Ministry: RS7 Funding Checklist

The RS7 Early Childhood Funding Return is the main funding return for early childhood education services. All ECE services must complete the RS7 Return in order to receive funding.

The RS7 Return tells the Ministry the number of funded child hours that are funded for each service, and the rate at which each funded child hour will be funded.

The following guide goes through how to prepare for this funding period in Discover, and you can view our video library to assist you complete processes in Discover.

1. MOE Updates 

Please check the Ministry of Educations Bulletins to see if there are any for the current funding period that effect your centre. You can view these here.

2. Frequent Absence Checks

You can monitor your enrolments with frequent absences by downloading the Frequent Absence Report under Reports > Children Reports > Frequent Absences.

Discover automatically limits funding based on whether your children are breaking enrolment rules including frequent absences. In Discover, you do not need to manually apply any funding overrides or similar actions. If funding is limited due to frequent absence, the report will indicate as such.

A yellow status a indicates a warning for any absence types where child is starting to break rules and a red status a indicates funding stopped or limited for any reason.

For further information on reading the Frequent Absences report, please see our article here

3. Centre Funding Report

The RS7 process submits the data as displayed in the Centre Funding Report. Checking this report for the required funding period will ensure you don’t submit missing data, like Attendance and Staffing.

The Centre Funding Report should be generated for the funding period you are submitting for to ensure your data is correct, in particular, the total amount of discretionary hours used. Discretionary Hours are 80 hours per funding period, please see the section below titled ‘Discretionary Hours’ for more information.

When checking this report, you may see red or yellow highlighted sections:

Red sections indicate that there may be an issue with the child’s hours for that day. 

Yellow sections indicate there may be a compliance breach on your roster. 

For further information on reading the Centre Funding report, please see our article here

4. Update the Centre Calendar

It is also worth checking your Centre Calendar under Centre > Centre Calendar for holidays in the period being covered by this submission and the following two funding periods, to ensure current and future funding amounts can be calculated accurately.   

For further information on how to access and adjust your calendar, please see our article here.

5. Discretionary Hours

80 discretionary hours are available to teacher-led services per funding period. 

Early learning services are required to have evidence that they have looked for a certificated teacher before using discretionary hours.

These records should be kept at the service for examination by the Ministry’s Resourcing Auditors when they carry out an audit. They do not need to be sent to the Ministry of Education. 

Once your RS7 has been submitted, the Discretionary Hours report will be submitted automatically to the MOE. 

6. Submission

You can submit your RS7 funding by selecting the menu option Ministry > RS7. Select the correct funding period and press 'Create'.

Centres can submit as many times as they like prior to the cut-off date. The Ministry will review the latest submission once the cut-off date has been passed. If you miss the cut-off date, please contact the Discover Support Team.