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Riverside County Family Child Care Association>
Electronic Payments for Child Care
August 28, 2007
Redleaf National Institute
The National Center for the Business of Family Child Care
©2006 www.redleafinstitute.org
10 Yorkton Court St. Paul, MN 55117
Phone# 651-641-6675 Fax# 800-641-0115
rni@redleafinstitute.org
This is the printable version of a resource that appears on
the Redleaf National Institute Web site.
Electronic Payments for Child Care Now Available with C-K
Kids
May 2007
It's the day parents are supposed to pay their family child
care provider, and some providers worry: Will the parent
forget their checkbook? Will the parent tell me she's run
short of cash and ask me to accept payment later? Will the
check bounce?
Getting paid on time is one of the child care industry's
biggest headaches. No one likes to wait until the next day,
next week, or their customer's next paycheck to be paid for
services they provided last week. But having to approach
your customers for timely payment is often more awkward
than the wait.
There is a new service to help you with this aspect of your
business. Minute Menu Systems, in partnership with
ReliaFund Inc., now offers you the ability to collect
payments from your parents electronically. This service is
offered through C-K Kids: The Online Business Software for
Family Child Care Providers, available from Redleaf Press.
Here's how it works. The provider fills out a short
application within C-K Kids. Once approved, the provider
sets up parent accounts, which will allow the parent to
login into a Web site called ChildCarePay.com. Once logged
in, the parent will be able to view their invoices and make
electronic payments from their computer each time a payment
is due. You and the parent can also set up a weekly,
biweekly, or monthly automatic payment plan. The amount of
the payment will then be electronically deposited into your
checking or savings account.
Tabytha Luikens, a family child care provider from Savage,
Minnesota, cares for children in families where one parent
drops off their child and the other parent picks up. Too
often the parent picking up would forget to bring the
checkbook or not remember that it was their turn to pay. So
she was eager to start using the electronic payment plan
available through her C-K Kids software program five months
ago. She loves it.
"It simplifies my life and reduces the time and money I
spend traveling to my bank each week," she said. When she
presented this plan to her families, six of her current
seven regular clients immediately signed up and are very
happy with it. The seventh client was not interested.
Tabytha set things up so that she is automatically paid on
Monday of each week. To meet this goal, the payments are
taken from the parent's account the previous Tuesday.
These electronic transactions are private; neither you nor
the parent has access to each other's bank account
information. The system uses the highest level of Internet
security, the same used by typical banking and financial
e-commerce sites. Electronic payments are made through the
same Automated Clearing House (ACH) standard that the
federal government has used for more than 20 years to
deliver payroll and social security payments.
Direct payment benefits you as a provider:
No more late payments or awkward payment reminders
Improved predictability of your cash flow
Fewer trips to the bank to make deposits
Allows you to transition your clients from hourly payments
to a weekly retainer
Providers can change the amount of the payment as often as
they want
Provider will know sooner if the check bounces (there is a
$3 returned check fee, which is lower than most bank
charges)
Direct payment also benefits your clients:
Convenient and saves time as well as the embarrassment of
forgetting a payment
Allows parents to match payment of child care fees to their
payroll cycles
The cost of this service is $1 per transaction (100% tax
deductible when paid by the provider). Tabytha pays this
fee herself and said that doing so made it easier for
parents to initially agree to participate. She is now
adopting a policy that will require new parents who enroll
in her program to participate in this plan.
Providers may pass this cost on to the parent by
automatically adding the $1 to the parent payment.
According to Minute Menu, approximately 30% of providers
using this service pass the $1 fee onto parents, and 70%
pay it themselves.
For further information about this electronic payment
program, go to www.minutemenu.com/epay.
In the future, Minute Menu hopes to be able to offer this
electronic payment plan to all providers, regardless of
whether they are using C-K Kids.
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