CM- Childcare vouchers, how does it work?

[miriam82]

Hello everyone , need help.
I got a parent who just signed a contract with me. And she asked if I accept childcare vouchers. I said I haven't received/worked with it yet but that I think I could accept . She said she would try to find out how it works.
Childminders out there, is that something I have to do? How does it work ? Have no idea
Thanks for your help

You need to find out which company their employer uses then you need to register with them.

The parent will have to release the vouchers every month I think so make sure they know to do it on time assume take a few days to reach your bank. They can only buy £240 ish a month so if your bill is more will need to top it up.

You will need to be Ofsted registered in order to accept vouchers and depending on which company you deal with the registration process should be pretty straightforward

I've just signed up with a childminder, and we've got two lots of childcare vouchers going out from two different companies.

One company (Edenred - one of the largest, I think) provides the childminder with a reference number beginning with a 'P'. I think the childminder has to do the registering with this one. The other company, Childcareplus, simply asked me for the childminder's name and address, so I was able to set that up myself. All very straightforward.

It's really just like a bank account with money in / money out, and it's controlled by the parent. The parent can make one-off payments or set up a standing order to transfer the same amount to you each month on the same day. There's also an option to put a reference in for the payment (I used the kids' names) and this is what you'll see on your bank account.

It's easy to register, but you don't have to take them if you don't want to.

Genuine question (and not a snotty comment!), but why would a childminder not want to take vouchers?

As far as I'm aware, they simply appear as 'cash' in your bank account. In my experience, it's just like a bank transfer anyway, so no different from making a transfer from my bank account to the childminder's.

If it was a paper based 'voucher' that had to be redeemed in some way by the childcare provider, then I could understand why they may be turned down because of the faff, but it doesn't work like that these days.

Like I say, it's a genuine question, as over £300 of our hard-earned monthly salary gets turned into vouchers and the last thing we want is to 'lose' it because it gets turned away!

The biggest problem I have with vouchers is parents failure to grasp that is takes up to 5 WORKING days to clear in our bank accounts. notjust they are activated like a bank transfer but not credited as quickly and this is one reason I might reserve the right to accept them from some parents.

Again not snotty, but just showing my side of things.

No, that's really useful, NickNacks. It's not something that I was aware of tbh, but I've always paid by 'standing order' on the voucher system as soon as I've been paid.

Definitely something to bear in mind!

The standing order just means it come from you on the same date. It still needs the amount to clear in your voucher account, then across to our voucher account, and then a BACS payment into our bank account. :)

Sorry, I mean the standing order is from cleared voucher funds in the childcare voucher account at my end, not from my bank account.

However, I didn't realise that the childcare provider has a voucher account as well? I thought the amount from our voucher accounts went directly into the the provider's bank account.

Blimey. That's a lot of accounts.

Well sort of.

When you activate the voucher (or it is activated automatically) I get an email telling me so and that it will be credited to my bank account within 3-5 working days (they're all a bit different). I can then log into my voucher account and see it pending. Providers can also set their account up so they only get BACS to their bank account on certain days of the month but I don't know why anyone would do that, mine is just set to credit 'immediately'.

They all work very slightly differently but that's the general gist. :)

And sometimes the voucher company randomly pays the money to someone else, or just tries to keep it for not apparent reason.

Also... Accounting for one payment for a child is easier than tracking the voucher from the dad, the voucher from the mum and the top up payment for the balance.

I do take a wide range of vouchers, but would honestly rather parents got tax relief direct, so I get one payment for each invoice.