Enrolments
Every child in Tot Tracker is assigned an enrolment, which categorises their time with your school. You can create as many enrolment types as you need - a typical Montessori with after-school care might have separate enrolments for full-time Montessori, part-time Montessori, and an after-school enrolment per age group or feeder school.
By grouping children by enrolment, you standardise the key financial details: weekly fee, whether ECCE applies, and how many months to spread payments over. This means less manual work and fewer mistakes when it comes to billing.
Year Setup
Next you create a Year profile, which tells Tot Tracker the weeks you're open, when ECCE applies, and any specific dates that need special treatment.
If your after-school children come from schools with different term dates, this can be specified here too - it's one of the reasons you'd have a separate enrolment for each feeder school. The Year profile ensures every calculation downstream is based on the exact calendar your service actually follows.
Child Details
The final setup step is the children themselves. Tot Tracker includes a bulk importer that lets you set up hundreds of children in one go when you first get started, and new children can be added individually as they enrol throughout the year.
The detail held on each child ensures they are correctly invoiced every time. You'll also be alerted when important items like their CHICK code are approaching expiry, so you're never caught off guard during an inspection.
Schedule Creation
With everything set up, you can now create schedules for each child based on their exact circumstances. Tot Tracker takes the weekly fee for their enrolment, checks for any discounts, ECCE or NCS amounts and the calendar for their school, then builds a parent-friendly schedule for every child.
The schedule clearly shows the headline rates the parent is being charged, with the most important figure being their monthly payment amount. This is calculated by taking all the various figures for the whole year and dividing equally by the number of months the parent wishes to pay over.
Should things change during the year - like the number of NCS hours a child is availing of - Tot Tracker automatically recalculates the monthly amount based on what has already been paid and what is still to come. For children who leave mid-way through a year, the schedule also shows whether the parent has over or under-paid at any given point. No more complex calculations for you to explain to your parents.
How the monthly amount is calculated
- ✓ Weekly fee is set per enrolment type
- ✓ Year profile defines the weeks you're open
- ✓ These combine to create the starting amount
- ✓ Any discounts are applied
- ✓ ECCE (weekly) and NCS (hourly) subsidies are deducted as required
- ✓ Remaining balance is spread equally across payment months
- ✓ Mid-year changes trigger automatic recalculation
Invoicing
On the 28th of each month - or earlier if you prefer - the system automatically creates invoices for each family based on their children's schedules, along with any adjustments or one-off amounts due (typically from holiday camps or NCS hour changes).
At any point in the month you can preview exactly what you'll be invoicing based on the current data in Tot Tracker. Once created, the invoices are instantly available in the parent app, and with the click of a button you can email them directly to parents as well.
Direct Debit Collection
Finally, the good part - getting paid! The best way for your parents to pay is via Direct Debit. They don't have to remember an amount or to make the payment, and you have certainty over how much you're getting and when it will arrive in your account.
We recommend collecting your Direct Debits around the 2nd of each month (the exact date will shift slightly due to weekends and bank holidays), and you set this date in your system. On that date Tot Tracker collects the payments from your parents, allocates each payment to the correct invoice, and informs the parent they are paid up.
Should any payment not be received on time, Tot Tracker provides an aged debtor ledger and automated reminders about overdue amounts - so nothing slips through the cracks.
