Tax free childcare - entitlement periods??

[Pez82]

Hi, I'm new to the government tax free childcare scheme (the one where you get bonus top ups up to £2,000 a year).
I made the first payment to the system yesterday and got my 25% awarded immediately. So far so good.

Now, I know there is a 3 monthly cap of £500. However the system currently says that I can get a maximum of £703.30 from government for each entitlement period. Does anyone know if this is correct and if so what are the entitlement period dates??
Thanks in advance to whoever has a clue 😉

Entitlement period as far as I know starts on the day your account is first active.

Did you pay in £2000 into one child account, or did you pay in a different amount? Do you have more than one child?

With Tax-Free Childcare please be aware the payments in and out are NOT instant. It takes time to clear your payment in (the account should now show how much cleared funds there are) and a payment to a childcare provider can take 3-4 working days on average. Improvements to the payment timescale are expected to happen but no confirmed date or how it will be shortened. My boss can do a payment on Monday and it won't be with me till Friday - so keep that in mind when using the system.

Many thanks @nannynick

So I only have one child so one account. It shows the money has left my account but it will probably take a few days to clear as you say. Overall the experience hasn't been too bad so far (and much easier than the childcare vouchers!)

I managed to talk to someone on the government helpline. They explained that the numbers showing on the system for the entitlement periods caps are incorrect and therefore confusing people. As for the dates, you're right, they're determined by the account opening date. I was trying to be clever and thought that if the cut off was quarterly I could have paid in more money in June to get the maximum bonus

Helpful for the numbers for the cap to be showing incorrectly. The number did not make sense if you had one child so good to know it is a wrong number I suppose. With luck it will be fixed soon.

Entitlement periods are not all the same for everyone as it would result in huge server loads at certain times of the year I expect.

Just found this thread from googling as I’ve had the same issue today except it was saying we were entitled to less than expected......looks like the issue isn’t fixed yet.........🙄

Hi there, does anyone know at what point you can start claiming tax free childcare i.e can you start accruing as soon as your baby is born, and then use the amount saved up when you start using a childminder/ provider?

Hi, you can only join the scheme when you're within a month of returning to work so the answer is unfortunately no, you cannot save into the account while you're maternity leave.
Hope this helps

I have been using the service for a while.
However everytime i come to make a payment i used to struggle to calculate how much i needed to pay in and how much the government would top it up by.

I came across this tax free childcare calculator recently which is really good if anyone is struggling?

taxfreechildcarecalculator.com