Important - Before you begin 

• Change the Effective From Date First, before updating any other Early or Late Fee Settings. Otherwise the Early and Late Fees will generate all the way back to the start of the service.
  
  
• Learn and test the manual process before enabling automation. This allows administrators to review how fees are calculated, confirm the correct bill payer and waive charges when appropriate.
  
  
• Once automation is enabled, eligible fees are generated automatically during invoicing across the entire centre.
  
  
• Do not delete an automatically generated Early or Late Fee invoice while automation is enabled. If the attendance still meets the charging criteria, the invoice will be generated again. To waive the fee for a family, apply a credit note instead. 

Setup

If children are dropped off before their booked start time or collected after their booked finish time, the service may choose to apply Early or Late Fees.

Fees can be charged in set time increments, such as:

• $10 for every 15 minutes
• $1 for every minute

To configure these fees, navigate to:

Centre Settings > Centre Details > Early and Late Fees Settings

Before changing any settings, update the Effective From Date.

Grace Period:

The grace period determines how early or late an attendance must be before a fee applies.

Enter a whole number in the Before or After (minutes) field. This indicates how many minutes before the booked start time or after the booked finish time are allowed before charging begins.

Fee is Charged:

Enter the dollar amount to be charged for each time increment.

Every (minutes)
Enter how often the fee should be applied.

For example, entering $10 in Fee is Charged and 15 minutes in Every will apply a $10 fee for each applicable 15-minute period.

Rounded To

• Nearest: The attendance time is rounded to the nearest complete charging period.
• Grace: The attendance time is rounded up or down according to the configured grace period.
• Partial: The time is not rounded, and a proportional charge is applied.

Fields for late pick up include:

Once-Off Fee
The initial fee charged once the grace period has been exceeded.

Every Subsequent (minutes)
The amount of additional time that must pass before another fee is applied.

Subsequent Fee
The additional fee charged for each subsequent time period.

Manual Processing

We recommend using the manual process first so administrators can understand how Discover identifies and calculates Early and Late Fees before enabling automation.

Leave Enable Late Fee Automation unticked to review charges before they are invoiced.

Manual processing allows administrators to:

• Review potential Early and Late Fees.
• Override a charge where appropriate.
• select No Charge for an individual occurrence.
• Confirm which bill payer should receive the charge.

To process fees manually:

1. Navigate to Late Fees from the main menu.
2. Select the week you want to review.
3. Select View to display the potential Early and Late Fees.
4. Review each charge and either:
   • Select the bill payer who should receive the charge; or
   • Select No Charge to waive it.
5. Select Create Invoices.

The invoices will be included in the family’s next statement. If the centre uses Combined Statement and Invoice, the Early or Late Fee will appear alongside the child’s regular fee invoice.

Automatic Charging

Only enable automation after your team understands and has tested the manual process.

To automatically generate Early and Late Fees, enable Enable Late Fee Automation within the Early and Late Fee Settings.

When enabled:

• Applicable fees are generated automatically during the centre’s normal invoicing process.
• The setting applies centre-wide.
• All attendance records that meet the configured criteria may be charged automatically.

Other Functions

Early and Late Fee settings can also be used to:

• Charge both an initial fee and ongoing fees.
• Apply an additional out-of-hours fee when a child is dropped off or collected outside the centre’s licensed operating 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.