Childcare centers can receive subsidy payments from state, federal, and/or local agencies. Managing these payments requires a different set of accounting and features than managing privately paid invoices and payments from a student’s family.
Playground simplifies 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 comprehenisve list of Debits and Credits across all funding sources.
Add Agency
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
The way you record subsidies will vary based on the way you charge families and record subsidy payments. Please navigate to the section below that most closely mimics your current way of tracking subsidies.
💡 Pro tip #1: Create a Program by the name of the Subsidy Agency. Enroll all of the students receiving the subsidy into the program. This will allow you to utilize the Filters at the top of the Distribution table of students so that you do not have to sift through the entire site's list of students when recording deposits.
💡 Pro tip #2: The right hand side of the Record Deposit screen will help you reconcile the total amounts of the deposit to the individual total of all students that received the subsidy in the Distribution table.
I charge families the full amount and add a credit for the amount of the subsidy
💡 The steps below should be utilized 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.
Enter the Service start and Service end dates to notate which dates of care the agency is paying for in this specific deposit (optional).
Distribute the total received amount per child in the Distribution section of the page. This is where you allocate out the funds per student that 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 in order to not double charge a family.
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 received amounts have been entered, guardians will see a credit in the amount of the received amount. 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 only for their private copay portion of tuition and record the subsidy payments separately
💡 The steps below should be utilized 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 has let you know they will be sending 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 out 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.
Enter the Service start and Service end dates to notate which dates of care the agency is paying for in this specific deposit (optional).
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 out the total received amount on a per-student basis.
If the a student's expected amount does not equal the received amount the system will notate 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 they were not paid. This typically occurs if attendance was not properly recorded for the student.
Charge: This will charge the primary guardian the adjustment amount and add the amount to their balance. This transfers the charge from the agency to the guardian's responsibility.
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 effect their current balance.
Once the expected AND received amounts have been entered, guardians will see a debit in the amount of the expected amount and a credit in the amount of the received amount. This will be reflected on the student's statement and on their specific Debits and Credits tabs but do not effect 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 effect the guardian's current balance.
Duplicate deposits
Deposit amounts from Subsidy Agencies can change infrequently. In order to not have to duplicate efforts for every deposit recorded, utilize 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 reconciles and looks correct.
Click Finish in the top right to save.