Increasing Fees...how do I tell parents?

[CasualFridays]

When I started, it was in April 2011, and I incresed my fees that Dec starting the new year (2012)with a new rate for all my families. I was also charging too low and upped it $5 per day. All of my families stayed and nobody took any issue with it.
I have kept those families on their rate but any new families I have taken on pay $3 more per day. I will probably increase again for 2014. I think this is fair.

[playfelt]

I only take kids till they start school so rarely have them more than 2 1/2 - 3 years so it works fine for me to raise the rates as a new child starts replacing the old one. I also have a maternity leave rate that says if first child stays in care full time then both kids if I take the baby will pay the original rate ie they get a break on baby too. If child drops to pt they come back at old rate but baby comes in at new rate. If child is pulled but both want to come back they both come back at new rate. So only way to get a sibling discount is to pay me for the year of mat leave for the oldest.

[Momof4]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate that? I do have a question, I thought I read somewhere that if I charge for stat days I fall under a different category at tax time, or that I have to be a registered business? Am I wrong?

Most of us are paid for our stat days, sick or missed days for any reason, that's what it says in my contract. All my closed days are listed and there are actually 15 of them through the year since I'm also closed Christmas Eve day and Easter Monday now. My clients know that they pay full fees for 49 weeks of the year and they do not pay for my 3 weeks of vacation, period, simple, that's the agreed upon contract. It's your business and as long as your clients are advised of all the days you are closed they are agreeing to abide by the rules.

[jammiesandtea]

When I increase fees I do it two ways:

1. I post the increased fee on my fees schedule of my website and any new clients come into care on the new fee schedule.
2. Existing clients get a fee increase at contract renewal time. All my contracts expired Dec 31st each year and at that time I make any necessary changes and have parents sign the new contract. If a parent takes issue with any changes then I replace them with another family.

Hi Judy,

I apologize to all for highjacking this thread with an unrelated comment, but it was the only way I could think of to get a message to you. Your private message box here on daycarebear is full and will not accept a message, and I could not find anywhere on your forum to send you a direct message. I thought maybe by replying here it would send you a notification since you had contributed to this thread.

Anyway, I am trying to register on the daycare provider connection forum but am having a technical issue and can't complete it. When I get to the bottom, the confirmation code only shows as an x in a box; you can't see the code. I've tried refreshing the page numerous times, and I've even tried accessing it from both my firefox and internet explorer browsers, in case it was a browser issue.

Everything else is filled out; my username, password, email address attached to my website, etc.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
jammiesandtea

[DaycareLady]

I decided not to raise fees, just didn't have the heart to do it.