Create and send an invoice

You bill families two ways: one invoice at a time (a single family, for a drop-in, a late fee, or a custom charge) or automatically on a schedule (every family on their plan's cadence). This article covers the manual invoice. For the scheduled kind, see Auto-generate invoices on a schedule.

The video below walks the whole money side end to end: plans, automatic invoicing, creating a real invoice, online payments, and the Outstanding Balances report.

In this video:

• 0:00 How billing plans work
• 0:57 Automatic invoicing
• 1:33 Create a one-off invoice
• 2:21 Invoice statuses
• 2:34 Turning on online payments
• 3:19 The Outstanding Balances report (the video calls it "Aging", its old name)

Create a single invoice

1. Go to Billing & Payments → Invoices.
2. Click Create Invoice.
3. Fill in the Create Invoice form:
   • Family (required): pick who the invoice is for.
   • Period Start and Period End: the window the charge covers. These show on the invoice and in reports.
   • Due Date: when the family should pay by.
   • Line Items: click Add Line for each charge. Give each a description and amount. If the family has a billing plan, you can pull it in as a line.
   • Notes (optional): anything you want the family to see on the invoice.
4. Click Create Invoice.

Screenshot pendingThe Create Invoice form with family, period, due date, line items, and notes

If you run more than one center

Organizations with more than one active center get a Bill under picker on the create form. Leave it on Automatic and NestliCare works the center out from the family's enrollments, which is right almost every time. Pick a center explicitly when you need to override that.

The center an invoice belongs to decides which center's billing it appears under, and, if that center has its own payout account, which account collects the charge. It is set when the invoice is created and cannot be changed afterwards.

A family with children at two centers is billed per center, so they get one invoice for each, and any sibling discount is still worked out across the whole family rather than per center.

The Invoices page also has a center filter so you can look at one site at a time. Center admins pinned to a single center see only their own center's invoices, with no filter to change.

Track invoices

The Invoices page lists everything with status tabs across the top: All, Draft, Unpaid, Processing, Paid, Past Due, Void. Use them to see what's outstanding. Export CSV (top right) downloads the current view for your records or accountant.

Search by invoice number or family in the box at the top. The search runs across every invoice you have, not just the page on screen, and the "Showing X to Y of Z" count underneath describes the search result. It narrows whatever filters are already set, so searching can never show you invoices outside your center or your organization.

Remind a family about an unpaid invoice

Sent an invoice and it is still sitting there? Open the invoice and tap Send reminder. The family gets a push notification and a bell notification in the app ("Payment reminder from your daycare, invoice INV-0042 for $45.00 is due September 18"). No email goes out, and the invoice itself does not change: its due date, its sent date, and any auto-pay the family has set up all stay exactly as they were.

The button appears on any invoice that is Unpaid, Past Due, or partly paid. Under it you will see when the last reminder went out and how many you have sent, so you can judge whether another one is welcome. You can send one reminder per invoice per hour.

From your phone

Invoices and Finances are both on the iOS and Android Admin tab. You can create an invoice, charge several families at once, take a part payment, and issue a refund from there. If you run several centers, pick the center first and a banner shows the scope you are working in.

What families see

When online payments are enabled for your daycare, the family gets an email with a Pay now link that opens a secure payment page, no login needed. See the parent side in Pay an invoice.

Troubleshooting

The line-item total doesn't match what I expected. Totals add up the lines you entered. Reopen the invoice and check each line's amount.

A family says they didn't get the email. Open the invoice and tap Send reminder to notify them again in the app. If online payments aren't enabled yet, no payment email goes out at all.

I bill everyone the same way every month. Don't create them by hand. Turn on auto-generation so invoices are created on each family's cycle automatically.

An invoice moved to Past Due on its own. That is expected. NestliCare checks hourly and moves a sent invoice to Past Due once its due date has passed on your organization's own calendar. An invoice due today is not past due; it becomes past due when your day rolls over, not when a server somewhere else does.

I searched for a family and got nothing, but I can see their invoice in the list. Search matches the invoice number and the family name. Check the spelling of the family name as it is stored, not the parent's name.