Nursery Funding
Calculator
See how much you might get from your local council over the course of a term, how many funded children you might be able to take on, and whether you’re charging enough for the surrounding hours.
Simply input all the details you know, use default values for those you don’t, and see how funded children might affect your bottom line. Explore your funding gap, or click the button below to see a snapshot of funding profit and loss instead.
Each button replaces the calculator.
Use this calculator to explore your profit and loss through hourly rates multiplied by weekly hours.
This is just so we can see where our calculator is most used. Don't want us to know? Don't put it in!
Term start
Term end
Council rate
£ Or use the default values below which are rates from Bucks LA:
Nursery rate
What do you charge per hour?
£
Funded hours
How many hours will you book these children in for a week?
Please check with your local authority before booking funded children in, as every authority has different procedures for claims.
Paid hours (per week)
Funded children
Without funding
Gain/Lose
With funding
right half of
Use this calculator to identify if you have a funding gap - meaning funding might cause you a minor or major income shortfall.
This is just so we can see where our calculator is most used. Don't want us to know? Don't put it in 🙂
Choose the date range you want to explore
Pick a funding term:
Closed for any number of weeks in this period?
Put them here:
Council rate
What will the council pay per hour?
If you don't know, use the default buttons below which are rates from Bucks LA:
Daily nursery rate
What would you charge for a non-funded 10-hour day?
Funded Hours per day
How many funded hours are you thinking to offer per day?
Please check with your local authority before booking funded children in, as every authority has different procedures for claims.
Paid hours (per day)
Any paid hours to go with those funded hours?
Days Attended Per Week
How many days will they be attending your nursery?
Know that this calculator treats every day and child the same. Be careful about your allocation!
Funded Children
Total income with funding
Your funding gap (or gain)
Your 'actual' daily rate
right half of calculator 2
This calculator is designed to give you a quick snapshot into whether offering funded hours is going to make you money, lose you money, or leave you on an even keel. It does not constitute financial advice.
Let Blossom help with your nursery funding
Blossom’s newly released Finance system is all set up to help with the practical side of your funding needs, from reports that your local authority might want to see to invoices that lay everything out for parents and of course, easy application.
We’ve redesigned the system to allow more simple assigning of funding packages to children, and allowing for stretch weeks without any overallocation of funding.
If the calculator above suggests you’ll make a loss through funded places, use Blossom’s packages to close the gap and make sure that while parents are benefitting from free hours, you aren’t being penalised.
To find out more about Blossom’s new finance system, fill in this form and book a demo!
Learn more about nursery funding with Blossom
More about MBK Group
Did you know that while it’s referred to as 15 or 30 hours a week for 38 weeks, you can ‘stretch’ your weeks if you’re open outside of term time?
Did you also know that it’s a total allocation of 570 or 1140 hours (15 and 30 respectively) per child across three terms from when they first qualify? That means it doesn’t have to be exactly 15 or 30 a week for a child, as long as it adds to those totals and is split according to your local authority’s guidelines.
If any of that sounds confusing, that’s where the MBK Group come in. Headed up by Tricia Wellings, our favourite nursery funding expert, the MBK Group specialises in getting your nursery in top financial form. With decades of experience running nurseries and helping others, the MBK Group are perfectly placed to guide you through everything you need to have your setting running smoothly.
Reach out to find out more!
How the nursery funding calculators work
The funding gap calculator starts by taking the term length you’ve chosen, and turning that into a number of weeks. These weeks are then a multiplier for everything else.
It calculates an ideal amount of money you’d like to make based on your daily rate, the number of days attended, the number of weeks, and the number of children. This number is not displayed, but stored to calculate the money you’d make when funding is applied.
It then calculates the money you’d make from funding alone, taking the council rate, multiplying it by the number of funded hours, then days, then weeks, then the number of children. Defaults are taken from the government’s rates and aren’t indicative of what your local authority might offer.
The ‘funding gap’ is the difference between these two values, while the income is your daily rate divided by 10, times the number of paid hours, then days, then weeks, then children, plus the funding money calculated above.
The adjusted daily rate then comes from your calculated term-time income divided by weeks, days and number of children.
The profit and loss calculator is based on an hourly rather than daily rate. It also gives you more freedom on your term lengths, but doesn’t take into account whether your local authority would pay for those weeks or not.
First it calculates the number of days between your term start and term end date, using rough estimates then divides it by seven, and uses this result as a multiplier going forward. This result is rounded, so six days becomes one week and so on.
‘Without funding’ takes the paid hours, adds them to the funded hours, then multiplies them by your rate, weeks and children. This is how much money you’d make if every hour was paid for. Defaults are taken from the government’s rates and aren’t indicative of what your local authority might offer.
Profit/loss is calculated by taking the amount the council will pay away from the amount that you would charge for those hours, then multiplying by the number of hours, weeks and children. If the council pays more than you charge it’s profit, while the reverse is loss. Profit is green, loss is red.
‘With funding’ adds your rate times paid hours times weeks, to the council rate times funded hours times weeks, and multiplies it by the number of children. If it’s less than without funding it’s red, while if it’s more it’s green.
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See how Blossom’s nursery management software can simplify your nursery admin.
