---
title: "Bill by the hour from attendance"
description: "Charge before and after school care by the hour, so a family pays for the time their child was actually signed in — computed from check-in and check-out."
type: guide
updated: 2026-09-14
canonical_url: https://help.nestlicare.com/owners/billing/bill-by-the-hour
roles: ["center_admin", "super_admin"]
platforms: [web, ios, android]
---
Some care doesn't fit a flat weekly rate. A child in before and after school care might be with you an hour on Monday and three hours on Wednesday, and the bill should follow. An **hourly plan** charges a rate per hour and works out each family's amount from the check-in and check-out times your staff already record.

The same parent question, in their words: *"So if they come in the morning and afternoon, it might be $10.00 one day and $20.00 another depending on how long they are there."* That's what this does.

## How it differs from a fixed plan

|  | Fixed plan | Hourly plan |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What you enter | An amount per period | A rate per hour |
| Amount charged | The same every period | Varies with hours attended |
| When it's invoiced | At the **start** of the period, in advance | After the period **ends**, in arrears |
| Auto-Send | Follows your Auto-Send setting | Never — always a draft you review |

The arrears part matters: an hourly invoice can't be produced until the period is over, because the hours don't exist until then. A weekly hourly plan invoices on Monday for the week that just finished.

## Create an hourly plan

1. Go to **Billing & Payments → Billing → Billing Plans**.
2. Click **Create Plan**.
3. Give it a **Plan Name**, like `Before & after school`.
4. Under **Plan Type**, choose **Hourly, by attendance**.
5. Under **Rate is**, keep **Per hour** (see below for the **Per day** option).
6. Fill in the hourly fields:
   - **Rate per hour** (required) — what one hour of care costs.
   - **Invoiced** (required) — how often to send the bill: Weekly, Bi-weekly, or Monthly. This is only the billing rhythm; it doesn't change the rate.
   - **Daily max** (optional) — a ceiling for any single day. A long day stops adding up once it hits this.
   - **Rounding** — bill exact minutes, or round each day up to the nearest 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or hour.
7. Click **Create Plan**.

<ScreenshotWithPointers
  src="/screenshots/owners/billing/create-plan-modal-hourly.png"
  alt="The Create Billing Plan form with Plan Type set to Hourly, by attendance, showing rate per hour, invoiced cadence, daily max, and rounding"
  caption="Choosing Hourly, by attendance swaps the amount field for a rate per hour and adds the daily max and rounding controls."
/>

The plan appears on the Billing Plans tab showing its rate and a **by attendance** badge, so you can tell it apart from your flat-rate plans at a glance.

<Callout kind="tip" title="Rounding is per day, not per period">
With rounding set to 15 minutes, a child who stays 1 hour 1 minute is billed 1 hour 15 minutes for **that day**. Each day is rounded on its own, then the days are added up.
</Callout>

## Charging a day rate instead

If drop-in families pay a flat rate per day rather than by the hour, set **Rate is** to **Per day** on the same plan type. Everything on this page still applies — arrears invoicing, drafts, warnings, recalculate — only the pricing changes. See [Bill drop-in families a daily rate](/owners/billing/drop-in-daily-rates).

## Attach it to a child

An hourly plan bills nobody until it's attached to a child's enrollment, exactly like a fixed plan:

- From **Families & Children**, on the child's card, use **Add tuition plan** (or the tuition row on the edit form).
- Or from **Organization → Rooms**, edit the child's enrollment and pick the plan under **Tuition plan**.

Both places show hourly plans as `$10/hr` with the **by attendance** badge. You can also do this from the iOS and Android apps.

Hourly plans attach to a child's room enrollment. They can't be attached to an add-on **program**, because program fees aren't driven by check-in and check-out — use a fixed plan for those.

## What gets billed

When the period ends, NestliCare walks each attended day for that child:

- It measures check-in to check-out, applies your rounding, prices it at the hourly rate, and caps the day at your daily max if you set one.
- Days the child was **absent**, or never signed in, add nothing.
- If nothing was attended in the whole period, no invoice is created for it at all.

The invoice line spells out the maths, so a parent can check it:

> Maya Okafor — Before & after school (After School) — Week of Aug 2 — 12.5 hr @ $10/hr

Sibling discounts and subsidies work exactly as they do on fixed plans, and are applied after the hours are priced. A 10% sibling discount on a $40 week takes off $4.

