Parent mail and tax free childcare

[cupofdecaf]

Does anyone know if you can pay through parent mail / parent pay app with the government tax free childcare account?

I wouldn’t have though so. What are you trying to do?

I can. Speak to your school / provider and they'll be able to advise.

I don't at the money out of my tax free childcare account to the school. Then I have to email the school to tell them which Parent Mail account to put it on (am or pm wrap around care or holiday club in my case). School then put it on, and it shows up in the app. A faff, but I use a lot of childcare so saves £££

Ack, horrible autocorrect at the start of of my second paragraph 🤦🏻‍♀️

I pay the school from my tax free childcare account. Then..

Who knew! That’s really good to know, thanks mummy

I'll be so annoyed if we can't pay via the tax free childcare. Why would they (a state primary) make things unnecessarily expensive (especially at the moment).

I can’t pay through the app but I pay using tax free childcare and then email school and they make the adjustment. That’s for wrap around care.

We use a similar payment system (mcas). There's no way of paying it directly from tax free childcare so I do the same as others - pay money to the school, then email a screenshot of the payment for them to then pay to mcas for me.

I am trying to do the same - use TFC to pay the primary school which is a registered childcare provider with HMRC, then ask the school to pay their wraparound care club (WAC) - but what an unbelievable faff!

HMRC's system doesn't have a way to add your own reference code, so the poor long-suffering school administrator has to check all the incoming TFC payments to work out which is from me, and allocate it to the WAC.