---
title: "Subsidies and discounts"
description: "Set up sibling discounts, and track outside payers (subsidy agencies, employers, scholarships) with per-child awards, claims, emailed statements, and the payments each one owes you."
type: guide
updated: 2026-09-17
canonical_url: https://help.nestlicare.com/owners/billing/subsidies-and-discounts
roles: ["center_admin", "super_admin"]
platforms: [web]
---
Discounts and subsidies both lower what a family pays, but they work differently. A discount is a rule you set once for the whole organization. A subsidy is money an outside payer covers toward one child's tuition, whether that payer is a county agency, a scholarship fund, or an employer paying for an employee's child. It comes with its own paperwork: an award, a claim each billing period, a statement to send, and a check to chase.
Both live under **Billing & Payments → Billing**, on the **Discounts** and **Subsidies** tabs. Both are applied when an invoice is generated, not stored on the plan.
## Discounts
A **discount** is a rule that applies automatically to any family that qualifies. The most common is a sibling discount.
- A discount can apply to the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th-and-later child in a family, to **all enrollments**, to specific **enrollment types** (full time, part time, drop-in, before & after care), to a specific **program**, or to **specific families** you pick.
- The **sibling discount is worked out by the children's ages**. NestliCare orders a family's children by date of birth and applies the rule to the younger ones. You do not tag a particular child as "the second child"; it is decided at billing time.
- **All enrollments** means exactly that: every enrolled family's tuition is reduced, every billing period the rule is active. Use it for org-wide pricing decisions, not individual rewards.
- The optional **start and end dates** are matched against each invoice's billing period: the discount applies to any invoice whose period overlaps the window. Leave both empty for an always-on rule.
Set discounts up on the **Discounts** tab.
### Discounts for specific families
Some discounts belong to particular families rather than to everyone: a staff member's own child, a military or first-responder rate, a financial-aid arrangement you agreed with one household.
Choose **Specific families** under **Applies To**, then search for each family and add it. The rule shows a chip per family, and you can remove any of them later by reopening the discount.
- It applies **every billing period**, to every tuition line for those families, for as long as the rule is active. That is what makes it different from a credit.
- Percentage or fixed amount both work, and it stacks with a sibling discount rather than replacing it.
- Editing the family list **replaces** it. Whoever is on the list when you save is exactly who the discount covers from the next invoice onward; invoices already generated are unaffected.
Pick by whether it repeats. A rate this family always gets is a discount with Specific families. A single amount you owe them once — a referral bonus, a goodwill gesture after a closure, a deposit you are applying — is a credit, issued from the family's card on the Families page. See Credits and referral bonuses.
## Subsidies
The **Subsidies** tab has two halves that work together.
### Agencies
An **agency** is any outside payer that covers some or all of a family's tuition: a county subsidy office, a scholarship fund, a state program, or an employer. Each agency gets its own ledger.
Click **Add Agency** and give it a name, plus a contact name, email, and phone if you have them. Tick **Email statements automatically** if the payer should be emailed each time a family invoice with their share is sent (see [Statements to the payer](#statements-to-the-payer) below). The agency table then tracks, per agency:
- **Awards**, how many children it currently funds.
- **Open Claims**, how many billing periods it has not paid yet.
- **Balance Due**, what it owes you right now.
- **Received**, what it has paid you in total.
### Subsidy awards
An **award** is one child's authorization from one agency. Click **Add Award** and fill in:
- **Family** and **Child**, who the award is for.
- **Agency**. If the program is not one you track as an agency yet, leave this empty and type a **Provider Name** instead. Awards without an agency show as "unlinked" and do not generate claims.
- **How much they pay**. Either **a fixed monthly amount** (the usual subsidy shape) or **the child's full tuition** (the payer covers everything, so the family's share for that child is $0 every period).
- **Case Number**, the agency's reference for this child. For an employer this is usually an employee ID; it is printed on their statements so they can match the charge to the right person.
- **Monthly Amount**, what the agency pays per month. Only for fixed-amount awards.
- **Expected Family Co-pay**, what the family is meant to pay alongside it. This is informational and helps you spot mismatches.
- **Start Date** and **End Date**, the authorization window.
- **Status**: Active, Paused, Expired, or Cancelled. Only Active awards affect invoices.
## What happens at invoice time
When an invoice is generated for a child with an active award, two things happen at once.
1. The family's invoice gets a **subsidy line** naming the agency, deducted from what the family owes. For a fixed award on a weekly or bi-weekly plan, the monthly amount is prorated to match. For a full-tuition award, the line equals the child's tuition after discounts, so that child's share of the family invoice is $0.
2. If the award is linked to an agency, a **claim** is created on that agency's ledger for the same amount and the same period.
That second half is the point. The family's invoice shows only the family's share, and the agency's share becomes a receivable you can actually see instead of money that silently vanishes from your books.
A few rules worth knowing:
- Awards never cover **fees**. A late-pickup fee or a late-payment fee stays on the family's invoice even when a payer covers the child's full tuition.
