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Automatically Add Extra Charges for Meals and Consumables

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Written by Josie
Updated yesterday

🔒 You will be able to set up automatic extra charges on our Premium and Professional packages once this feature is released. It's not out just yet, but to learn more about pricing, click here!

From January 2026, new UK government requirements mean nurseries must itemise any additional charges applied to funded sessions. This includes:

  • Food charges

  • Non-food consumables charges

  • Activities charges

Famly's automatic charges feature helps you stay compliant by automatically applying these charges when your chosen sessions are added to a child’s plan. It ensures invoices are itemised and transparent, reducing admin and helping to recover the cost of care.


How to Set Up Automatic Charges

To set up your sessions with automatic extra charges for meals and consumables:

  • Head to your Settings

  • From here, click on Finance

  • In Pricing, go to Automatic charges

  • Click on New automatic charge

A form will open where you can configure your automatic charge setup.

Configure your automatic charges:

  • In the first dropdown, select any sessions you’d like to add automatic charges to

  • In the second dropdown, select the extra charges linked to these sessions

  • You can choose to apply these extra charges only if the sessions are funded. Just toggle the switch to enable this setting

  • For partially funded sessions, you can decide how the extra charges should be added:

    • At full price

    • In proportion to the funded hours

    • Not at all

  • Set the start and end date for when this automatic charge should be active. The Active from field is mandatory, but you can leave the Active until field blank if there's no end date determined yet

  • When you’re finished, click Save.

Your new automatic charge rule will now appear on the Automatic charges overview page. You can edit it at any time by clicking the pen icon.

Each rule will be marked with a status to show whether it is:

  • Active

  • Scheduled for the future, or

  • Expired if the end date has passed

You can use the Show expired toggle at the top of the page to show or hide expired rules for a neater overview.


How to Add a Session With an Automatic Extra Charge to a Child’s Plan

To add a session with added automatic extra charges:

  • Go to the child’s profile and open the Bookings tab

  • Schedule a change in their plan or open up their current plan

  • Add a session that includes an automatic extra charge, as configured in your Settings

When added, the automatic charges will appear directly on top of the session.

In the summary on the right, the charges will be listed and marked with an A symbol to show they were added automatically.

You can configure which automatic extra charges are included for each child:

  • Click on the ... menu at the top right of the booking plan

  • Select Configure automatic charges

  • Uncheck any extra charges you don’t want to apply for this child

Remember to save the plan once you're ready. Now, when you raise an invoice for this period, you'll see the extra charges itemised on the invoice for clarity.

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