FOR CLUBS

After-school, breakfast and holiday clubs — set up the way a club runs.

The register, sessions, parent app and payments clubs run on — with ratios, regulator wording and the words on screen set for 5–12 year olds across the UK. The parts you don’t use are switched off in Features you use, for staff and families alike.

Try free for 14 days See pricing

Term-time, breakfast, holiday models all supported 5–12 ratios per nation (Ofsted / CIW / CI / ETI) Per-session or hourly billing

SETTING TYPE — CLUB

Pick “Club” at signup and ParentLink speaks club.

A nursery and a holiday club have very different daily realities. Pick Club (or Holiday club) at signup and your ratios, your regulator's school-age wording and the words on screen follow, and the learning journal is off for school-age children. Anything else your club doesn't use, you switch off for everyone in Features you use, or hide from some of your staff in Roles and permissions.

After-school / breakfast club

Term-time hours, flat per-session pricing, school pickup mode (bulk-sign-in a school run when the minibus arrives), per-pickup grace and late-pickup charges.

Holiday club

The same session templates as any club, plus the online booking page for the days and weeks you open — parents book holiday days themselves. Easy to flip a single setting from "club" to "holiday club" mid-year.

Wraparound (under-5s welcome)

A club that does both — under-5s wraparound from the early years AND school-age children. Keep the EY journal and funded hours for the youngest, the school-age regulator copy for the older ones. One toggle: “cares for under-5s”.

Only the screens you use

The learning journal is off for school-age children. A whole part your club doesn't use — the staff rota, meals, recruitment, the waiting list, or invoicing if you bill with your own system — you switch off in Settings → Features and words: it goes for staff and families alike, and nothing is deleted. To hide one screen (the daily diary, the sleep room, inspection prep) from some staff only, set it to Off for their role in Roles and permissions.

REGULATOR-AWARE

Out-of-school ratios across all four UK nations, set at signup.

School-age care ratios differ by nation — 1:8 by default across the UK, and England sets no statutory figure at all. Pick the country at signup and your ratios + regulator labels follow you everywhere: the live ratio chip, the inspection-readiness snapshot, the audit log, the staff vetting tab.

England — Ofsted

Childcare Register standards. No statutory school-age ratio: ParentLink defaults to 1:8 and you can set your own. DBS-tracked staff. Late-pickup charging with a grace period and a per-15-minute rate.

Scotland — Care Inspectorate

1:8 by default; you can set 1:10 when every child is 8 or over. PVG-tracked staff. Health & Social Care Standards + Playwork. Saturday opening hours supported.

Wales — CIW

CIW National Minimum Standards. 1:8 for under-8s. DBS staff vetting. £ billing.

Northern Ireland — ETI

Registered with the HSC Trusts; ETI inspects funded pre-school. 1:8 for under-12s. AccessNI staff vetting.

DAY-TO-DAY

The kit clubs actually run on.

Register, kiosk, sessions, parent comms — adapted for the cadence of a club that's empty until 3pm and slammed until 6pm. The parts a club doesn't use are switched off in Features you use.

Bulk school-run sign-in

School pickup at 3.10pm — bulk-sign-in the school run with one tap. Each sign-in records the member of staff who made it, and the run leaves out any child whose session starts later — a 7pm babysitting booking isn't on the 3pm bus.

Recurring + one-off sessions

Set Tuesday + Thursday afternoons as a recurring booking; add a one-off Wednesday this week. Both ride the same billing engine — flat per-session or hourly.

Online booking pagePaid plans

One shareable link where parents book holiday-club days and whole term blocks themselves — live capacity, instant confirmation or an approval queue, with your logo and colours on Pro. Put it on your own website too: a Book now button, or the booking page inside your own page. New families land straight in your queue with their child's details already captured; no phone tag.

One answer to “is it full?”

Places are counted by who is in at the same time, from each session's own times: a breakfast-only child and an after-school child don't take two places, and overlapping sessions can't both fill the same room. The booking page, the waiting list, the Dashboard and the morning email all give the same answer. A session with a capacity of its own keeps its own count.

Several sessions in one day

A child can have an after-school slot AND a later babysitting session on the same afternoon. Each is signed in/out, charged, and absence-tracked on its OWN times — no more two bookings colliding into one register cell.

Per-session billing

Charge a flat £18 session, or £8/hr — your choice per template. Pro-rata partial weeks (mid-term joiners) and bank-holiday closures handled automatically.

