Before adding funding to a child's plan, you'll need to make sure your local authority's funding grant rates are set up in Famly. Find out how to set up your funding grants here.
How to Add Funding to a Child's Plan
Funding is added directly through the child's booking plan. You'll find the option once you've entered their sessions.
Go to the child's profile and open the Bookings tab
Click on the child's plan and enter their sessions
Under Pricing Preview, click Add Public Funding
From here, you can view and edit the funding information for this child
Setting Funding Automatically
The easiest way to apply funding is to let Famly calculate the deduction for you. Enter the number of funded hours per week and Famly will automatically work out the deduction amount based on the hourly rate of the child's sessions.
The number of hours you enter will depend on what your local authority mandates and whether you're stretching the funding throughout the year.
Setting a Maximum Number of Funded Hours Per Day
If you need more control over how hours are spread across the week, you can set a maximum number of funded hours per day. Combined with allowing or disallowing funding on specific sessions, this is useful for more complex funding patterns.
To set a default maximum for your whole setting, go to Settings → Finances → Public funding.
Setting Funding Manually
If the automatic calculation doesn't work for your setup, you can enter a custom deduction amount instead. Tick the Set manually box in the Deduction from Invoice section to enter a custom hourly rate or weekly deduction amount.
💡 If you set funding manually, you'll need to update it yourself any time the child's plan or pricing group changes. It won't update automatically
We don't recommend setting the manual deduction to match the claimable rate from the council, as this could be treated as a top-up fee.
What Does the Manual Funding Alert Mean?
When setting funding manually, you may see an alert if the deduction you've entered doesn't match the funding grant details. For example, if you've entered a deduction that corresponds to more hours than the child is eligible for, Famly will flag this.
💡 This is just a notification and won't stop you from saving the plan. It's worth double-checking your funding setup to make sure everything looks right
How to Set Up Partially Funded Sessions
If a session is only partially funded, it's best to split it into two separate segments, one funded and one unfunded. This avoids rounding issues that can occur when Famly calculates funding per minute across a session.
For example, if a child attends a full day session but funding only applies between 6am and 12pm, here's what to do:
Add two sessions with times that reflect the funded and unfunded periods
Remove funding from the unfunded session by clicking on it and selecting Disallow funding
You'll need a session that can be booked hourly and flexibly to make this work. When you click on the session, you'll be able to add two sets of start and end times. Save the plan and your total will be correct.
Changing How Funding Is Distributed
When funding is added, Famly highlights the funded hours by striping the relevant sessions. If the distribution doesn't look right, you can change which sessions the funding applies to.
Click on a session and select Disallow funding
Famly will apply the funding to other sessions in the plan instead
Sessions marked with an F are ones that funding can be applied to
💡 You'll see a warning if there aren't enough sessions marked with an F to cover the number of funded hours you've entered, or if the funding amount in £ isn't enough to cover the hours entered. The invoice will always show the number of hours entered, not the £ amount
Viewing a Summary of Public Funding
Once funding is set up, you can check a summary of what will appear on the invoice at any time from the child's plan.
Go to the child's profile and open the Bookings tab
Click on their plan to open it
Find the Public funding section and click to expand the summary
This shows the number of funded hours and the deduction amount as you've entered them. Click the arrow next to a session name for a more detailed breakdown.