At Daily Connect, we’re all about finding new ways to make our users’ lives easier. One way we’re doing that is through the introduction of our completely redesigned parent billing solution.
These new tools, which are being rolled out to all Professional+ users over the next few weeks, make it easier for childcare providers to send invoices and collect payments from the families they work with.
With advanced features including automation tools and reporting dashboards, Daily Connect’s new parent billing solution gives childcare center owners and operators the flexibility to build a payment program that works for their business.
Read on as we explore some of the key features added in this update.
Key Features of The Daily Connect Parent Billing Platform
Parent Billing integrates directly with your existing Daily Connect account, meaning administrators can manage invoicing and payments from exactly the same app they already use to manage attendance, scheduling, parent messaging, and more.
The powerful new features include:
New Payment Options
With customizable payment options, administrators can choose to have parents pay however is most suitable for them. This includes:
- Multiple Payment Methods: accept payments via credit/debit card, ACH transfer, cash, or check. Parents can pay directly from their Daily Connect app, or via a link sent to them in their email invoice.
- Split Payments: parents can split their childcare bill in any way they like, with multiple people able to contribute towards tuition payments.
- Support for Subsidies and Scholarships: easily reconcile your subsidy invoices and payments right from the Daily Connect platform.
- Credits and Discounts: add credits and discounts to parent invoices to make sure the correct amount is always displayed.
- Additional Charges: add all relevant charges, including tuition, meal plans, after-care, onboarding fees, field trips, and more.
All of these new features are in addition to the existing Parent Billing features on the platform, which enable childcare providers to email parents invoices and seamlessly collect payments online.
It’s your payments, your way – making life easier for you and your families.
Automated Parent Billing for Childcare Centers
Chasing payments is time-consuming and frustrating. But with Daily Connect’s new automation features, that frustration will soon be a thing of the past. Features include:
- Auto-Pay: parents can set up auto-pay to ensure you always get paid on time.
- Recurring Invoices: send automatically repeating invoices at the end of each billing cycle, cutting down on the amount of time staff need to spend manually calculating and sending invoices.
- Late Fees: automatically add a late fee to invoices when parents miss a payment deadline.
- Notifications: you’ll receive a notification when parents pay their bill, meaning you always know when money is coming in.
Together, these new features will save you and your staff countless hours every month, freeing you up to spend more time on the parts of your business you enjoy the most: being with the children.
Reporting Tools
Understand how your childcare business is performing with reporting tools and real-time dashboard features built directly into the Daily Connect app:
- End-of-Year Reports: quickly understand how your business performed over the past year with powerful reporting tools that help you identify new opportunities for growth. There are reporting tools for parents to see what they spent too.
- Real-Time Dashboard: access a live payment dashboard in the Daily Connect app that clearly displays completed, pending, and upcoming payments, so you can understand your business’s financial position at a moment’s notice.
Make use of these reports for your own analysis, or share them with your accountant or business manager – they’re there to help you be more successful.
Clear, Low Transaction Fees
These new payment features will be rolled out to all Professional+ accounts over the next few weeks.
Your monthly subscription rate will remain the same, but there will be transaction fees applied to every payment you collect. You can decide whether to pay these yourself or transfer the cost to your customers.
There are no set-up fees, recurring monthly fees, or contracts: the only fees associated with using our new Parent Billing tools are the transaction fees outlined below.
Transaction fees are calculated as follows:
Credit/Debit Card Payments
Each payment will be assessed a 2.9% transaction fee. Here is an example.
For a $250.00 weekly invoice you send to a parent, there would be a transaction fee of $7.25 ($250.00 x 2.9%). As the childcare provider, you have two options:
- Make customers responsible for this fee. When the customer pays their invoice, they would see the charge of $250.00, plus a $7.25 transaction fee. Their total would be $257.25, and you would receive $250.00.
- Pay this fee yourself. When the customer pays their invoice, they would see the charge of $250.00. They would pay $250.00 and you would receive $242.75.
ACH Transfers
Each payment will be charged a $0.99 transaction fee. Here is an example of how this works using the same example $250 payment as above.
For a $250.00 weekly invoice you send to a parent, there would be a transaction fee of $0.99. As the childcare provider, you have two options:
- Make customers responsible for this fee. When the customer pays their invoice, they would see the charge of $250.00, plus a $0.99 transaction fee. Their total would be $250.99, and you would receive $250.00.
- Pay this fee yourself. When the customer pays their invoice, they would see the charge of $250.00. They would pay $250.00 and you would receive $249.01.
Cash or Check: there are no fees associated with offline payments including cash and check payments.
Start Using Our All-New Parent Billing Features Today
We’re excited to roll these features out to all Professional+ subscribers over the coming weeks. You’ll receive an email and an in-app notification when these features are activated on your account.
If you have any questions about how to use these features, don’t hesitate to visit our Help Center or contact our Customer Support team. Together, we’re excited to continue innovating new ways to help you build a better, more successful business.
