Payments overview
Playground's Payments feature runs on the concept of a balance: every student at your center has a continuously running balance attached to their account. Your center can choose whether payments on that balance are due on a weekly or monthly basis as well as which day payment invoices are sent out.
Charges can be added to a student's balance on a one-time basis or on a payment plan. Our system automatically saves the different types of charges you create, making it easy to apply the same type of charge multiple times or to multiple students. Creating large-batch charges, editing existing payment schedules, and applying discounts are just some of the many capabilities of our Payments feature.
If a family has multiple students at your center, your administrators will still see the family's balance on a student-by-student basis. The family's parents, however, will see a family balance, the sum of all their students' balances.
Getting Started
Before your center can start using our Payments feature, you'll need to verify your business with Stripe, our payments processor. Learn how to verify your center with Stripe here. Learn more about Playground's transaction fees here.
Next, you'll need to set your center's preferences for how often payments from families are due. On the Administrator Dashboard, navigate to your Settings page. On this page, select the Payment tab. Here, you will see options for "Billing frequency," "Billing day," "Reminders," and "Pass processing fees onto parents."
Billing frequency: Decide whether payments from parents are due on a weekly or monthly basis.
Billing day: For a monthly cycle, decide whether payments are due on the 1st, 14th, or last day of the month. For a weekly cycle, decide which day of the week payments are due.
Reminders: Decide how many days in advance (1–10 days) parents receive a reminder that payment is due.
Pass processing fees onto parents: Decide whether you center or parents will cover credit and ACH processing fees.
Remember to click "Save" after making any changes to these settings.
Additional resources
Below are some articles that will help you get started with our Payments feature. You can always find these and other related articles in the "For Administrators" collection in our Help Center, under the "Payments" section heading.
One-time charges
Payment plans
Additional features
How to apply a late fee (coming soon!)
We understand that comprehensive and flexible payment options are important to your center, and that not every question can be perfectly answered in an article. If you're unable to find an article that addresses your needs, please reach out to us through the support chat function on our website or mobile app, or email us at [email protected].