Bluebell
28-07-2013, 09:22 AM
Ok I'm having a puzzle over how to do something and normally quite able to think about things but in this situation I don't get how to do it!
I have found a brilliant app called hours billing which means that I can record the times that children arrive and leave by pressing a 'timer' button. I can then print out a report showing the attendance record for the week/month with exact times of arrival and hometime.
On top of this it works out the hourly rate and calculates what the parent owes me. all good so far. I can even convert the duration into an invoice and e-mail to parent.
There is also an option to enter payments which you can put as a deposit/retainer and then mark off later against the invoice or against an already created invoice.
This is going to be brilliant for producing attendance records for legal Ofsted requirements - especially when I do pickups or meet parents somewhere, rather than being at home and being able to write it down.
Also good for year end accounts and producing money received.
BUT and here is the problem I can not seem to solve - what happens when the actual hours attended do not match the contracted, therefore billed, hours?
I can not adjust the time attended because that is the reason I use this app - to record actual attendance of child!
I could have 2 durations - attended hours and contracted hours and only invoice the contracted hours to the parent (or for record keeping purposes) but that seems to be doubling my work as i would have to enter timings twice!
I could just produce the invoice but then parents will wonder why they are being charged more/less than the actual used hours or there will be a discrepancy for an invoice that is underpaid - say parent is 5 minutes earlier picking up and 5 minutes late picking up - I don't charge for that but the app does!!
I can ask the timer to round up or round down but obviously all parents are different. I can change timings to 'fit' the contracted hours but that defeats the point of having accurate timings for Ofsted records! For example I have a mum who is contracted 5.5 hours. She works shifts so if she picks up an hour early she still gets charged the same, if she's a bit late I don't charge because of the flexible nature of her job and if she is an hour or more then I charge the extra! Most of my parents pay in advance so I won't need to invoice them as such but I do need to match my invoices to my income for book-keeping reasons!
The only other thing I can think of to do is at the end of the year/month produce a credit note for discrepancy purposes to balance books explaining what it is for. The app doesn't allow for this so I would have to do it myself, but I just feel there should be a simpler way!
Does anyone use apps for this purpose? How would I solve this problem it is really puzzling me!
Any help appreciated!
I have found a brilliant app called hours billing which means that I can record the times that children arrive and leave by pressing a 'timer' button. I can then print out a report showing the attendance record for the week/month with exact times of arrival and hometime.
On top of this it works out the hourly rate and calculates what the parent owes me. all good so far. I can even convert the duration into an invoice and e-mail to parent.
There is also an option to enter payments which you can put as a deposit/retainer and then mark off later against the invoice or against an already created invoice.
This is going to be brilliant for producing attendance records for legal Ofsted requirements - especially when I do pickups or meet parents somewhere, rather than being at home and being able to write it down.
Also good for year end accounts and producing money received.
BUT and here is the problem I can not seem to solve - what happens when the actual hours attended do not match the contracted, therefore billed, hours?
I can not adjust the time attended because that is the reason I use this app - to record actual attendance of child!
I could have 2 durations - attended hours and contracted hours and only invoice the contracted hours to the parent (or for record keeping purposes) but that seems to be doubling my work as i would have to enter timings twice!
I could just produce the invoice but then parents will wonder why they are being charged more/less than the actual used hours or there will be a discrepancy for an invoice that is underpaid - say parent is 5 minutes earlier picking up and 5 minutes late picking up - I don't charge for that but the app does!!
I can ask the timer to round up or round down but obviously all parents are different. I can change timings to 'fit' the contracted hours but that defeats the point of having accurate timings for Ofsted records! For example I have a mum who is contracted 5.5 hours. She works shifts so if she picks up an hour early she still gets charged the same, if she's a bit late I don't charge because of the flexible nature of her job and if she is an hour or more then I charge the extra! Most of my parents pay in advance so I won't need to invoice them as such but I do need to match my invoices to my income for book-keeping reasons!
The only other thing I can think of to do is at the end of the year/month produce a credit note for discrepancy purposes to balance books explaining what it is for. The app doesn't allow for this so I would have to do it myself, but I just feel there should be a simpler way!
Does anyone use apps for this purpose? How would I solve this problem it is really puzzling me!
Any help appreciated!