Why we have terms for Funded Placements
At tiney, we’re here to unlock the potential of every child, and that means helping childminders grow strong, sustainable businesses.
As more families use government-funded childcare, we need clear, simple terms to make sure everyone understands how Funded Placements work and what’s expected. These terms help keep things running smoothly for you, for tiney, and for the families you support.
You’ll need to agree to these before offering Funded Placements through tiney.
Quick overview - Funded Placement Terms at a glance
Local authority registration
Tiney has agreements with many local authorities, but you may still need to register directly with your local authority to offer funded placements. You’ll find step-by-step guidance in your App and can contact our funding experts team with any questions.
Getting paid into your Tiney Wallet
To receive payments correctly, you’ll need to give your Tiney Wallet business account details to your local authority. These details are available in your App.
Headcount submissions
Where local authorities allow it, tiney will complete and submit termly headcount submissions on your behalf. If this isn’t possible or permitted, you’ll need to submit it yourself - we’ll guide you, but the responsibility is yours.
Membership Fee on funded hours
Tiney’s Membership Fee applies to all funded hours, additional charges, and other line items, unless explicitly excluded on our pricing page. All pricing terms may change in future, in line with the Childminder Terms of Use.
If the Membership Fee can’t be collected automatically
If the local authority pays you directly, tiney will create a matching charge in your Wallet. You can pay this from your Wallet balance, with a debit or credit card or via bank transfer.
Full Terms
Tiney supports and accepts local authority “Funded Placements”. These Funded Placement Terms apply where a new or existing Childminder registers with us to be eligible to deliver Funded Placements through tiney. They set out the Childminder’s rights and responsibilities with regard to the onboarding process to offer Funded Placements, the delivery of such funding, and details of the Membership Fee charged by tiney in respect of such funding.
You will be required to read and accept these Funded Placement Terms before submitting a new funded contract request.
In these Funded Placement Terms we may use capitalised words and phrases. When we do, these have the meanings given in our General Terms of Use and our Childminder Terms of Use, both of which apply to our contract with you in combination with these Funded Placement Terms.
In the event of any inconsistency between any of the provisions in these Funded Placement Terms and the Childminder Terms of Use, the provisions in these Funded Placement Terms shall prevail.
1. Supplementary requirements
1.1. It is a condition of Funded Placements, in addition to fulfilling all of our registration criteria and having a registered account with us as a Childminder, that you acknowledge and adhere to the following supplementary terms and conditions in order to be able to deliver Funded Placements:
Registration
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1.1.1 Except in cases where tiney has a direct agreement with the local authority to administer Funded Placements on behalf of Childminders (in which case tiney will register on your behalf and inform you if there is any additional information required), you shall register with your local authority. The process for registration will differ from authority to authority - tiney will provide high level guidance (on a per-authority basis) and support on this.
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1.1.2 Tiney will provide you with Funding Account details which must, where possible, be given to the local authority for all payouts (see section 5.1 below for further details on this).
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1.1.3 You may request tiney’s assistance to submit your headcount claims to your local authority. To do this, you must share your local authority portal login details, answers to any security questions, inform tiney of any password changes and forward any communications from your local authority to tiney.
Liaising with the Parent
1.2 You shall obtain the following details from any Parent who wants a Funded Placement:
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1.2.1 Details of the type of funding they want to claim (funding types are based on child age and guardian income criteria).
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1.2.2 How many hours per week they want to claim from your childcare setting.
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1.2.3 How the funded hours will be allocated across the week.
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1.2.4 Whether or not the Funded Placement will be during term-time only, and if not, whether the funded hours will stretch into the term-holiday periods.
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1.2.5 Any additional hours required over the funded allowance.
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1.2.6 Any funding eligibility criteria, if applicable, including eligibility codes (and you shall ensure that the Parent obtains any eligibility code if they require one but do not have one).
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1.2.7 The Parent’s National Insurance information (to enable tiney to perform an eligibility code check).
1.3 You acknowledge and agree to inform the Parent that Parent funding eligibility can affect the start date of the funded care. You shall also inform the Parent that they will need to reconfirm their eligibility periodically (for example, every 3 months) as requested by the government and the local authority, and that a Parent’s eligibility may therefore change between school terms. As a result, the Childminder (and tiney) can’t guarantee that any funding will be claimable if eligibility is not maintained.
