Nursery fee calculation, help please!

[OrganicAlchemy]

I have received my first invoice for my 1 year old daughter's nursery fee and it is higher than I thought it would be including the 15 hours funding (11.4 stretched)

My maths is awful so I don't want to embarrass myself asking for a breakdown if it's obvious accurate 😅

Here are the details;

She attends Mondays and Tuesdays weekly

The invoice is for October plus she had her first day 30th September so I presume they included that - so 10 days chargeable

11.4 hours a week stretched funding, full day is 0730-1800 (10.5 hours)

Costs of nursery is £63 full day and £42 for half.

Food is extra £11.25 for full day

Invoice is £546

Please help my brain is hurting 🤓

Thanks in advance!

Nursery always costs more than you expect 😁 that's not helpful, but true in my experience unfortunately

It’s ok to ask for a breakdown, don’t forget about tax free childcare too!

Are the hours free or just subtracting the government contribution?

I have no idea, the invoice only states '21' hours, no other info 🤪

Yeah thats also confusing,the gov website didn't explain it well enough for me! I asked the nursery and they said I need to take off 20% from the invoice and then pay that onto the childcare account, then it gets sent to them?

Ask for a break down, it's fine childcare costs are big so it's worth you knowing exactly what you are paying for. I only asked about free/ subsidised hours as I assumed ours were covered but in fact they were reduced by what the government paid.

10 days = £742.50
Funding is £11.22 per hour so 11.4 hours = £127.91

724.50-127.91 = £596.91

Your bill will likely fluctuate each month depending on how many chargeable days fall within.

So you should be paying £477.28 into your tax free childcare account.

Don’t forget to send it from your account to the nursery otherwise it will just sit there and you will end up being charged late payment fees - a common error from my nursery manager days!

The nursery my children attend take the weekly fees, x by 51 then divide by 12 to get a set monthly amount which is slightly higher than you'd expect as a month has more than 4 weeks. Yours could have done that with the extra added day included.

Make sure you use the government gateway to pay this invoice which will reduce your bill by 20% (or paid for by government/tax free).

Funding won't be anything like £11; the average is £5.88.

It's also 11.4 hours a week, not per month.

OP, it looks as if they might have charged a reduced rate per hour for the funded hours - about £2ish, which is I would imagine the difference between the normal £6/ hour for a full day and what they get per hour in funding - we are not going to be able to work it out exactly as there are a number of ways they could be doing it. I think you need to ask them for a full breakdown.

Technically they are not allowed to do that - the hours should be free. However there could be other charges for other "consumables" etc that have been added.

Oh yes I did 11.4 a month not a week you’re right.

The average funding rate for under twos is £11.22 but it would vary and does entirely depend where OP is.

Apologies I missed the under 1 - the 5.88 is for older children, you are right. Given the nursery seem to charge £6 an hour, that made sense!

The nursery should be deducting their hourly rate off the hill not the actual funding they receive otherwise they are “topping up” and that’s not allowed.

I wish my county gave nurseries £11+ for under 2s! Sadly we only get £9.50 per hour!