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Invoicing & Payments

Providers

Wootzoo's invoicing module lets you create, send and track invoices for every parent. You can invoice for ad-hoc sessions, contracts, or any custom charge. Payments can be made online via Stripe or recorded manually.

Creating a One-Off Invoice

  1. Go to the parent's profile and open the Invoices tab.
  2. Click Create One-Off Invoice.
  3. Add a title, description and amount. You can add multiple line items to a single invoice.
  4. Set a due date and optionally enable a Pay Now button (requires Stripe connected).
  5. Save as a draft to review, then click Send to email it to the parent.

Contract Invoices

If a child has an active contract (term dates, hours, hourly rate), you can generate a contract invoice directly from the Invoices tab. Wootzoo calculates the invoice amount based on the contract dates and rate, applying any CCOW funding deductions automatically.

Bulk Invoicing

Go to Invoicing → Bulk to invoice multiple parents at once for the same period. Select the children, review the amounts, and send all invoices in one step. You can mark invoices as paid from the bulk view too.

Recording a Manual Payment

When a parent pays by cash, BACS, childcare vouchers or Tax-Free Childcare:

  1. Open the invoice and click Record Payment.
  2. Enter the amount paid and select the payment method (Cash, BACS, Tax-Free Childcare, Childcare Vouchers, Cheque).
  3. The invoice status updates to Paid (or Part-Paid if the amount is less than the total).

The payment method is stored against the invoice so you can refer back if fees are ever disputed.

Online Payments (Stripe)

Connect your Stripe account under Settings → Payment Details. Once connected, invoices can include a Pay Now button. Parents pay online and the invoice is automatically marked as paid.

Stripe payments require 3D Secure authentication for most cards. The parent is redirected to their bank's authorisation page and then returned to Wootzoo.

CCOW (Childcare Offer for Wales)

Wootzoo automatically calculates each parent's CCOW-funded deduction for contract invoices, so you don't have to work it out manually. The invoice shows the funded portion (paid by the council at the CCOW rate) and the parent's chargeable portion separately.

Setting up CCOW

Two things must be configured before CCOW calculations will apply:

  1. Go to Settings → Invoicing → Childcare Offer for Wales and enable Auto-calculate CCOW. Set your nursery hourly rate (what parents pay for non-funded hours) and the CCOW rate (the council-funded rate, default £6.40/h).
  2. On each eligible child's profile, enter their weekly funded hours (e.g. 17.5h). This is the Mon–Sun weekly allowance. Without this, no CCOW deduction will be applied for that child.

How the calculation works

When you generate a contract invoice, Wootzoo iterates through every contracted session day in the month. For each week (Monday to Sunday), it tracks how many CCOW-eligible hours the child has already used. Once the weekly allowance is exhausted, remaining hours are charged at the full nursery rate.

The weekly allowance resets every Monday. Wootzoo correctly handles months that start mid-week - hours used in the previous month's portion of that week are carried forward so the child doesn't get a double allowance.

What counts towards CCOW hours

When calculating how many funded hours a child has used in a week, Wootzoo aggregates hours from two sources:

Bulk contract invoicing

The Generate All button on the Invoicing page creates draft contract invoices for all eligible children in one step. CCOW deductions are applied automatically for any child with funded hours configured. Click any row in the preview to see the day-by-day breakdown before generating.

Ad-hoc sessions and CCOW

CCOW does not automatically reduce the fee when you add an ad-hoc session. Instead, the ad-hoc form shows a live summary of how many funded hours the child has used and how many remain for that week, so you can set the correct fee manually. Tick Count towards CCOW funded hours if the session should be included in the weekly hours tally.

See Ad-hoc Sessions for full details.

Payment Reminders

Wootzoo sends automated reminder emails when invoices are overdue. Configure the reminder schedule under Settings → Invoicing → Invoice Chase-up Settings:

Invoice Statuses

Ad-hoc Sessions Discounts