If your program bills based on time in care, you can set a custom billing rate per student and charge families for the actual time they spend checked in — by the day, hour, or minute.
💡 Attendance-based billing charges families in arrears — after the care has taken place. If your program bills in advance of care for hourly or daily time slots, check out Drop-in Care Billing instead.
Set a Custom Attendance-Based Billing Rate Per Student
Each student can have their own custom daily billing rate. Once set, Playground will automatically calculate what the family owes based on the time the student is checked in.
From your admin dashboard, navigate to the My School tab and click Students.
Select the student whose billing rate you want to configure.
Click the Settings tab on the student's profile.
Under the Billing section, find Custom Daily Billing Rate and toggle it on.
Enter the student's billing rate and select the unit of time (per day, per hour, or per minute).
Click Save changes.
💡 Once the rate is set, the system will automatically calculate the amount owed each time that student is checked in. You still need to approve and charge the fees — see below.
Charge Families for Attendance-Based Fees
Accrued attendance charges show up under Approvals in the Payments tab. You review and approve them before they're added to the family's balance.
From your admin dashboard, click the Billing tab.
Click Fee Approvals.
Select the Daily Attendance Fees tab to see a list of accrued charges organized by week.
Use the Week of dropdown to switch between weeks.
Click any column header to sort by date, student name, billable time, fee amount, or latest check-out time.
Click the ⚙️ icon in the top right of the table to reorder columns.
For each charge, choose Charge, Edit, or Forgive:
Charge — immediately adds the charge amount to the family's balance. The family will see the amount and the attendance date.
Edit — lets you adjust the amount before charging the family a different amount.
Forgive — removes the charge from the family's account. The system keeps a record that the fee was incurred, but forgiven fees are not visible to families.
To charge or forgive multiple fees at once, select the checkboxes on the left side of the table and use the bulk Charge or Forgive buttons.