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Buying Extra Nursery Hours (BENH) Set Up

Buying Extra Nursery Hours (BENH) is a feature available at the location level and is only enabled for council-run Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) locations. It allows administrators to manage and offer additional nursery hours to parents and carers.

Key Concepts​

  • BENH – Buy Extra Nursery Hours, the overarching feature that allows the purchase of additional childcare sessions.
  • Products – Individual purchasable sessions (e.g., AM, PM, Full Day).
  • Session Types – Types of attendance (e.g., AM, PM, FD).
  • Resources – Used to manage capacity for additional sessions independently from regular attendance.

Enabling BENH​

You can enable or disable BENH for a specific school year via the ELC location settings.

Enable BENH

  • Toggle BENH availability per school year.
  • Set a start date for when BENH products become available to parents, giving you full control over rollout timing.

Managing Extra Hours at a Location​

Navigate to:

This area provides three main tabs: Calendar, Products, and Availability.

1. Calendar View​

Calendar

  • Displays all available and booked products by date.
  • Click a date to view:
    • Products available for that day.
    • Existing bookings (including payment status).
    • Capacity per session type and age group.

Single Day Details

2. Products Tab​

Create and manage purchasable extra sessions.

Create from Session​

Create Product - From Session

  • Use an existing session as the base.
  • Set:
    • Session
    • Product name
    • Price
    • Available date range
    • Eligible session types

Useful when you want to offer an extra session to specific groups (e.g., exclude AM for children already attending AM).

Once a product is created, you can schedule price changes to take effect during the year (e.g., mid-year rate increases).

Create Top-Up Session​

Top-Up Product

  • Extends a child’s existing session without assigning additional resources.
  • Commonly used for converting short sessions (SS) into full AM or PM sessions.

3. Availability Tab​

BENH capacity is independent of session attendance, providing flexibility in managing additional hours.

Availability Tab

  • Set the resource-based capacity for products.
  • Defined by session type and age group (e.g., 2-year-olds, 3–5-year-olds).
  • Ensures product availability aligns with staffing and space.

Booking Behaviour & Discounts​

  • Products can be booked directly by parents/carers.
  • Statuses include paid and unpaid, both of which are visible in the calendar view.

Automatic FD Discount:
When AM and PM sessions are selected on the same day, the system automatically converts them into a Full Day (FD) session and applies the lower FD price if it's more economical for the parent/carer.