## Review before sending

Hourly invoices are **always created as drafts**, even if Auto-Send is on for the rest of your billing. Attendance data drives real money here, so a human looks first.

If any day in the period has an attendance problem, the draft is flagged. You'll see **"1 attendance issue"** next to it on the Invoices list, and the detail panel names the day and the child:

<ScreenshotWithPointers
  src="/screenshots/owners/billing/invoice-attendance-warning.png"
  alt="An hourly draft invoice showing the Check attendance before sending panel, the flagged day, and the Recalculate from attendance button"
  caption="Attendance problems are named on the draft, with Recalculate from attendance once you've fixed the records."
/>

Two kinds of flag:

- **No check-out recorded** — someone forgot to sign the child out. That day is billed at **zero hours** rather than guessed, so the invoice is short until you fix it.
- **Check-out was auto-closed** — NestliCare closed the day for you at your center's usual closing time. Those hours are billed, but they're an estimate, so they're worth a look.
- **The child left and came back** — a day with more than one stay (before and after school) is currently priced from its latest stay. Pricing every stay of the day is being switched on center by center; ask us to turn it on for you and we will check your next draft together first.

## Fix the attendance, then recalculate

1. Correct the records on the child's attendance (see [Fix an attendance mistake](/owners/situations/fix-an-attendance-mistake)).
2. Come back to the draft invoice and click **Recalculate from attendance**.

The line items, hours, and total are recomputed from the corrected records, and any flag that no longer applies disappears. Recalculate works on drafts only — once an invoice is sent, adjust it like any other invoice.

<Callout kind="warning" title="Don't void and regenerate">
Voiding an hourly draft and re-running generation won't bring it back: a voided invoice counts as already billed for that period, on purpose, so nobody gets billed twice. **Recalculate** is the way to pick up corrected attendance.
</Callout>

## When invoices are generated

Hourly plans generate after the period closes:

- **Weekly** — every Monday, for the previous Monday to Sunday.
- **Bi-weekly** — every other Monday, for the previous two weeks.
- **Monthly** — on the 1st, for the month that just ended.

Generation runs in the morning in your center's timezone, alongside your other invoicing. Fixed plans are unaffected and keep billing in advance, so a family with one child on each plan gets two invoices covering different periods. That's expected.

You don't have to wait for the schedule — **Generate** on the Invoices page runs it on demand.

## Switching an existing plan to hourly

You can change a plan's type on the Billing Plans tab. If children are already on it, NestliCare asks you to confirm, because it changes how their next invoice is worked out. Invoices already generated keep their original amounts.

## Troubleshooting

**No invoice was created for a child on an hourly plan.** There were no billable hours in that period — check the child was signed in, and signed out, on at least one day. A period with no attendance produces no invoice by design.

**The total looks too low.** Almost always a missing check-out: that day bills at zero hours. Open the draft and look for the attendance flag, fix the record, then **Recalculate from attendance**.

**The total looks too high.** Check for an auto-closed day, where the child was signed in but never signed out and the day was closed at your usual closing time. Correct the check-out time and recalculate.

**A busy day charged less than the hours suggest.** Your **Daily max** capped it. Raise or clear the cap on the plan for future invoices.

**Nothing generated on Tuesday.** Weekly hourly plans generate on Mondays, bi-weekly on alternating Mondays, monthly on the 1st — and always for the period that has already finished.

**The plan won't attach to a program.** Hourly plans are room enrollments only. Programs bill at a fixed amount.

**The parent's app shows a plain total.** Older versions of the iOS and Android apps show the invoice and its total correctly, but label the plan's rate using the billing cadence rather than "per hour". The invoice line itself still reads `12.5 hr @ $10/hr`. Updating the app clears it up.

## Related

- [Bill drop-in families a daily rate](/owners/billing/drop-in-daily-rates) — the same plan type priced per attended day
- [Create a billing plan](/owners/billing/create-a-billing-plan) — flat-rate plans, and attaching plans to children
- [Auto-generate invoices on a schedule](/owners/billing/auto-invoice-generation) — the schedule hourly plans ride on
- [Create and send an invoice](/owners/billing/generate-and-send-an-invoice) — sending drafts, one at a time or in bulk
- [Fix an attendance mistake](/owners/situations/fix-an-attendance-mistake) — missed check-outs and backfilling a day
- [Charge a late pickup fee](/owners/billing/late-pickup-fees) — a per-minute fee past your cutoff, on the same weekly draft