2. The Childcare Agreement
2.1. Once you have obtained all of the information listed above, and have followed our family onboarding process and collected all necessary information which is required to be documented in the Childcare Agreement, you may submit a new contract request via the Contract Builder in our App. This will prompt you through the necessary details, and verify the Parent eligibility for funding.
2.2. Assuming funding eligibility is confirmed, the Childcare Agreement will be produced which you can review and e-sign. Once you have signed the Childcare Agreement, it will be sent to the Parent for review and e-signature. You are not permitted to vary the Childcare Agreement in any way without our prior written approval. If there are any specific contractual arrangements which you and the Parent wish to agree in relation to your engagement, then we will try to accommodate them.
2.3. If funding eligibility cannot be confirmed, the Childminder will be notified in the App and prompted to discuss alternative options with the Parent, including requesting a different (standard or flexible) contract type, or amending the start date of the Childcare Agreement to meet funding eligibility requirements (if possible).
2.4. Funded contract requests must be made with as much notice as possible before the start of the school term. Any contract requests submitted after the start date of a new school term may not be able to be agreed, due to the headcount deadline dates imposed by the relevant local authority.
2.5. Once the Parent has signed the Childcare Agreement, they will be asked to onboard to tiney and complete the child passport in the usual way.
3. Headcount submissions
3.1. Tiney will, on behalf of the Childminder, make the headcount submissions required by local authorities by the relevant deadlines (which differ from authority-to-authority but usually involve a forecast headcount submission at the start of the term and a confirmation headcount submission shortly after the start of term) where either (i) the Childminder is under the remit of a local authority that enables tiney to be the umbrella provider and to administer funding places on behalf of its childminders; or (ii) where the Childminder has requested this service, and has provided their local authority portal log in details to tiney and consented to tiney securely logging into the portal on their behalf and making the relevant headcount submissions on their behalf.
3.2. In the event that the Childminder is under the remit of a local authority where neither of the above circumstances in section 3.1 (i) or (ii) apply (or in the event that the Childminder does not wish to share their local authority portal log in details with tiney), the Childminder will be responsible for making the relevant headcount submissions themselves by the appropriate deadlines. In these circumstances tiney’s Membership Fee, as described below, will still apply.
3.3. You acknowledge that it is important that headcount submissions are made by the relevant deadlines (as published by each local authority) in order for the funding claim to be successful. Where tiney is making headcount submissions on behalf of the Childminder, tiney guarantees to meet the relevant deadlines provided that the Childminder has supplied tiney with the correct funding eligibility and contract details by the relevant deadline as communicated by tiney based on the deadline set by the local authorities. If tiney is responsible for a late headcount submission due to having failed to meet a relevant deadline despite being in possession of all of the requisite information in a timely manner, tiney will cover the cost of any resulting fine or penalty imposed by the local authority and that will be the extent of tiney’s liability (subject to the relevant section of the Childminder Terms).
3.4. You acknowledge that if funding eligibility and contract details are incorrect, or not made available by the Childminder to tiney by the applicable deadline, tiney cannot guarantee that the headcount submissions will be made or therefore that the funding claim will be successful. Tiney will not be liable to the Childminder for unsuccessful or unsubmitted claims in these circumstances, nor will tiney cover the cost of any fines or penalties that may be incurred as a result.
4. Tiney’s Membership Fee
4.1. Tiney’s Membership Fee (as detailed in the Childminder Terms of Use and on tiney’s Pricing page) applies where fees earned by Childminders are through Funded Placements. For Funded Placements, the Membership Fee will apply to the full invoice amount for any childcare, additional fees and any other line items related to the childcare offering provided by that childminder.
5. Invoicing and Payment
5.1. Where the Childminder is not under the remit of a local authority that enables tiney to be the umbrella provider and to administer funding places on behalf of its childminders, tiney will provide a dedicated business payment account, with a sort code and account number into which the Childminder may receive their local authority payments ("Funding Account"). These Funding Account details will be made available to the Childminder in the App and the Childminder must provide these details to the local authority on the Local Authority’s request in order for the funds to be received into the Childminder’s Tiney Wallet.
