Guide · For directors, office managers, and bookkeepers · 25 minutes
Billing and invoicing
Tuition is the part families notice when it is wrong and never mention when it is right. This covers the setup that makes a month-end run boring, and what to do on the days it is not.
Contents
1. How billing fits together
Four things, and confusing them is the source of most billing mess:
- A tuition schedule is the recurring arrangement for a family — what they owe, how often.
- An invoice is one bill generated from that schedule, for one period.
- A payment is money received against an invoice.
- A receipt is the family's record of that payment.
Card details never touch your systems or RoundUp's — payments run through Stripe, and what is stored is a reference to a payment method, not a card number.
When an amount is wrong, fix the schedule and regenerate. Editing the invoice by hand fixes this month and leaves next month broken — and you will not remember in four weeks.
2. Tuition schedules
Set up one schedule per distinct arrangement, not one per family. Most centers need five or six: full-time by age group, a part-time rate or two, and the exceptions.
- Base rate by program or age group
- Part-time and drop-in rates, with the days they cover
- Recurring fees — supplies, meals, activity fees
- Sibling discounts, staff rates, employer partnerships
- Anything with an end date, flagged so it does not run forever
"Toddler · 3 days · sibling" tells an office manager and a parent the same true thing. "Rate B" tells neither, and gets applied wrongly the first week someone new covers the desk.
3. Payment methods and autopay
Families can pay by card or by bank transfer, and can save a payment method for reuse. Saving a method is what makes autopay possible; without one, autopay has nothing to charge.
- Have families save a payment method during onboarding, while they are already in the app
- Set a default method per family — a family with three saved cards and no default is a decline waiting to happen
- Turn on autopay where your policy allows it, and be explicit with families about the charge date
- Point families at the billing portal for their own card updates rather than collecting details by phone
Autopay runs as a batch and reports back two lists: successes and failures. Read the failures list every time — see below.
4. The monthly run
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Generate in draft
Generate the whole cycle without sending. Nothing goes to a family until you have looked at it.
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Check the total, then check the exceptions
Compare the run total against last month and explain any difference. Then check every family whose arrangement is unusual: subsidies, mid-month starts and departures, sibling discounts, schedule changes that took effect this period. That is where a misconfigured rate hides — the ordinary families are ordinary.
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Fix the schedule, regenerate
Per the rule above. Never patch the invoice.
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Send, then run autopay
Invoices out first, autopay after, so a family who wanted to change their method has a window.
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Watch payments for 48 hours
Confirm money is landing and receipts are going out. Early declines are usually stale saved cards, not a configuration problem — but check the first few yourself before assuming.
5. Failed payments
Failures are tracked as their own list, with a retry. That list is the single most valuable screen in billing, and the one most often left unread.
- Work the failures list within 48 hours of every run
- Retry once — a good number of failures are transient
- A second failure is a conversation, not a third retry. Usually an expired card.
- Ask the family to update their method themselves through the portal
- Track how long a balance has been failing; 30 days of silent retries is not a collections process
A card that declined twice will decline a tenth time. The only thing that fixes it is telling the family — and the longer you wait, the larger the balance you are asking them to clear at once.
6. Late fees
A late fee policy has four parts, and getting them written down stops the fee being applied inconsistently — which is what makes families angry, more than the fee itself.
| Setting | What it does | Worth thinking about |
|---|---|---|
| Grace days | Days after the due date before a fee applies. | Enough to cover a weekend and a bank delay. |
| Fee type | Fixed amount, or a percentage of the balance. | Percentage scales with the bill; fixed is easier to explain. |
| Amount | The fixed sum, or the percentage rate. | Check it against your state's rules on childcare late fees. |
| Maximum | A cap on the fee. | Essential with a percentage fee, or a large past-due balance produces a fee nobody intended. |
Put the policy in the handbook in the same words the system applies it, and it stops being a monthly argument.
7. Subsidies and vouchers
Subsidy arrangements are the most common source of invoice errors, because two parties are paying for one child and only one of them reads the invoice.
- Set up the subsidy program before the family, so the family attaches to a program rather than a one-off arrangement
- Record the voucher with its own dates — a voucher that lapsed last month is still billing as if it had not
- Make sure the family's own portion is a separate, visible line, so a parent can see what is theirs
- Diary voucher renewal dates; a renewal that slips turns into a family invoiced for the full amount with no warning
- Reconcile subsidy payments separately — they arrive on a different schedule from family payments and rarely match the invoice date
A lapsed voucher does not announce itself. It shows up as a family suddenly owing four times their usual amount, discovered by the parent. A monthly look at voucher end dates costs ten minutes and prevents that entirely.
8. Refunds
Refunds are requested with a reason, then approved — deliberately two steps, so a refund is never a single mis-tap.
- Always record a reason; it is what makes the year-end review of refunds meaningful
- Decide who can approve, and keep it a short list
- Check whether the situation is a refund or a credit against next month — a credit is usually simpler for both sides
- Refunds return to the original payment method, so confirm it is still valid before promising a date
9. Statements and tax receipts
Statements can be produced for a single family or for the whole center, by month, and sent from the same place.
- Family statements — the answer to "what have I paid this year?", which is most of your inbox in January.
- Center statements — the month's billing in one view, for your own records or your bookkeeper's.
- Tax receipts — year-end receipts families need for dependent-care claims, downloadable per family.
- Receipt export — payment receipts can be exported in bulk when your accountant wants the year in one file.
Generate tax receipts before families ask. A center that sends them unprompted in the first week of the year removes a fortnight of individual requests, and it is the kind of thing families mention to other families.
10. Your month-end checklist
- Schedule changes that took effect this period are reflected
- Starters and leavers pro-rated correctly
- Voucher and subsidy dates still current
- Invoice run reviewed in draft, total explained against last month
- Invoices sent, autopay run
- Failures list worked, families with a second failure contacted
- Refunds requested this month reviewed and approved or declined
- Outstanding balances reviewed — the list is short if you look monthly
- Statement produced for your own records
Families should bring those to you, not to RoundUp support — you set the rates and issue the invoices. For anything about the app itself: support@roundupece.com or +1 (458) 273-4336.