Ministry: Returns & Funding Information

Discover is able to digitally hold all data related to your RS7 Funding Submissions and will collate this into report format ready to include in your submissions.

Most of the information for these processes can be (and should be) verified via the Center Funding Report.

Within your Discover system, administrators will be able to access the Ministry Tab, from here a range of Ministry related reporting options will populate as follows:

1. RS7
2. Funding Advancement
3. ECE Returns
4. ELI Confirmation
5. Default Funding Rate

RS7

In preparation for your RS7 submission, administrators should be generating and checking their Centre Funding Report to ensure their attendance and Rostering data is correct. Discover recommends completing this weekly, but this is at admins discretion on how they will embed this into their task list. To view the report, administrators should navigate to Finance Reports > Centre Funding Report. 

Within the Submissions screen, administrators will be able to see their funding periods projected for the future 12months. Alongside these, the submission window dates will be evident. Within these windows, the create button will become enabled and admins can select on this to create their return and submit electronically to the Ministry.  

1. Please ensure that all your staff rosters and attendance data is complete up to the end of the appropriate month
2. If you have not already, please set up your public holidays for the next funding period (holidays for the Current period should already be loaded but check) in your Centre > Centre Calendar
3. Preview and review your centre funding by running a Centre Funding Report for the Funding period. It highlights data that could be incorrect and that you need to attend to.
4. Use the wizard to create your return and send it electronically

If you upgrade in the middle of a funding period, you will need to run your partial RS7 from your previous platform, print out and post to the MOE.  It's possible the MOE will accept a PDF emailed*, they did once.  When you get to the end for the funding period, submit the rest of your return electronically in Discover.

Please note: If you are submitting your RS7 return electronically, please email details (including your service number) to ECE.Funding@education.govt.nz 

Resubmitting the RS7

If you made an error during the period when submissions are open, you can resubmit by pressing the "Create" button again - be mindful of the timing, this may affect when your payment will be made.

If you submitted for the early payment date, but now it is after the close of for early (e.g. now after the 7 days from the start of submissions) then realise you have made an error and wish to resubmit, you should check with the MOE first as they may have already started processing.

If you need to resubmit, after talking to the MOE, and you find the "Create" button is disabled, contact support to have the period you need to resubmit for open for you.

Funding Advancement 

To assist with Centre funding forecasts you can create and edit records for with the information provided by the MOE for each period. 

When you receive your funding letter from the Ministry of Education, please go to Ministry Menu  > click  Funding Advancement  > read the Centre Funding Advancement instruction then,  >  click the Create New button to enter the Advanced funding Hours for each of the months on the letter. 

The advantage of this means Discover can calculate and show you your washup projections on the Centre Funding Summary report.

ECE Returns 

The ECE census collects information on children’s enrolment and attendance as well as on staff, teaching languages and wait times at each service. This information contributes to a comprehensive information base on ECE in New Zealand and is used by the Ministry to monitor and forecast ECE expenditure and design new policies.

The census is done annually typically in June or July and sent electronically via Discover. You will not be able to submit your census until the census date, and Discover will tell you on your dashboard when it the census date is approaching. Before you start, you should do the following:

1. Record child attendance for the return week
2. Update staff details
3. Ensure all children have been allocated an NSN
4. Updated staff contact hours in the roster
   If you are a Homebase Service - this includes your Educators for that week - we will be adding a link for the 2021 return that will automatically populate the roster for the week for all Educators and Nannies, for those who do not already have a roster entry. 
   This is based on the recorded Attendance for that week - so make sure you have the attendance for that week entered first.

ELI Confirmations

You should review your service's records before confirming by reviewing the Center Funding Report or the Invalid Child Data report. If you have reviewed the data, choose the month you have reviewed and click confirm.

This is a confirmation that the Eli data is correct i.e. child events and centre closures only.

If you later find that you made a mistake -  fix up the information and Discover will send the corrected information to ELI, there is no need to reconfirm with ELI.