New 30 hours Invoicing Rules: What is Famly doing?

In 2024, a high court ruling took a parent’s side against a council after a nursery attached a mandatory fee to the 30 hours funded hours. 

A few months later, in February 2025, the government released updated guidance for all early years providers. In essence, it’s an attempt to clamp down further on how flexible providers can be with the 30 hours funding in their settings. 

Perfect.

As time insensitive and painful as these new changes might feel, we of course want to give everyone using Famly the peace of mind that we’re keeping you compliant, and want to add a silver lining to these new requirements by using it as an opportunity to vastly improve our invoice experience for the parents you serve as well. We want less confusion, fewer questions from your parents to you, and happier administrators able to do the work of applying funding more quickly.

While we can’t say we exactly stand behind the new guidance, we wanted to take the time to run you through what’s changed, and what we’re going to do about it.

First up, those changes…

What are the changes to the statutory guidance?

The primary theme of what’s actually changed with this latest guidance is probably ‘transparency’. 

The government hasn’t really changed its fundamental stance. It’s always wanted to stop nurseries charging top ups and make sure there are no mandatory fees or requirements associated with the funded hours.

And while the best way to do that would of course be to fund the scheme properly, this guidance is instead focused on tightening what settings can do to make up for a gap between their costs and what they are paid in funding.

So then, what’s really changed? It’s three main things:

1. Language: The language is stricter around the idea that 15 or 30 hours must be accessible without extra charges attached. This in theory opens up for local authorities to be stricter in their provider agreements and is something we’re already seeing happen.
2. Enforcement: Beyond encouraging local authorities to make their provider agreements more strict, it also recommends more strongly that they intervene when they feel the rules are not being upheld. PR campaigns from the DfE have also increased parents’ understanding of their pathways to highlight perceived wrongdoing to their local authority. Together, this makes it more likely settings will be pulled up.
3. Transparency: Importantly, the guidance insists that charges must be clear on every setting’s website and that their invoices must be itemised more clearly. Local authorities will have oversight on this with settings in their area.

Of course this is all designed to make it easier for parents to opt out of any consumables charges if they want to. The elephant in the room here is that in almost all cases that is going to be insanely impractical for settings

From managing allergies and storing packed lunches, to splitting up classes for trips, and managing different nappy stock piles, there are so many issues that will arise if parents opt out of these charges that go well beyond balancing the books. Many nurseries will end up in a situation where they will have to forego fees but still deliver consumables purely in the hope that not too many parents take them up on the offer, which is of course a vulnerable situation to be in.

Got it, but what specifically needs to change on invoicing?

The changes around invoicing can be found in A1.36 of the updated guidance. It’s important to note that these changes don’t come into effect until January 2026. If your local authority is pushing you to make changes sooner, the DfE have told us they want to hear from you, so please do get in touch with me directly on ma@famly.co.uk if that’s you..

Essentially, invoices now need to be broken down into the following categories:

1. The free entitlement hours - A parent should be able to see how many hours they are receiving for free over the invoice period.
2. Additional paid hours - They should of course need to see the hours they’re paying for too.
3. Food charges - Parents should be able to see what they’re charged for meals and snacks, which need to be a voluntary choice.
4. Non-food consumable charges - This includes things like nappies, sun cream etc. and again these have to be voluntary - providers will need to make accommodations for parents to bring their own.
5. Activities charges - These are charges for optional extra activities like trips or special sessions. Again - these have to be voluntary and should not be directly related to your normal delivery of the EYFS (although exactly what that means is not very clear).

Every single cost doesn’t need to be itemised, but the costs do need to be bulked into these categories so that parents can see what they’re paying for.

So, what is Famly changing and when?

To be compliant, we need to make sure we break all invoices down to this level of detail. At the same time, we know that some of you already felt like the invoices needed to be less confusing and more clear for parents.

The idea? Two birds, one bad-funding-policy related stone.

First and foremost, we want to start by reducing the admin burden of these changes. So we’re working on a new feature where you can set up meals, consumables and activities to be automatically applied to funded hours on the invoice. This will help to make the administration of these consumable charges much much easier. To comply with the law, you’ll of course be able to opt parents out of this if they request, but only on your end of the system.

Second, we’re looking at clarity in our invoices - and this is where we need your help. It’s worth mentioning that at Famly you can have your invoices as ‘Actuals’ or ‘Annualised’. Basically, ‘Actuals’ means parents pay for exactly what they got that month - ‘Annualised’ takes the charges over the whole year and averages them so parents can pay roughly the same amount each month. We need to make some changes to both.

In short, Actuals will get a makeover, with clearer breakdowns, improved formatting, and alignment with the itemised requirements of the new policy.
Annualised will get a totally new format, with much more clarity and configurability.

All of this is scoped to be ready for you to try out during September and into Autumn, to give you plenty of time to get used to the new invoices well before the start of 2026.

How can I get involved?

We’ve already spent the last two months busily conducting research and feedback sessions with lots of you. More recently, we’ve run a webinar on the topic to explain in more detail these changes and will continue to do more as we work on these changes.

We’ll be using our exclusive Famly community ‘Village’ to conduct polls and research as we build the solution, so please head over there if you’re a Famly customer to have your voice heard.

If you’d like to get involved in more broadly opposing or fighting back on some of these changes, we can highly recommend campaign groups like Early Years Voice, or Champagne Nurseries on Lemonade Funding, both of which are led by Famly customers.

Otherwise our partners and friends at the Early Years Alliance are also doing lots of work to seek clarity and push back on the most controversial elements of the changes.