Late Fees

Setup

If children are being picked up late or dropped off earlier than their booked time, administrators might consider charging late fees. 

Fees are typically charged in blocks of minutes, e.g. $10 per 15 minutes or $1 per minute and can be set up through the Centre settings as follows:

Navigate to Centre Settings > Centre Details tab > scroll to Early and Late Fees Settings.

Grace Period:

Late fees have a grace period and will only apply when a child's attendance exceeds that period. 
Set the 'Before or after (minutes)' field to a whole number to indicate how soon before/after the booking time begins/ends the fee will apply.

Fee is Charged:
Type in the dollar value of the late fee, keeping in mind the time increments you will set next.
Every (minutes):
Setting a number of minutes in this field will tell Discover how often you would like the fee indicated in the 'Fee is Charged' field to apply.
Rounded to:
Nearest: time rounded to the nearest whole period.
Grace: time is rounded up or down according to the grace period.
Partial: time is not rounded, a partial charge will be applied.

Fields for late pick up include:

Once off fee: the dollar value of the fee charged after the initial grace period.
Every subsequent (minutes): the time period after which another fee will be applied.
Subsequent fee: the fee to be charged after the subsequent time period above has passed.

Automatic Charging

Late fees can be automatically or manually charged.  For automation tick the 'Enable late fee automation' option in your settings.  Otherwise, manually processing gives administrators a chance to review late fees before they are sent to families, and potentially override the fee the parent will be charged. 

If your centre has enabled the automation, late fees will be automatically run on your normal invoice cycle.  Otherwise, please use the Late Fees main menu item to view the late fees for a particular week, and create the invoices.  The late fee invoices created will be included in the next statement sent to the customer.

Manual Processing

The menu Late Fees, allows you to go to a specific date/week and see all the "eligible" Early/Late fee candidates.

• Select the Monday date for the week you would like to assess
• Filter by room if you wish then View. This will display a list displaying all who meet these requirements and the calculated rates.
• You can alter the rates, switch between Bill Payers or choose No Charge.
• When satisfied with the list, you can Create Invoices

Invoices will be created on the accounts selected and will appear on the statements sent out to the parents at the next invoice run or if you send them manually.

If you manually set a Late Fee on a child to "No Charge"  the automated process will recognise this and will process any further.

Other Functions

• You can charge and initial and ongoing late fee.
• You can  set an out of hours late fee, which will be an additional charge triggered if the parent picks up or drops off outside of centre licensed hours.

Reporting

Navigate to Children Reports > Early And Late Charge to see charges for a given date range, with different thresholds of time (grace period) and to see all those that are Early and/or Late.