Designated daycare in New Brunswick: what the program changes for your billing

A designated early learning and child care centre in New Brunswick commits to a provincially framed rate, in exchange for which eligible families receive a subsidy calculated on their income. For a director, this is not simply a price change: it is a change of billing method.

This guide describes what designation concretely changes in a daycare's administrative work, without covering eligibility criteria, which belong to the department.

An invoice built from two amounts

In a non-designated daycare, a parent invoice follows a rate the daycare sets itself. In a designated one, it follows two separate elements: a framed base rate, and a subsidy that depends on the family's situation.

The practical consequence is that there is no longer a single "daycare price". Two children in the same room, in the same month, can produce two different net amounts because their families sit at different points on the income scale.

What becomes painful in a spreadsheet

While a daycare has a dozen children, the two-part mechanism fits in a spreadsheet. Past that point, three things degrade at once.

• Special cases multiply: a family whose income changes mid-year, a space moving from full time to part time, a child changing age group on their birthday.
• Retroactive adjustments appear: a subsidy confirmed late forces a correction to an invoice already sent, sometimes already paid.
• Traceability is lost: when justifying an amount six months later, nobody knows which version of the formula was in force.

None of these three is a calculation problem. They are history problems: you must be able to say not only how much, but since when and why.

What to review every month

A designated daycare benefits from handling four items at the same point in the month, in this order.

• Actual attendance for the month, since some spaces are billed by days attended.
• Changes of situation reported by families, which shift the subsidised share from a specific date.
• The invoices themselves, with base rate, applied subsidy and HST shown separately on the document.
• Payments received, so the year-end tax receipt reflects amounts actually collected rather than amounts billed.

That last point is the one most often neglected. An issued invoice is not a received payment, and it is the second that counts for the tax receipt handed to the parent in February.

Tax, on the other hand, does not depend on the family

A New Brunswick daycare applies the province's harmonised sales tax, at the same rate for every family. Unlike the subsidy, that rate depends neither on income nor on space type: it depends on the province where the daycare operates.

That distinction is worth keeping in mind when checking an invoice: if two families see different net amounts, it comes from the subsidy, never from the tax.

What a parent should be able to read on the invoice

A designated daycare invoice is harder to understand than an ordinary one, because the amount asked of the parent is not the price of the service. Three lines prevent most calls to the office.

• The base rate applied and the number of days billed, so the parent can check the starting calculation.
• The subsidy deducted, on its own line, so they can see the reduction comes from the program and not from a discount granted by the daycare.
• The tax, calculated and shown separately, rather than folded into a single total.

An invoice showing those three lines is rarely disputed. An invoice showing only a net amount ends up being explained on the phone, every month, to several families.

Three recurring mistakes

Difficulties seen in designated daycares rarely come from the program itself. They come from how information travels.

• Applying a subsidy change to the current month when it takes effect on a specific date: the retroactive adjustment is then computed over the wrong period.
• Confusing amounts billed with amounts collected when producing year-end tax receipts.
• Keeping the rate table in a document separate from the billing software, which guarantees one of the two will go stale without anyone noticing.

Further reading

Program conditions, rates in force and designation terms are published by the Government of New Brunswick. The list of licensed facilities also indicates, for each one, whether it is designated.

Sources

• Government of New Brunswick — early learning and child care
• Open data — licensed early learning and child care facilities in New Brunswick