The calculator

Fifteen funded hours, priced honestly.

Put your own hours in. It runs the allocation the entitlement letter does not, and shows what the hours funding does not cover actually cost per hour.

What funded hours actually cost

A funded-hours entitlement is usually granted for fewer weeks than a setting is open. This is the bill after that entitlement is allocated properly, with consumables and registration charged the way they actually are, not the headline hours taken at face value.

How the entitlement is used

Hours attendedhrs/wkWeeks attendedwks/yrFunded hourshrs/wkFunded weekswks/yrHeadline rateUSD/hrConsumablesUSD/dayDays attendeddays/wkRegistrationUSDSibling discount%Consumables charged

What you actually pay per hour

$6.96/hr

Headline rate says $6.50/hr, up 7.1%

What the headline hours leave outThe entitlement reads 15 hrs/wk, but stretched across every attended week it is only 11.2 hrs/wk. On the hours that are actually unfunded, this setting charges $9.27 per hour once consumables and registration are counted, against a parent's own estimate of $9,945 for the year, where the actual bill comes to $15,983.

Parent's estimate$9,945/yr

Actual bill$15,983/yr

Annual bill: the estimate a parent gets from the headline hours alone, next to the actual bill this calculator builds up below.

Line	Annual
Unfunded hours	$11,213
Consumables	$4,590
Registration	$180
Sibling discount	$0
Total	$15,983

What the calculator is doing that the letter is not.

1. It allocates the entitlement across the weeks you actually attend.

Fifteen hours for thirty-eight weeks is 570 hours a year. Attend fifty-one weeks and that is 11 hours 11 minutes a week, not fifteen. Choose term time instead and the entitlement is spent inside the thirty-eight weeks, which is better for some patterns of attendance and worse for others. The calculator runs both.

2. It charges consumables on every attended day, including funded ones.

Meals, nappies and wipes are not care hours and funding has never covered them. On our fee page that is 18.00 a day, on its own line. A setting that tells you a funded day costs nothing is charging it somewhere you have not been shown.

3. It divides by the hours you were actually charged for.

That is where the two rates on this page come from, and they answer different questions. The big figure at the top, $6.96, is the blended rate across every hour attended, funded and unfunded together. The $9.27 in the panel beside it is the rate on the 1,725 hours a year that funding does not cover, which is the number that actually leaves your account. Nothing on the fee page is wrong; only one of the three is ever printed anywhere.

Every input is editable, including the funding scheme itself: hours a week, weeks it is granted for, and whether it stretches. Nothing about this model assumes one country’s rules.