Simplifying Nursery Funding Forms with Digital Declarations

The funding paperwork that takes nursery managers the most time is the parent declaration form: one per funded child, renewed when hours change, signed by the right people, and then typed again into the council's portal. Moving it online removes the chasing and the re-typing. It doesn't remove the need for someone to check the form before it goes to the council, and it shouldn't.

What the declaration is for

In England, the statutory guidance on early education and childcare asks providers to complete a declaration with parents before a child first takes up a funded place. It records the pattern of funded hours the family is taking and any optional charges they have agreed to, and it commonly includes the parent's consent for the council to check their eligibility. Each council publishes its own version, so the boxes, the wording and who must sign vary from one area to the next.

Where paper declarations go wrong

• Details copied by hand. Names, dates of birth, addresses and session times are already in your records, then written out again by the parent and typed again into the portal. Every copy is a chance for a transposed digit.
• Missing signatures or dates. Forms come back with one parent's signature where the council wants both, or without a date, and have to go home again.
• Codes that don't match. A working-parent eligibility code is mistyped, or has lapsed because the parent didn't reconfirm, and nobody notices until the council's check.
• Hours that drift from the booking. A child's sessions change in October, the declaration still says September's pattern, and the claim no longer matches either.
• Forms that are hard to find later. When the council asks to see a declaration in an audit, it's in a ring binder, a scanned PDF, or nowhere.

What moving it online changes

Start from data you already hold

A digital declaration should be generated from the child's record: names, date of birth, address and the funded and chargeable hours from their booked sessions. The parent checks and completes what only they can provide, such as National Insurance numbers and eligibility codes, rather than starting from a blank page.

Signatures collected without the school-bag round trip

Parents sign on their own phone, or on the office tablet at pick-up if they prefer. The form shouldn't be submittable until everyone who needs to sign has signed.

A review step before it counts

Someone at the setting should still read each completed form, and either approve it or send it back with a note saying what needs correcting. That is your check before the council sees anything, and the record of who approved it and when is part of your audit trail.

The signed form kept with the child

The signed declaration, ideally on the council's own form, sits against the child's record with the date it was signed and approved. When hours change, you renew the form from the previous one rather than starting again.

Less typing in the portal

Most councils still require you to enter each child into their provider portal. Software can't submit the claim for you, but it can put the data in front of you while you work, or fill in the portal's fields directly, so the figures come from the approved form rather than from memory.

What to check when choosing a system

• Does it produce your council's own declaration form, or a generic one your council may not accept?
• Can parents who can't or won't use an app still complete a form, on paper or in person?
• Are funded and chargeable hours taken from the child's sessions, or typed in again?
• Is there an approval step, and does it record who approved each form and when?
• How does it help with the council portal itself, and on which portals?
• Can it flag eligibility codes that are due to expire or have failed the council's check?

How Pigeonhole handles it

In Pigeonhole you create a declaration from a child's record. It is pre-filled with their details and with the funded and chargeable hours from their sessions and extra charges. The parent completes and signs it online; every parent with parental responsibility signs, and both can sign in the same sitting. Families who can't use the online form can sign a printed copy or sign on your screen in the office. You then approve the form with your own signature, or reject it with a comment and it goes back to the parent.

Declaration forms are set up council by council, using each council's own parental declaration. Councils already set up include Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Croydon, Durham and North Somerset. If yours isn't set up yet, ask us to add it.

In your council's provider portal, our Chrome extension fills in the fields it recognises from Pigeonhole and puts every other figure one click away to copy. Where your council uses the LiquidLogic portal, it can also check your claim against the council's live register and flag code problems, data that doesn't match, and children missing from either side.

Read more on our childcare funding software page or see the detail of funding forms.