How on earth does the tax free childcare account work for paying nursery fees? Help please!

[Bobbieiris]

My daughters have just started nursery but I can't get my head around the tax free childcare account. Where it asks you to pay money in does that mean you put in all your child's nursery fees for the month? I asked at the nursery and they said you dont have to pay all the fees in but you get 2 pounds back for every 8 pounds you put in. How does this work? Doesn't it make sense to just put all the nursery fees in. And how do you then make the payment to your nursery? Please could someone tell me how this works?!

I put in 80% of the nursery fees, it then gets topped up with the extra 20% by the government. Up to a £2000 a year. Pre - 30 hours free, we hit the £2000 easy for a full time child's place in the midlands so usually have to top up extra in the last 3 month of every quarter.

You can setup an automatic payment from the account to your nursery if you have a standard monthly amount. If it changes each month, you have to do it manually.

You can use the tax free childcare right up until they are 11 so we still use it for our eldest for breakfast club at school.

The government put £2 for every £8 you put into the account, up to £500 per quarter. You set up a payment to your nursery, if you have same monthly amount you can set up a regular monthly payment to leave the tax free account to your nursery on the same day every month, or you can manually set up payment every month (if costs vary then this is the best way)

What i tend to do is pay in the full nursery invoice amount for a couple of months then you will have extra money left over from where the government tops it up and pay in less on the 3rd month for example using the remainder left over in the account to make the shortfall.

When first starting what I'd do is pay in the full nursery amount 1st month and see how much you get in addition from the government top up if you wish to calculate it exactly every month.

Ahh that makes sense now 😊 thank you