Tip of the Month 2025 - August - Stretched Funding
As a new School year approaches, we thought that we would focus the Tip of the Month on Stretched Funding! The benefits of offering Stretched Funding include year-round income stability, better staff utilisation (and possibly retention) and is appealing to parents who work all year round. Keep reading for our tips on how to set this up at your setting!
What is Stretched Funding?
The Local Authority provides funding for eligible children for 30 or 15 hours a week based on the 38 weeks of term time. This can be stretched over a larger number of weeks, meaning that the child will be eligible for less funded hours per week, but more weeks in the year. This is beneficial to the setting as you won't see large peaks and dips in income across terms. It also helps working parents who usually don't work on a term time only basis.
A child that is eligible for 30 hours of funding for 38 weeks will be able to claim for more weeks and attend less than 30 hours. Lets do the maths :-
30 (hours a week) X 38 weeks = 1,140 hours a year.
1,140 / 50 weeks = 22.8 (hours a week)
0.8 X 60 (minutes) = 48minutes.
So the child that is eligible for 30 hours a week over 38 weeks will be eligible for 22 hours and 48 minutes over 50 weeks.
If you are open for 51 or 52 weeks, you can adjust this sum accordingly.
Setting Stretched Funding Up On Abacus
To set up Stretched Funding, head to Settings > Funding. To create a new group for Stretched, click on the green plus button
.
Here, you will enter the details of your stretched term. Give the Funding Group a name - something that is easily identifiable when you are selecting this group for your children. Enter a description if you like, and then enter the Maximum number of hours in a week, a day and 2, 3, 4, and 5 days.
Booking Limits
The "Maximum amount per week" will be the total that a child can claim in one week.
The "Maximum amount per day" will be the total of funded hours a child can claim in one day. If you cap the number of funded hours that can be taken in a day then put that number here. If you don't cap the number of funded hours they can claim in a day then this will be 10 hours.
The "Maximum booking limits" for 2 days will be the number of hours that a child can claim over 2 days. Typically, this will be the number that a child can claim over one day, twice.
For example, if a child can claim 7 funded hours over one day, they will be able to claim up to a maximum of 14 over 2 days because anything more than 14 would mean that one of the days had more than the number of hours that can be claimed in a day.
This will repeat over 3, 4 and 5 days until you have reached the maximum that can be claimed in a week.
Stretched Funding Terms
Once you have created your Stretched funding groups, you are ready to add the terms. With Term Time Only funding groups, your terms will typically follow the school terms with any gaps between terms or half terms being non-qualifying for funded sessions.
When adding stretched terms, you will want to add the term dates in back-to-back so that they run concurrently through all of your eligible time.
REMEMBER: Children become eligible for fund the term after the reach the eligible age so it is important to still enter your term dates.
So, how do you add a Funding term? Just head to the "A" symbol 
next to the Stretched Funding group that you have created.
At the bottom of the screen, click on "Add Term" 
.
This is where you will populate the form on the right-hand side of the screen. Give your term a name (e.g Autumn Term 2025) and enter your start and end dates for your term. Remember, you want your dates to be back-to-back. We would recommend the following.
Spring Term - January 1st - March 31st
Summer Term - April 1st - August 31st
Autumn Term - September 1st - December 31st.
If you know the Head Count Date for this term, pop it in the field.
You can then enter your LEA Hourly Value. This is the amount that you receive from the Local Authority per hour. This is important information is this data will display on your Funding Summary Report. However, this figure can be changed at any time and will not affect the invoice total so if you are unsure what this is - don't panic! It can always be edited at a later time with an issue.
Since this is a stretched term, there is no need to add non-qualifying days so you can go ahead and "Save."
For a full helpfile on adding funding to your system, click here.
Applying Stretched Funding
Once you have set up your Stretched Funding, you are ready to apply it to the childs account. Firstly, head to Children > Accounts > Discounts and select your newly-created Stretched Funding group from the drop-down list in the "Funding" section. Then, hit "Save".
Now you are ready to apply the Funded sessions. Head to Children > Sessions and go to Schedule. You will notice that "Funded Hours" is an option that would not have been there before. Select this.
You will then be taken to the page to schedule your Funded Hours. Start by selecting the "Start W/C". This is the week from which you want your booking pattern to start.
Then, enter the start and the end time of the portion of the session that you wish to make funded.
Then, on the grid at the bottom, select the day of the week to which you wish to apply the funding. A pink line will indicate that the funding has been scheduled. Where the pink line in on top of the blue line, it will negate the cost of that portion of the session.
When you are happy with your selection, click "Next" and confirm which room the child will be in. Then hit "Save".
For a helpfile on scheduling funded sessions, click here.
Funding Reports
Funding Summary Report
There are a couple of reports that we can look at when it comes to Funding. The first being the Funding Summary Report in Reports > Finance.
This report will show you the number of funded hours that have been booked within the time frame that you have selected. You can see the number of funded hours booked for this child, the amount left over and the LEA reclaim value for this period (based on the LEA Hourly Value we talked about above).
The LEA Reclaim Value will show you the amount that you will receive from the Local Authority for this child in this period, The Setting Equivalent Value shows you what the cost of the session would be should no funding be applied to it and the Revenue Difference is the difference between these two figures.
Unfortunately, the Revenue difference is usually a minus figure as the Local Authority rarely pays what we would charge a parent for a private session. However this is a useful piece of information to have, as it should give you an indication of the amount that you would need to make up with things like Meals and consumables.
For a helpfile on the Funding Summary Report, click here.
Funding Eligibility Report
The Funding Eligibility Report will show you the children that will be eligible for funding based on their age on any given date. For example, if you wish to see which children in the setting will have turned 2 by next term you can enter the start date of the term and filter by just the children that will be that 2 years old.
The report will show you the children that will be in the given age bracket from the date that you have run the report for and will show the funding group (if any) they have been allocated to receive Funding from. This is a really handy tool to see which children could be claiming funding from a new group from next term or children that have not been set up for funding from next term yet.
For a helpfile on the Funding Eligibility Report, click here.
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