Fees & Billing Policy

Last updated April 2021 (v2.1). Reviewed annually. 

Aim

Being exists for our Mission: to cause a powerful future for your child. In doing so, we are committed to working with you to develop your child for their whole life - school and beyond. We do this by surrounding your child with extraordinary educators who deliver sector-leading pedagogy, all with love and care.

To sustainably deliver our service, we rely on our families honouring their reciprocal obligation to pay fees. 

This Policy outlines the requirements and obligations of Being and you, our parents and families.

Definitions

Securing a Place

To confirm a place at Being, you will be required to pay a non-refundable Enrolment Confirmation fee. This fee will vary service by service, and is used to offset the administrative cost of creating your enrolment. 

Understanding your Fees

When enrolling at Being, you will nominate specific days of the week that your child will be booked to attend our service (weekly bookings). Each booking at Being is allocated to a session which has a daily fee associated with it (daily session rate).

Every Being service has its own unique catalogue of sessions and daily sessions rates which are designed to meet the individual needs of the community. These may change from time to time. 

Your total weekly fees will be calculated as the number of weekly bookings times by the applicable daily session rate. 

In attending Being, you may be entitled to receive the Child Care Subsidy (otherwise known as CCS). CCS is a Commonwealth subsidy administered through Centrelink. If you are eligible for CCS, a portion of your fees will be subsidised on a weekly basis through payments made directly to Being (weekly CCS subsidy). You are required to pay the remaining fee (your weekly gap fee). 

Weekly gap fee = Total weekly fees - weekly CCS subsidy

Your weekly gap fee is your out of pocket expense. 

In order to administer CCS and manage payment of your gap fee, we use a system called Xplor. Xplor is software that talks to Centrelink on a weekly basis to determine your weekly CCS subsidy, and then calculates and charges your gap fee. By Law, we are required to use a system like Xplor to manage the administration of CCS. 

Eligibility for Child Care Subsidy

Services Australia has a number of useful resources that can assist you in determining your eligibility for CCS. 

We encourage you to determine your eligibility and apply for CCS as soon as possible to avoid paying full fees. 

You can find the steps for applying for the CCS here. 

Claiming Child Care Subsidy

It is your responsibility to ensure that they have entered the correct information into Xplor in order to claim your subsidy. Most importantly, during enrolment, you will be required to provide us with:

• Primary parent - name, date of birth and Parent CRN
• Child - name, date of birth and Child CRN

While we will assist you in obtaining your CCS, it is your responsibility to ensure that you:

1. Apply to receive CCS through Centrelink, 
2. Enter the correct details entered into Xplor, 
3. Complete your Complying Written Agreement on Xplor, and
4. Approve your enrolment on MyGov. 

It is also your ongoing responsibility to ensure that this information remains up to date. 

If you enter incorrect details (including not entering any CCS information) into Xplor, you may be liable to pay full fees until we are able to re-apply for your subsidy. This process can take up to ten business days after you enter the correct information on Xplor and notify the Family Empowerment Team. 

What do you pay for?

Fees are payable in arrears for every day that your child is enrolled to attend at the service, including public holidays, sick days and family holidays. 

Please note you are only entitled for CCS so long as your child remains under the maximum number of allowable absent days (currently 52) in a financial year. If you exceed this allowable number of absences, Centrelink may stop paying your subsidy. 

Accepted Payment Methods

Being uses Xplor’s automated Billing system to ensure that your subsidy is received and that you are billed the correct gap fee. 

There are two ways which you can pay:

1. Direct Debit (recommended) - if you choose this option, we require that you set up valid payment details on Xplor and agree to DebitSuccess’ Direct Debit conditions so that your payments are received. 
2. Daily Pay Now - make payments that suit your schedule through the Xplor’s Daily Pay Now options through the Xplor App.

Use of either of these methods may incur fees such as transaction fees and dishonour fees, which you will be required to pay.

As of writing this Policy, DebitSuccess currently charges the following:

Payment Method	Charge
Direct Debit (Bank Account)	$0.60 per transaction
Credit Cards	2.14%
Other (Amex, Diners)	3.00%

DebitSuccess also charges the following for failed transactions:

Payment Method	Charge
Direct Debit (Bank Account)	$19.95
Credit Cards	N/A
Other (Amex, Diners)	N/A

Please note that the above fees and charges are indicative. You can see your exact charges through your Direct Debit Agreement over the Xplor app.

Payment Frequency

If you elect Direct Debit, you will have the option of choosing either a weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly billing schedule. All billing occurs in arrears to ensure that Xplor’s system has considered your CCS subsidy prior to debiting you. 

If you elect Daily Pay Now, you will be required to clear your account balance every fortnight. 

It is your obligation to ensure that you are able to make payments as they fall due. We understand that under some rare or unexpected circumstances it may become difficult to pay your fees on time. If this applies to you, please contact billing@being.nsw.edu.au prior to your payment falling due to discuss alternative arrangements. 

Discounts

Under Family Assistance Law, we are unable to provide you discounts or gap-free make up days while still being eligible to receive your Child Care Subsidy. To do so would be contravention of our obligations under this Law, and would put in jeopardy our ability to receive CCS from all our families. As such, Being does not provide discounts or gap-free make up days under any circumstances. 

Payment reminders

We will send you your statement fortnightly. Your statement outlines all of your child’s attendances, payments you have made, and subsidy that has been received. You are also able to view your live amount owing through Xplor.

We will also endeavour to send you reminders relating to your account.

Changes in CCS Entitlements

Your CCS Entitlements may change for a number of reasons; most commonly due to a change in your income or activity. While we would like to assist you with this, we are not informed of changes to your CCS Entitlements ahead of time. Once we determine retrospectively that your entitlements have changed, we will endeavour to notify you. 

Changes in your CCS will impact your gap fee.

Unsuccessful Payments

Xplor uses DebitSuccess as the Direct Debiting platform behind XPay. DebitSuccess may charge you for any unsuccessful attempt to make a debit. 

Overdue Accounts

We consider an account overdue where payment has not been received for attendances that occured over 30 days ago. If your account is ever overdue, we will notify you and request that you remediate your account balance within 7 days. 

If your account balance ages to over 60 days, we will temporarily suspend your enrolment effective immediately to give you time to clear your balance. Once you have cleared your balance, we will remove the suspension from your enrolment. 

If you fail to remediate your account balance, we reserve the right to seek the assistance of debt collection services to recover the outstanding balance. 

Increases in fees

Being may change our fees from time to time. In general, fees are reviewed and regularly change in January and/or July.

We will give you two weeks' notice of any fee increases. 

Updating or Ending your Enrolment

We require two weeks' notice to update or end your enrolment. To provide notice of your intention to update or end your enrolment, please contact your Centre Leader.

In the case where you choose to end your enrolment, in order to receive your subsidy during your notice period your child must attend your last scheduled day. Otherwise, you will incur full fees for the period between your last day and your last scheduled attendance. 

Once we confirm your enrolment has ended, you will be provided with a Final Invoice. This invoice is payable within 7 days of your child’s last scheduled day of attendance. 

Account notifications

We will endeavour to provide you accurate, timely notifications around your account via email and SMS. We encourage you to respond to these notifications by contacting our Family Empowerment Team if you have any queries about the notification.

Included in these notifications are reminders relating to:

1. Upcoming payments
2. Overdue accounts
3. Changes in your subsidy
4. Rejected payments

By enrolling at Being, you agree to receive these notifications during the period of your enrolment and thereafter if you have any outstanding balance that needs to be resolved. So that you continue to receive these notifications, you also agree to keep your maintain accurate and current contact information on Xplor. 

Getting in touch

For all Billing related items, please contact our Family Empowerment Team. This team’s charter is to empower our families in relation to all of the ancillary parts of your experience at Being. 

To get in touch, email us at billing@being.nsw.edu.au and, if you wish to discuss the matter with us over the phone, you can reach us on (02) 8311 3192. 

Appendix

Related Policies

Orientation for Children Policy

Privacy and Confidentiality Policy

Stakeholder Impact Assessment

Stakeholder	Impact Assessment
Every Child	Robust and clear systems around the collection of fees are critical to ensuring that we can continue to deliver sector-leading education and care to our children. Creating clear expectations of Being and families will ensure that this relationship is powerful and focused on what matters most: empowering the life of the child.
Families	This Policy creates clear expectations for our families and for Being on the role we pay in receiving fees for the service Being provides. This Policy is intended to ensure that families are clear of their rights and obligations.
Educators	This Policy will have no meaningful impact on Educators.
Centre Leaders	This Policy ensures that our Centre Leaders remain as pedagogical leaders, so that they are continued to be focused on the lives of the children, families and educators at our service. By removing the administrative burden of handling Billing enquiries, as well as the cross-contextual shift in relationship dynamics that can occur from ‘CL’s as debt-collectors’, we preserve the sanctity of the family-child-CL relationship.
Being	Like with families, This Policy creates clear expectations for Being of the role we pay in administering the receipt of fees. This Policy is intended to create the context to create extraordinary experiences for our families.
The Community	This Policy ensures that the service that Being provides remains viable, and, in doing so, continues to provide value to the Community in which the service is placed.

Philosophical Alignment

	Alignment Considerations
The Mission	A powerful future for every child through early education and care is facilitated through the receipt of fees and efficient Billing processes that allows funding to be redirected back to the service.
The Powerful Child	Not applicable.

Background

National Law and Regulations

	Regulation and National Quality Standards
r 168	Education and care service must have policies and procedures (2)  Policies and procedures are required in relation to the following— … (n)  payment of fees and provision of a statement of fees charged by the education and care service;

National Quality Framework

	Regulation and National Quality Standards
7.3.2	Administrative systems are established and maintained to ensure the effective operation of the service.