoices as paid, so there is no need to inform tiney of these codes, or to add any specific reference to your payments through TFC.
I've made payment via TFC but the app isn't showing it yet - what's happened?
Don't worry, this is normal. HMRC's processing time means that payment made from your TFC account will take a few days to reach the recipient. In the meantime, you can head back to the invoice in your app and confirm that you have made the payment.
Please note that HMRC's processing time will be impacted by weekends and public holidays, so keep this in mind when making payment for your invoices.
Once the payment has reached tiney, you'll receive a receipt, and the invoice status will be updated to Paid.
If you have received an invoice that is payable by another payment scheme, such as credit/debit card or a voucher scheme, you can make the payment through Tax-Free Childcare, and we will update the invoice accordingly once we receive the payment.