Late-pickup charging

Per-session late-pickup grace + £/15-min rate, or your setting’s default. A 25-min overrun on Tuesday + 20 mins on Thursday accumulate into one weekly late charge.

Live staff:child ratio

Per-room and overall ratio chip. Honours the school-age ratio for your nation (1:8 by default in the UK, or your own) — not the baby-room 1:3 a nursery sees.

Trips + outings

Recurring outings (Wednesday Forest School) or one-offs (museum trip). Pull the child + staff list, check ratio, get parent consents in one flow.

MONEY + COMPLIANCE

Invoicing, payments, audit log — exactly like a nursery.

Clubs need the same financial spine as nurseries — they just don't use the funded-hours screens. Everything in the “Run the business” section of /features works identically for clubs.

Invoice generator

One invoice per family — monthly, every 4 weeks or weekly — built from attendance + extras + late-pickup charges. Re-runnable for corrections. Per-parent statements one click away, and families press Explain on a bill to see how it was worked out.

Direct Debit via GoCardless

Per-club API key. GoCardless caps its fee on each payment, so it is far cheaper than card-only billing for routine collections: GoCardless Direct Debit is 1% + 20p a payment, capped at £4 (plus 0.3% on a payment over £2,000; their prices exclude VAT).

Card payments via Stripe

Holiday-club bookings paid when they're made, invoices paid by card, and parents who can't do DD. Hosted Checkout flow, webhook-verified reconciliation.

Audit log + GDPR export

Every change to a child, staff, money or consent record is logged — old value, new value, who, their role and when — and kept for 24 months. Subject-access requests answered from the app, without a support ticket.

Regulator snapshot

One-click "show me everything an inspector might ask for" view. Adapts to your regulator — Childcare Register / NMS / Care Inspectorate / ETI.

Staff vetting tab

DBS / PVG / AccessNI expiry tracked per staff member. The compliance timeline card on the dashboard flags lapses 60 days out.

FAQ

The questions club managers actually ask.

Do you support breakfast + after-school + holiday club from one account?

Yes. Pick “Club” as the setting type at signup and you can run all three timing models from one setting: morning sessions, term-time afternoon sessions, and school-holiday weeks. The session template editor handles each cadence.

What about wraparound clubs that ALSO take under-5s?

Tick “Cares for under-5s” in Settings → Profile. The early-years journal and curriculum follow the under-5s while school-age regulator wording stays for the older children. One setting, both regimes.

Can I charge per session or per hour?

Both. Each session template carries its own pricing model — flat per-session (£18 for the after-school slot) or hourly (£8/hr for the holiday club). Billing engine handles the split per child per week.

Can a child have two sessions on the same day?

Yes. A child can run an after-school slot AND a later babysitting session on the same afternoon — each is signed in and out, charged, and absence-tracked on its own times. Sign one in at 3pm and the other stays pending until 7pm; the school-run bulk sign-in won't sweep up the later one by mistake.

How do school pickups work?

The kiosk has a school-run mode: bulk-sign-in the children arriving on the minibus in one tap. Each sign-in records the member of staff who made it, and a school-run sign-out is labelled as the school run. Children whose session starts later are left out of the bulk run automatically.

Do you handle late pickup?

Yes — per-template late-pickup grace (e.g. 5 min daily) plus a £/15-min charge above a weekly threshold, or your setting’s default. Multi-day overruns accumulate into one weekly charge so a parent who's 10 mins late twice gets one £5 charge, not two.

Will an inspector accept your reports?

Yes — the Inspection-readiness snapshot adapts per regulator (Childcare Register for England clubs, NMS for Wales, Care Inspectorate practice guide for Scotland, ETI for NI). The Snapshot view shows exactly what an inspector wants, drawn from your audit log + safeguarding records.

Pricing — same as the nursery product?

Same. £0 for as long as you use it, for 15 children, £50/mo for 50, £75/mo for 100, £150/mo for Pro (150 children). The Starter plans take card payments for online bookings; Pro adds invoicing with Direct Debit and card, document auto-send and advanced reports. See /pricing for the full table.

Can I move from Cheqdin, Famly or a spreadsheet?

Yes — export a spreadsheet (CSV) from your current system and import your children and parents; you match the columns and see a preview before anything is added. We'll help with the first import for free: email hello@parentlinkeducation.co.uk.

Free for 15 children. £50/mo for 50. £150/mo for Pro.

Sign up takes two minutes. We'll spin up an empty club ready for your children, or you can start with 15 sample children to test the workflow before importing real data.

Start free Try Pro 14 days