June is when the spreadsheets come out. September’s intake is mostly known, autumn staffing is being pencilled in, and fee letters need to reach parents before the summer holidays scatter everyone. For a lot of managers, this is also the month the sums stop adding up the way they used to, because the expanded funded entitlements have quietly transformed what nursery income looks like.
More funded hours, tighter rules
The entitlements now reach children from nine months, and for many settings funded hours have shifted from a side dish to the main course of their income. That expansion came with tighter charging rules: what you can and can’t charge alongside funded hours, what must be genuinely optional, and how the whole arrangement has to be presented to parents.
Presentation is where settings get caught. Invoices need proper itemisation, so a parent can see exactly what they’re paying for and what the funding covers. A funded place has to be genuinely accessible, which means a “voluntary” charge that isn’t really voluntary is a problem waiting for a complaint. The rules aren’t there to stop you charging for consumables or extras where permitted; they’re there to make sure nobody’s free hours quietly stopped being free.
We hear from managers who feel the rules tie one hand behind their back. The honest reply is that clarity is also protection. A transparent, itemised fee letter sent this month prevents the September conversation that starts with a parent, a printout and a complaint to the local authority.
The money settings leave on the table
While a few settings overcharge by accident, far more undercharge by omission. Early Years Pupil Premium goes unclaimed because nobody asked the eligibility question at registration. The Disability Access Fund goes unclaimed because a child’s DLA status was never mentioned. Local streams sit unexplored because the paperwork looked tedious in a busy week.
Individually these amounts look small. Across a year, and across the children who qualify, they’re often the difference between a room that washes its face and one that doesn’t. Building the eligibility questions into your registration forms costs nothing and pays every term.
The same goes for talking to parents about money generally. Families comparing settings this month are comparing fee letters, and the setting whose letter explains clearly what’s funded, what’s charged and what’s optional wins trust before a single visit. Transparency isn’t only a compliance duty; in a competitive local market it’s a selling point.
Sustainability is a set of small levers
Beyond funding itself, sustainability comes down to a handful of levers pulled deliberately: occupancy, the shape of your week, and staffing costs, which dwarf everything else on the expenditure side. Occupancy in particular rewards attention to shape as well as volume. A setting can be “full” on Tuesday and Wednesday while Monday and Friday run half empty, and the funded-hours world has made those lopsided weeks more common. How you price, package and offer sessions decides whether the quiet days pay their way.
Scenario planning matters more than it used to. What happens to the budget if occupancy dips five percent, or if two senior staff leave in the same term? Managers who run those numbers in June make calm decisions; managers who meet them for the first time in November make rushed ones.
Our course Early Years Funding, Charging Rules and Sustainability gives managers and owners a clear grounding in the whole system: the entitlements, the charging rules, the funding streams that get missed, and the budgeting habits that keep a setting viable.
Run a setting that’s compliant and solvent.
The course covers the expanded entitlements, charging and invoicing rules and the practical levers of sustainability, with an NFAQ-accredited certificate for your CPD file.
None of this is why anyone came into early years. But the settings that master the money are the ones still here, still open and still caring for children in five years’ time, and that’s reason enough to give it a June afternoon.