Payments: WINZ Payments

• WINZ Payments refers to financial assistance received by the government, specifically pertaining to childcare. 
• If you have children who need looking after, Work and Income may be able to help pay for childcare. They can pay for up to 50 hours a week depending on your circumstances.

When you upload WINZ payments and EFTPOS payments in bulk, Discover ignores them as there is no way of reliably identifying who made the payment. It is common for WINZ will make one lump payment for several children so we do not recommend using this method.

Instead, we advise adding the WINZ details in the Work And Income section on the Child Record and enabling Automated WINZ payments in your Centre Settings. Discover will automatically add payments to this bill payer's account each week on the anniversary day, of the start date you enter below and beginning on the week you enable the feature.

Adjustments to a child's upcoming WINZ payment can be made via Payments > Child Benefactors.

Click on the clipboard icon to make the necessary changes for the relevant week and click 'Save'.
The child's WINZ payments will return to their weekly amount (as set in their profile) the following week.

WINZ Enrolment & Fees

When processing an enrolment for a WINZ child  and any attached fees, there is a small calculator button showing on the Discount row.

This pops-up a calculator which you can use to calculate the discount before or after WINZ - in this scenario you would select After WINZ and enter 100 into the % field - then click Add - this will enter the discount amount needed to create an enrolment fee equal to the WINZ subsidy.

Reconciling WINZ Payments 

Please note: We do not recommend bringing the WINZ payments from Xero, or any other import, to Discover.

WINZ payments can be a lump sum, late, short paid etc. Discover works on the principle, for the benefit of the parents and accounting, that the payment will be made and therefore can automatically create a receipt for the amount on the anniversary of the payment.  

Reconciliation can be done from a number of reports. We have a report specifically to give you a list of WINZ transactions for a chosen date range. The most commonly used one is the Financial Transaction report for Payments for a specified date range, and then copy to the Clipboard and paste it into Excel then manipulate to your needs.

• Go to the Finance Reports > WINZ Payments
• Specify the period you wish to assess.
• You can also sort the Report by Date, Bill Payer or Child.
• You can also "Copy to Clipboard" and paste the results into Excel for further analysis.

Payment Reporting 

Payments will be made weekly and they will not be backdated, so you can start using the feature at any time. Payments will automatically stop on the End Date you specify.

You will be sent an email with a summary of the payments that were processed, and any exceptions where a payment could not be added for some reason. 

These reports can be located under Finance Reports:

• WINZ Payments Report > Select the Date Range 
• Financial Transactions  > Select Payments and  WINZ (Type)

Restarting WINZ Payments 

To restart WINZ for a child, the dates and amounts on the Child's WINZ section as required. Discover will only create WINZ payments for the current week - so if you missed some you will need to manually create the WINZ payments on the account.

WINZ Rate Increase

Discover does not automatically adjust children's WINZ payment schedules. You will need to review the WINZ children, put an end date on the current one, and then you can enter a new record to take effect from the start of the new rate.

Some centres have their WINZ loaded as arrears and others as advance/current - you will need to set the start date of the new record reflective of your approach.

Be mindful of the Enrolments where you have an adjustment or discount for the WINZ components.

WINZ Invoicing for Centre Holidays

If your centre does not charge for Stat Holidays such as  Good Friday, Easter Monday and ANZAC Day, then you may notice that the Invoice produced is not $0.00 for those days for some children.

This impacts those children who receive WINZ payments.  If the child receives WINZ, then Discover will charge on the invoice for the portion of WINZ amount, for the public holiday. 

If your centre does not charge for public holidays then Discover needs to charge the portion of WINZ received so that money is allocated to an invoice. Otherwise, the parent receives a credit for the money (WINZ Receipt) that isn't theirs. It doesn't charge the parent anymore, it is now a transaction to offset the WINZ receipt and is considered Centre Income.