Childcare centers can receive subsidy payments from state, federal, and/or local agencies. Managing these payments requires a different set of accounting features than managing privately paid invoices and payments from a student’s family.
Playground simplifies the process of managing third-party agency payments, ensuring programs can account for all revenue streams for their business.
Subsidies Dashboard
Under your Billing tab, navigate to Subsidies. This page will list all of your existing Agencies, a comprehensive list of Debits, and a comprehensive list of Credits across all funding sources.
Add Agency
From your Admin Dashboard, click on the Billing tab and then the Subsidies sub-tab.
Click Add Agency in the top right corner.
Add the Agency name.
Optionally add the Agency ID and/or description.
Click Save.
Agency name | Funding source that is providing payments to your center for childcare. Typically, a government organization or non-profit |
Agency ID | Unique ID provided by the agency (Optional) |
Description | Description of the agency or of the funds attributed to the agency for your convenience (Optional) |
Record deposits
Your method for recording subsidies will depend on how you charge families and track subsidy payments. Please refer to the section below that best matches your current subsidy tracking practices.
💡 Pro tip #1: Create a Program called the Subsidy Agency and enroll all of the students receiving the subsidy in it. This will allow you to use the Filters at the top of the Student Distribution table so that you do not have to sift through all of your students when recording deposits.
💡 Pro tip #2: The right-hand side of the Record Deposit screen will help you reconcile the deposit totals to the individual totals of all students who received the subsidy in the Distribution table.
I charge families the full price of care and add a credit for the subsidy
💡 The steps below should be used if you charge subsidy families full tuition and then record a credit in the amount of the subsidy payment to decrease the guardian's balance.
Navigate to the Subsidy dashboard and click on the subsidy agency.
In the top right corner, click Add Deposit.
Enter the date.
Toggle on Skip Expected Values in the top right corner in order to gray out the entire Expected column.
Enter the Total Received Amount of the deposit for that date.
[Optional] Enter the Service start and Service end dates to note which dates of care the agency is paying for in this specific deposit.
In the Distribution section of the page, distribute the total received amount per child. This is where you allocate the funds per student who received them.
Click Finish in the top right to save.
Once you save, the guardian's balance will decrease by the received amount.
🚨 Be sure to toggle on Skip Expected Values so that families are not double charged.
Family-view of Deposits
Primary guardians will see an invoice for the full amount of tuition on their statement. This charge will show under the student's specific Debits tab and does affect the guardian's current balance.
Once the amounts received for the subsidy have been entered, guardians will see a credit for the amount received. This will be reflected on the student's statement and on their specific Credits tab and will affect the guardian's current balance.
I charge families their copay and record subsidy payments separately
💡 The steps below should be used if you charge subsidy families only their private copay portion of the tuition and separately charge and record payment for the subsidy agency.
When expecting a subsidy, navigate to the Subsidy dashboard and click on the subsidy agency.
In the top right corner, click Add Deposit.
Enter the Total Expected Amount in the top section. This corresponds to the amount the agency sent to you or will send to you for all students receiving this subsidy.
Distribute the total expected amount per child in the Distribution section of the page. This is where you allocate the total expected amount on a per-student basis.
If you haven't received the funds yet, click Finish in the top right to save your progress. When the payment arrives, proceed to the next step.
Navigate back to the specific deposit and click the edit pencil icon to the right of it.
[Optional] Enter the Service Start and Service End dates to note which dates of care the agency is paying for in this specific deposit.
When funds are received, enter the Total Received Amount of the deposit from the agency.
Distribute the total received amount per child in the Distribution section of the page. This is where you allocate the total received amount on a per-student basis.
If the student's expected amount does not equal the received amount, the system will note the discrepancy in the Adjustments column. You have 2 options:
Waive: This will waive the adjustment amount, and the guardians will not see any change in their balance. This is a loss to the center of funds, which were not paid. This typically occurs if student attendance is not properly recorded.
Charge: This will charge the primary guardian the adjustment amount and add the amount to their balance, transferring the charge from the agency's responsibility to the guardian's.
Click Finish in the top right to save.
Family-view of deposits
Primary guardians will see an invoice for their copay portion of the tuition. This will affect their current balance.
Once the expected and received amounts have been entered, guardians will see a debit for the expected amount and a credit for the received amount. This will be reflected on the student's statement and on their specific Debits and Credits tabs but does not affect the guardian's current balance.
🚨 Expected and received amounts only show up on the ledger once both have been entered. If only expected amounts have been entered so far, they will not appear on the student-specific Debits tab.
Expected and received amounts recorded on a student DO NOT affect the guardian's current balance.
Duplicate Deposits
Deposit amounts from Subsidy Agencies may be relatively consistent. To avoid duplicating efforts for every deposit recorded, use the duplicate function and only edit amounts that have changed from the previous deposit.
Navigate to the Subsidy Dashboard and click on the subsidy agency.
Click the three dots to the right of the existing deposit you'd like to duplicate.
Click Duplicate.
Select the checkboxes to the left of the part of the deposit you'd like to duplicate.
You can duplicate just expected values, received values, or both.
Click Continue.
Adjust the date of the deposit.
Double-check that the information in the deposit is reconciled and looks correct.
Click Finish in the top right to save.