To delay paying childminder

[Harmonyrays]

On day two of my ds being with his new childminder I receive an invoice for the entire month. Is this normal? I'd expected to get it at the end of the month. I've only just gone back to work and don't get paid until then.

AIBU to delay paying until the 30th?

I run an after school sports club, we ask for all payment in advance due to the number of people that will happily send their kids for most of a term & then vanish without paying. Its not just 1 or 2, before we introduced strict advance payment I was chasing thousands of pounds at the end of every term.

As a former childminder, I can tell you why we charge in advance. When I started out, I charged at the end of the week for the care provided. I can't tell you how many times my clients 'forgot' their cheque books and would promise to bring it next week and then forget over and over. One client tried to pay me in doughnuts (yes, brought a box of doughnuts). I am still out about $500 (Cdn) from 1 client. I provided food, diapers, wipes, etc which came out of the fees I charged, so I needed the money to cover these costs in advance. As a childminder, it is very difficult to get tough with parents who don't pay, or don't pay on time. If you don't charge until after the service is provided, you risk losing a client if you demand payment and if you lose that client, you also lose all the money that is owed. So yes, please pay your child minder in advance, if that is what you agreed to do in your contract.

I paid my childminder in arrears weekly as that was our arrangement. I think you need to look at your contract. If it stipulates payment in advance you will have to pay up front.

However, a month seems a long time. If your CM decided to finish the arrangement without notice you could be very out of pocket and left in the lurch. As posters above have noted, unscrupulous employers of childminders who do not pay are bailed out by the courts who allow them to pay in insultingly small installments and the same could be true for childminders themselves.

As a rule of thumb pay as little as you can up front but be scrupulously honourable and honest yourself.

Of course you are being unreasonable. What would happen if she accepted payment in arrears then you didn't pay? Not only would she be out of pocket, but then need to try to quickly fill the space. I am a childminder and I take a 4 week deposit along with payment monthly in advance. That way I can never be left out of pocket like I have been in the past.

@Teacher22 you are not the childmjnders employers. You are the client. She is a small business who provides a service, not your babysitter.

Wages aren’t always paid for work already done. The last school I worked at we got paid in the middle of the month, for the two weeks we had worked already and for the 2 we were about to do.
Weird I know but it’s probs quite common

I find it staggering that some parents try to get out of paying for childcare. You'd think it would be right up there with mortgage/rent in terms of priorities.

Childcare safeguards your most precious possessions and enables you to keep your job. You'd think people would appreciate that.

It must be some where in your contract, the child minder has bills to cover and has probably calculated what your contribution is to cover these, you need to discuss it with her, she could well stop taking your child.

I might be missing the point here, but childminding is a job, so surely like any other job you should get paid at the end of the month, Of course childminders have expenses, but most jobs do, petrol, train fare, bus fare etc. Most jobs are a month in hand, it’s hard but that’s the way it is. Why is child minding different. No employer pays out expenses in advance do they.

I'm going to pay weekly for two and it will coincide with my pay date and become monthly.

@Harmonyrays, I hope you mean this is what you've agreed with your childminder and isn't just what you've decided to do? If not, you could very well turn up on Monday and find you no longer have childcare in place.

No employer pays out expenses in advance do they.

In this situation, there is no employer! The childminder is providing a service and is a self-employed business. As several others have already said, the business is run on these terms to ensure parents don't get a month's worth of care for nothing. Believe me, this is not uncommon.

sweethope there are many posts above that explain why Childminders often elect to charge in advance of the month

sweethope it's a childcare business/provider rather than an employment. Most schools, clubs and childcare is payment in advance.

sweethope childminding is different because the person that’s supposed to pay you can just not come back & then you never get paid. It you work in a regular job you’re unlikely to turn up on payday & find the office/shop/bank you work in has upped & vanished!

so surely like any other job you should get paid at the end of the month

Firstly, being a childminder isn’t a ‘job’ as such. They are not employed by anyone. They are self employed, and offer a service on particular terms. People can choose whether to use the service (and therefore accept the terms) or not.
Secondly, I have always been paid mid month. 2 weeks in advance, 2 weeks in arrears. Many people in the thread have said similar. There are also many industries where it is common to charge in advance. Childcare is one of them (most nurseries charge in advance).

I have always paid in advance, but childminder requested weekly payments. I don't think I would have been happy to pay a full month up front

When I was childminding I took a month's worth of fees as a deposit at the contract signing, this was non-refundable and was to hold the space open. It was made clear in the contract that if they decided not to take up the space then I reserved the right to retain the deposit either in part or in full to cover my lost income because I'd held a space that I could have otherwise filled. If I managed to fill the space before the take up date then I would refund the whole deposit. If they did take the space up as planned then I refunded the deposit off their first months fees.

My fees were all payable in advance, you are buying a service so you pay for it and then it is provided. I quickly learned to be firm about fees and when payment was expected, I also got strict about withdrawing care without notice in cases of missed fees and had a clear process to follow for this (verbal reminder when fees were one day late followed by a written reminder at three days late and if they were not paid within 24hrs of the written reminder then no further care would be provided until the account was brought up to date).

Childcare safeguards your most precious possessions and enables you to keep your job. You'd think people would appreciate that.

If more people felt like that, childminders would be valued much more highly and a lot of the comments on this thread wouldn't have been made. Sadly this isn't the case and a lot of us are made to feel like money-grabbing bitches for even daring to ask to be paid properly. To look after and nurture a future generation. To have a positive impact on children's lives. To keep your most treasured loved ones safe and happy. It's very sad to see childcare so low on the list of 'priority costs'.

Why is there even a 9 page discussion about this - the contract should say what the terms of payment are and check that, rather than asking what everyone on here thinks. Clearly there are a variety of contracts and experiences - you have to go with whatever you have signed up to, and should think about the affordability issues of paying when you will be required to pay, before you sign the contract an and start using the service. And if you start using a service before you've signed or seen the contract, you're really daft, and ambiguities like this are likely to crop up and cause all kinds of problems. If the contract wasn't seen and signed before starting the service and has only emerged now, 2 days in, I think you really need to go along with it - you should have checked this stuff out at the beginning. What CM is asking isn't outrageous or unusual - if it were, you could query it, but it's really very usual, so you should get on and pay up. Whether you can afford it at this point really isn't the CMs concern.

You receive all of these things as soon as you pay for them except a holiday!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't read all comments but as a CM myself would like to add that just today one of my parents has dropped off her child and said tomorrow will be his last day as she has a new job further away. He is full time and they pay weekly in advance. They have told me they can't pay now and now I am £170 per week out of pocket. I needed that money and will have to pursue through the courts. Cm's aren't cheeky fuckers. We have bills to pay and so many expenses. OP please pay your CM.

tigwig that’s really tough, childcare.co.uk is quite a useful website to find local parents looking for carers. Hope you fill the spot ASAP xxx

I paid my cm a deposit in advance of £100 iirc, then she billed me monthly in arrears with the deposit coming off the last one.
Seems fair to me, wonder why more don't do it

We pay in advance. Nothing wrong with that.

DH gets paid a month in advance, working for a very large employer.

However, the point for the OP is obviously that it depends on the contract