This help centre article has been written for the Koru Kids Nanny Service for families.
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Advance payment
When your nanny accepts your job offer, you’ll need to make an advance payment to cover four weeks' childcare. It’s 100% refunded if things don’t go ahead. The advance payment is used to pay your final invoice when you stop working with your nanny. Any money left after paying for your nanny's final hours and notice period will always be returned to you. If your nanny's start date is over a month away, you'll pay this invoice 4 weeks before they start.
Set-up fee
You'll only pay this fee once, in your first invoice for your first-ever Koru Kids nanny. It helps to cover our costs for setting you up as an employer and fulfilling all your employee obligations with HMRC and pension registrations.
Monthly payroll
Our pay cycles start on 26th of the month and run until the 25th of the following month.
Your nanny will submit the hours they've worked on their timesheet via the Koru Kids app or website. Most nannies do this immediately following their shift. You are sent these for review every Saturday via a notification from our app. You’ll have until the 28th of the month to review and approve all your nanny’s hours for that month (up to the 25th).
You are sent an invoice estimate which will include any rounding to account for minimum hours. If the total hours in a month is less than the minimum hours in your nanny’s contract, we'll round up your invoice. We send an estimate so you have a chance to query anything before we issue the final invoice and take payment.
Invoice estimates will not include any manual adjustments on your invoice, such as reduced minimum hours due to different term dates, or payment in lieu of notice. These will be included and itemised on your finalised invoice.
We send you your finalised invoice on the last working day of the month. The payment itself will be taken automatically by Direct Debit between the 3rd and 5th of the month. We will pay your nanny on the 7th.
Late payment
If for some reason the Direct Debit fails, this will mean we will be unable to pay your nanny on time. Our payroll team are able to make payments every Thursday, so depending when the payment clears in our account your nanny will be paid the following Thursday.
Paying via direct debit
We ask all of our families to pay for their childcare with a Direct Debit. Why?
It's easier for you: no more forgetting to pay or annoying bank transfers
You're protected: all payments are covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee meaning your bank will refund you in the unlikely event something goes wrong
It ensures your nanny gets paid on time: our nannies rely on your payment for income and using Direct Debit ensures they get paid on time
Ending your nanny's contract
If you need to end your arrangement, you'll need to give your nanny their contractual notice period - our standard is 2 weeks notice after the 2 week probation period. If you do not need your nanny to work during this time, then you may pay their contracted hours in lieu of notice.
We'll process a refund for any remainder of your advance payment within 2 weeks of you receiving your final invoice.
Need to let us know that you're nanny is no longer working for you?
Can I use Tax-Free Childcare or get reimbursed from Universal Credit?
In order to use these methods of payment, your childcarer - i.e. your nanny, and not Koru Kids as a childcare agency - would need to be Ofsted registered.
Due to the part-time nature of the role, the vast majority of our nannies are not Ofsted registered. This means that you would not be able to use Tax-Free Childcare or get reimbursed from Universal Credit.
If you do find a nanny that is Ofsted registered then we would be able to accept these payment methods. However, it's worth bearing in mind that we currently don't have this information available on our nannies' profiles so it would not be possible to search on this basis.
If you do find a nanny through Koru Kids, it may be possible to ask them to register with Ofsted. You'd need to arrange the nanny's Ofsted registration with them directly.
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