At the beginning of every month, we generate invoices for the subsequent month for all children with regularly scheduled care, meaning that your parents are billed for each month in advance. Invoices are generated automatically based on the hours of care currently scheduled in your calendar. You can review your calendar under the summary for each child in your tiney app, and it's important that you let us know about any permanent changes to care schedules or rates as soon as you can so that we invoice parents correctly.
Childminders are requested to let us know about any changes that will need to be included in that cycle by midnight on the 15th of each month. For example, any changes for June care should arrive with us by midnight on the 15th of May.
Any change requests received after this time may need to be billed separately, or included in the next month's invoice. That said, we do have the option to rescind and reissue invoices which have been sent, as long the parents have not already paid these, in case of any last-minute changes.
Examples of common invoice changes include:
Additional or ad-hoc hours, or days, not currently included in the regular schedule. This includes care in the current month in addition to the hours that have already been invoiced, or additional hours coming up in the next month.
Permanent changes to hours or days for upcoming care. Please note these must be made with at least 7 days' notice.
Any closures or absences in the current month which need to be credited, for days that have already been invoiced.
Any closures or absences in the following month that you’d like removed from the schedule.
Any upcoming holidays that will or will not be charged.
Changes to hours in any school holidays that are not currently in your calendar.
End dates if placements are terminating. Please note there must be at least 30 days' notice for terminations.
A move to, or from, Local Authority 15/30hr funding, or Student Finance. In these cases new contracts will need to be issued.
For any of these changes, please be sure to include the child's name, the specific dates affected, start and end times of sessions, and the rates to charge if these differ from your normal rates. If any of this information is missing it makes it much harder for us to generate your invoices quickly and correctly!
If received by the deadline, all changes will be applied on invoices due by the last day of the month, for care in the following month. Any changes you’ve previously told us about will already have been included.
We aim to have invoices in your drafts for review by the 15th of each month, but please be aware that we do stagger this over our community of childminders in order to ensure that our team can keep up with incoming requests.
Once invoices have been drafted, you do have the option to send them from your app once you're happy. In the latter part of the month, we will send all unsent invoices for the next month's care, to ensure that parents have them in time for the due date, unless we've got a message from you requesting a change, or unless you have let us know you don't want us to do this for you.
As ever, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the payments team if you have any questions or need anything clarifying!