5.2. Each Funding Account will be opened by tiney and held in the Childminder’s legal name, and will be safeguarded by tiney’s e-money institution provider (namely, Modulr) in accordance with the FCA regulations. You can read more about how Modulr helps to safeguard your funds here: Message from Modulr
5.3. Tiney will submit an invoice to the relevant local authority on behalf of the Childminder for any amounts due to be claimed from that local authority for the following month. Tiney will also submit a monthly invoice to the Parent which will itemise fees which must be paid additionally by the Parent over and above the funded hours for the following month of care (and showing the funded hours as line items set to a £0 rate). When you tell us about any additional agreed fees incurred during any month (such as additional hours, late pick-ups, meals, outings etc.), these will be added to the following invoice, or invoiced separately.
5.4. The Childminder acknowledges that payment timings vary between local authorities (some make payment upfront to cover periods of the term based on headcount estimates; others make a monthly payment in arrears and a final balancing payment at the end of the term). When a payment by a local authority is received into the Childminder’s Funding Account, tiney will attempt to automatically reconcile those payments against any unpaid invoices in the Childminder’s name which have been generated in accordance with the process above. If a payment can't be reconciled automatically, then it may take up to 2 business days to be processed by a member of the tiney team. When a payment is successfully reconciled, tiney will transfer that payment to your Tiney Wallet in the App. We will automatically deduct the Membership Fee attributable to that payment from your Tiney Wallet immediately after the funds enter your Tiney Wallet. The remainder of the payment will then be made available for you to withdraw.
5.5. In the event that the funded payments are made by a local authority directly to the Childminder’s own bank account (for example where tiney has not allocated the Childminder with a Funding Account because the Childminder is not under the remit of a local authority that enables tiney to be the umbrella provider and to administer funding places on behalf of its childminders, or in the event that the Childminder has not provided their Funding Account details to the relevant local authority for receipt of funds, or for any other reason), tiney will create a "charge" in the Childminder’s Tiney Wallet to match the Membership Fee which would have been applied to the invoice and been deducted from payment had it been made directly to tiney (the "Charge"). In addition, tiney may issue a written notice (via email or in app messaging) with a breakdown of the Charge, its due date and any late payment fees that may be due in the event of a late payment.
5.6. Where the Childminder receives funded placement payments directly from a local authority and disagrees with the Charge applied by tiney in relation to those payments, the Childminder will promptly share sufficient information with tiney to enable us to verify the amount claimed. This may be in the form of screenshots of the claims made on the local authority portal, remittance advice, reports provided by the local authority, or any other information tiney may reasonably request access to in order to verify the claim amount. In some cases, the Childminder may be asked to grant us temporary access to their local authority portal or provide relevant login details (subject to any applicable data protection or contractual obligations). This information is required solely for the purpose of verifying the funded amount and will enable tiney to make any necessary amendments to the charges.
5.7. Any Charge will be visible in our App and must be paid off by the Childminder by the due date specified by tiney either by using any existing balance in your Tiney Wallet, or via debit or credit card, or by bank transfer payment to tiney, the details for which will be provided via email or in the tiney App. Invoices for these Charges will be available on request.
5.8. If the Childminder fails to make payment of any tiney Charges invoiced by the due date for payment, then, without limiting tiney’s right to terminate under the General Terms of Use, tiney reserves the right to charge a fixed late payment fee of £50 to cover the administrative costs of recovering the overdue amounts, charge interest on the overdue amounts, and make any other reasonable efforts to recover the Charge, including issuing a Statutory Demand, seeking a County Court Judgment, engaging Debt Collection services and taking any other action legally available to us, including terminating the contract with the Childminder and cancelling their registration with us.
5.9. Tiney will be transparent with childminders about the rates for Funded Placements that are paid by local authorities. In the event of any discrepancy between funds payable and funds received by/from a local authority, Tiney will seek to investigate and rectify the discrepancy. Tiney will never retain or withhold funds paid by a local authority that are due to the Childminder. Any overpayment of funds by a local authority will either be returned by tiney to the local authority, or paid to the Childminder, as directed by the local authority. In the event of any overpayment of funds by a local authority due to the early termination of the Childcare Agreement, you shall immediately refund such overpayment.
5.10. The relevant local authority is responsible for payment of your invoices (or any portion thereof) in the case of Funded Placements and, provided tiney has complied with its contractual obligations (including in respect of headcount submission deadlines), tiney will not be liable for late payment, partial payment or non-payment by the local authority. In the event of any dispute, we will provide you and the Parent with reasonable assistance to help come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Document version: v3, published 4th February 2026
Previous versions:
