Card processing, recurring billing, and reminder tools for daycares and preschools. Set up around weekly tuition, registration and supply fees, and a director doing the billing between classroom coverage.
You will not find any of this on a statement. It shows up as a tuition balance nobody has had time to chase.
A parent's card gets replaced and Friday's tuition does not run. Without automatic card updates and retries, the family keeps attending, the balance keeps building, and it surfaces weeks later.
The director covers a room at drop-off and reconciles tuition at nine that night. Anything typed by hand at that hour is where the missed charges and the wrong amounts come from.
A late pickup at six fifteen, a supply fee in September, a field trip in the spring. Charges that depend on somebody remembering to enter them are charges you collect about half the time.
Sibling rates and staff rates recalculated every cycle on a calculator. Each manual adjustment is a chance to undercharge a family and never find out.
We start from how the center actually collects, then match the tools and the program to it. These are the setups that commonly fit a daycare or a preschool.
Weekly, biweekly, or monthly tuition drafted from a stored card on the day you already bill, with automatic card updates so a routine decline does not become a month of arrears.
One-time charges billed against the same card the family is already on, so enrollment season does not turn into a stack of checks to sort.
Late fees, extra days, and activity charges added as items on the account, so the charge lands on the next cycle instead of on a sticky note at the front desk.
Discounted plans set once per family rather than recalculated each time, so the second child bills at the right rate without anyone doing arithmetic.
A Clover Mini or Flex at the door for the parent who wants to settle in person, and the EmeraldPay Gateway virtual terminal when a card has to be taken over the phone.
Both prices go in the tuition agreement. The billing runs whichever one matches how the family pays, so the cost of taking cards sits in the posted rate rather than in the margin on a classroom.
That list is a starting point rather than a prescription. A twelve-child program in a house and a center with four classrooms and a summer camp need different setups, and the right answer starts with how often you bill.
Most of your money arrives as a scheduled charge rather than across a counter, so the hardware question is smaller here than in other trades. These three cover what is left.
Small enough to sit by the sign-in sheet without taking the whole desk. It handles the parent who wants to pay a registration fee in person, settle a late pickup charge at the door, or put a card on file while they are standing there enrolling.
Pickup happens at a door, not at a desk, and that is where a parent with a balance is easiest to catch. The Flex goes to the door, and it travels to a summer camp site or a family event where you are collecting for something.
One place for the director to run the tuition cycle, add a supply fee to an account, and see what came in that week. If your center also sells anything, meals, uniforms, or camp weeks, it rings up here against the same reporting.
If none of these fit how your center actually collects, tell us and we will spec something that does.
Enrollment records, attendance, and daily reports to parents stay where your staff already work. We handle the tuition rail underneath them.
Each tuition plan carries two numbers, a card price and a cash price. The billing applies the correct total, so the cost of accepting cards sits in the card price rather than in a tuition rate you set once a year and live with.
Both prices are on display before a customer reaches the counter, which is why almost nobody asks about it.
The terminal applies the right total. Your team keeps doing what they already do.
Program setup, signage, and terminal configuration are handled as part of onboarding rather than left to you.
A center-sized illustration, with the arithmetic left in so you can check it.
Those are made up but realistic figures for a center billing sixty five children weekly, and the math is 245 times 260, then 3.2 percent of that total. Real effective rates move with card mix, ticket size, and the program you choose, so we work from your actual statement instead of a figure on a page.
Actual savings depend on your card mix, average tuition payment, and the program you choose. We will quote your specific number from a recent statement rather than a range from a website.
Tuition is one of the larger bills a family pays every week, so yes, some will notice and some will ask. The answer is to settle it at enrollment rather than on the first draft.
Both prices belong on the tuition agreement a family signs before their first day. Parents who agreed to the card price on the way in do not call about it in March. The ones who find out later do call, and they have a point.
Some families will move to cash, check, or bank transfer for a weekly bill of this size, and that is the program working as designed rather than a problem. You are giving them a choice and taking the cost out of the tuition rate itself.
A center that competes on being the polished option may prefer to absorb the cost and post one number. That is a reasonable call. We will quote traditional pricing off the same statement so you can put the two side by side and decide.
A director cannot be at a desk and in a classroom at the same time. These run on their own, and every one of them is about money that would otherwise arrive late or not at all.
The phone rings at drop-off when every adult in the building is covering a room. An automatic text goes back within a few seconds, so a parent looking for a spot gets an answer instead of calling the center down the road.
A short message before the draft and another when a payment did not go through. Most late tuition is not a refusal to pay, it is a card that changed and a parent who has not noticed yet.
Ask the families who have been with you two years, not everyone on the list at once. Enrollment in this business runs on what other parents say, and almost no center asks on any kind of schedule.
A family walked through in April and then life got busy. One message when a spot opens in their age group turns a cold list into filled capacity, which is the only thing that changes your revenue.
An online application that takes about five minutes.
We confirm the program and finalize the rate sheet with you.
Your Clover devices arrive configured for your business.
Plug in, run a test ticket, and you are live.
Usually yes. The question worth asking first is what the early termination fee is and whether the monthly difference clears it. Get that number in writing, send it with a recent statement, and we will tell you straight whether moving now or waiting for renewal is the better call for you.
You set a card price and a cash price for each tuition plan. Scheduled drafts run at the card price, because a card is what is on file. A family paying by check or cash at the office pays the cash price. The billing record applies the correct one, so nobody at the desk is doing arithmetic on a Friday.
No. Attendance, ratios, records, and the daily updates parents get stay exactly where your staff already know them. We handle the payment and the recurring billing underneath. Tell us what you use and we will confirm how it connects before you commit to anything.
A year is fine. More than a year is not. Payments collected more than twelve months ahead of the service are not boardable, so a two-year prepaid rate is out no matter how the discount is structured. Annual up front, semester plans, and monthly drafts all work.
Not really, and you should know that before you switch. Agency payments usually arrive by check or bank transfer on the agency's schedule, and no processor changes that. What we can do is keep the family portion on a card so the piece you actually control is collected on time and reconciles cleanly against the rest.
The charge retries on a schedule, and a card updater service catches most replaced or reissued cards automatically before it ever fails. You get told which accounts did not clear instead of finding out at the end of the month. What we cannot do is make the conversation with that family happen for you.
A number does not require a sales call first. We read your most recent processing statement and tell you what you are actually paying, line by line, including what the recurring tuition charges are costing you.