Costs and Fees

In order to ensure that your setting is sustainable, it is essential that you are able to set your fees so that they cover your costs and enable you to make a surplus or profit to invest in the future of your organisation.

Working out all of the business’s costs can often be an eye opening exercise for childcare settings, but it is crucial that you review this on a regular basis to ensure that you are charging enough to cover all your obligations.  You will need to think about more than just the obvious costs such as staff and rent and consider longer term costs and any investment that you need to make, for example in new equipment or in improving your outdoor area.

Some of the guides and resources on this page will show you how to breakdown your costs and use the information to calculate your breakeven point.  The Business Success for Childcare guide (free to download) has a step by step guide to working out your costs and using the information to develop a fee structure.

Don’t forget that your Local Authority may be able to help you to do this.  It doesn’t have to be a complicated process, but doing it can be the difference between staying in business and going bust!