- A fixed award and a full-tuition award on the same child stack in that order: the fixed amount first, then the full-tuition payer picks up whatever tuition is left.
- If a family's whole invoice comes to $0 because a payer covers everything, sending it simply marks it paid. The family gets no payment request, and the payer's statement still goes out if you turned that on.
## Statements to the payer
Agencies and employers have no NestliCare account, so the only thing they ever receive is an emailed **statement**: each open period, the child it is for, the reference, the amount, and where to send payment. It contains nothing else about the child or the family, and no link into NestliCare.
There are two ways to send one:
- **Automatically.** On the agency, tick **Email statements automatically**. From then on, every time a family invoice carrying that payer's share is sent (by you, or by auto-invoicing), the payer gets a statement of the new charge with their total outstanding underneath. Re-sending the same family invoice does not email the payer again.
- **By hand.** On the **Subsidies** tab, click **Send Statement** on the agency. This emails everything currently outstanding: every open and partially paid claim. Use it for a monthly reminder or when a payer asks for their balance.
Both need an email on the agency. The **Ledger** shows when each claim was last emailed.
Add the employer as an agency with the payroll or benefits contact's email, tick Email statements automatically, then add an award for the child with How much they pay set to the child's full tuition and the employee's ID as the reference. The family's invoice for that child comes to $0, the employer is emailed the charge each period, and record their check under Record Payment when it arrives. The employer sees invoices only: never the family's feed, photos, messages, or anything else.
An award with a provider name but no agency still reduces the family's invoice. It just never creates a claim, so nothing tracks whether that money arrived. Link awards to agencies once you have more than a couple.
## Record what an agency pays you
Agencies pay by check or transfer, usually covering several children and several months at once. Record it against the agency, then split it across the claims it covers.
1. On the **Subsidies** tab, find the agency and click **Record Payment**.
2. Enter the **Amount** and **Date Received**.
3. Pick a **Method**: Check, EFT / Direct Deposit, or Other.
4. Add the **Reference / Check #** so you can match it to your bank statement later.
5. Allocate the amount across the agency's open claims. Oldest claims are filled first by default. Partial allocations are fine.
Each claim then reads Open, Partial, or Paid. Click **Ledger** on any agency to see its full history: every claim with its period, child, invoice, amount and paid-to-date, and every payment received.
## When discounts and subsidies are applied
Both are calculated **at the moment an invoice is generated**, using whatever is active at that time. That means:
- A discount or award you add today affects the **next** invoice, not invoices that already exist.
- If you change a rule or amount, invoices already generated keep their original figures.
The cleanest way to fix a wrong discount or award is to correct it, then regenerate the affected invoice. Editing a generated invoice by hand is a last resort.
## Troubleshooting
**A sibling discount did not apply.** Check that the children are in the same family and that their dates of birth are set. The rule applies to the younger child by age order, so a missing date of birth can make a family look like it has one child.
**An enrollment-type discount did not apply.** Check that the enrollments actually carry that type — a discount for "Full time" only reaches enrollments marked full time. Also check the discount's date window: it must overlap the invoice's billing period.
**A discount with an end date stopped applying.** That is the window doing its job: once no part of a billing period overlaps the window, the rule no longer fires. Clear the dates to make it ongoing.
**A family discount did not reach one family.** Reopen the discount and check that family is still in the list. Saving the discount replaces the list with whatever is on screen, so a family removed by accident stops getting the discount from the next invoice on.
**A subsidy is not showing on an invoice.** Confirm the award is attached to the right child, its status is Active, and it was active before the invoice was generated. Awards added after an invoice exists only affect the next one.
**An agency's balance looks too high.** Balance Due is claims minus payments. If you have been banking agency checks without recording them here, the ledger has claims and no payments. Record the payments and allocate them.
**An award shows "unlinked".** It has a provider name but no agency, so it discounts invoices without creating claims. Edit the award and pick an agency to start tracking what is owed.
**A family says their invoice is too high.** Check the expected co-pay on the award against what the invoice actually charges them. A gap usually means the award amount is stale, or the agency changed the authorization and nobody updated it here.
**The payer did not get a statement.** Check three things on the agency: it has an email, **Email statements automatically** is ticked, and the family invoice was actually sent (a draft creates the claim but sends nothing). A re-sent family invoice does not email the payer again; use **Send Statement** for that.
**Send Statement is greyed out.** Either the agency has no email, or nothing is outstanding for it.
**A full-tuition award still left the family with a balance.** Fees are never covered by an award, so a late-pickup or late-payment fee stays with the family. If the balance is tuition, check whether another child in the family has no award: the payer covers only the child on the award.
Related: [Create and send an invoice](/owners/billing/generate-and-send-an-invoice), [Auto-generate invoices on a schedule](/owners/billing/auto-invoice-generation), [Create a billing plan](/owners/billing/create-a-billing-plan).