Card, vouchers & Tax-Free Childcare
Parents pay by card, employer childcare vouchers or from their government Tax-Free Childcare account. Each child gets their own payment reference, so every payment can be matched to the right booking.
For schools, academies & trusts
Breakfast to 6pm,
Breakfast to 6pm,
all accounted for.
Breakfast club, after-school and holiday provision — booked and paid for by parents online, registered on a phone at the door, and reported back to the trust. The office stops handling cash, forms and phone calls.
Trust office
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HO
6 schools1 onboarding
Trust office
Dashboard
SeptemberRoll out
Wraparound income£18.4k
Places booked892
Unpaid£640
| School | Places | Income | Unpaid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakfield Primary | 228 | £4,940 | £0 |
| St Mary’s C of E | 201 | £4,180 | £45 |
| Hillside Academy | 186 | £3,720 | £0 |
| Brookvale Junior | 164 | £3,310 | £120 |
| Ravenswood Primary | 113 | £2,250 | £475 |
5 schools · separate families, separate recordsOne trust view
Bringing it in-house
You’ve taken wraparound back. Now run it properly.
With families expecting cover from 7:45am to 6pm, many schools now run breakfast, after-school and holiday clubs themselves instead of handing the site to an outside provider. That’s better for parents — and a lot more admin for the office.
The office
Stop being the booking system
No more paper slips in book bags, cash tins, cheques or a staff member fielding “can I add Tuesday?” at the front desk. Parents book and pay themselves, and every payment is recorded against the child’s booking.
The clubs
Registers that stand up
Who’s in, who’s absent, who collected them and at what time — on a phone at the door, with allergies, medical notes and SEND flags on the child’s row rather than in a folder in the office.
The trust
One view, every school
Central sees bookings, income and unpaid balances across the trust; each school still runs its own clubs, its own staff and its own parents without seeing anyone else’s.
Your clubs, on your page
Parents book the week
Parents book the week
on Sunday night.
Put breakfast club, after-school clubs and holiday cover on the school’s own booking page. Parents pick the days they need and pay for them — the office isn’t in the middle of it.
- ✓Sell a block of sessions, a whole week or a single day
- ✓Caps, cut-offs and waitlists handled for you
- ✓Card, Tax-Free Childcare, vouchers — or a funded place at £0
7:45Daily
Breakfast ClubMon–Fri · Reception–Y6 · £4.50
Open
36/50 places
15:15Daily
After-School ClubMon–Fri · to 18:00 · £9.00
Open
44/50 places
15:15Tue
Football · Y3–Y66-week block · coach-led · £36
Waitlist
Full · 7 waiting
Ahmed family · week of 14 SeptBreakfast × 5 · After-school × 3 · 2 children
Tax-Free Childcare£99.00
Breakfast club
After school
Holiday camp
A day either side of the bell
One register, from the first child in to the last one out.
Every session your school runs outside the timetable, with the same record-keeping you’d expect inside it.
7:45 · Breakfast club
Doors open, register live
- ✓Tap children in as they arrive
- ✓Late arrivals flagged
- ✓Allergy & medical alerts on the row
- ✓Adult:child ratios calculated live
8:45 · Handover
Straight into class
- ✓Attendance list ready to export
- ✓Breakfast served & allergens checked
- ✓Any incident already written up
- ✓Your team alerted if an expected child hasn’t arrived
15:15 · After school
Clubs, sport and care
- ✓Separate registers per club or room
- ✓Staff rota and cover set in advance
- ✓Snack menus with allergens matched
- ✓Photos shared with consenting parents
18:00 · Collection
Signed out, with who collected recorded
- ✓Collection password on the child’s row
- ✓Time out recorded against the child
- ✓Late collections flagged to you
- ✓The day’s record kept
Parents & payment
Paid up front, without the chasing.
Parents book on their phone and pay the way they already pay for childcare — and the office sees exactly who owes what.
Arrears you can actually see
A live list of who’s unpaid, by how much and for how long, with payment reminders sent before the due date. No spreadsheet to keep.
Funded and free places
Offer funded or free places at £0 — they’re booked like any other place and still appear on the register.
Book the term, or just Tuesday
Sell a whole half-term block, a week or a single session — with capacity, cut-off times and waitlists handled for you.
Siblings, in one basket
Families book every child onto every club in a single checkout and pay once. Sibling discounts apply automatically once you’ve set the rule, so nobody has to ask the office.
Receipts the office doesn’t write
Every payment produces a receipt in the parent’s account, dated and itemised — which is what they need for their employer or their childcare account, and what you need at year end.
Safeguarding, staff & compliance
The paperwork an inspection asks for.
The clubs either side of the school day are held to the same standard as the rest of it. This is where that evidence lives.
Incidents & accidents, logged
Written up on the spot with what happened, who was there and what was done — then shared with the parent where you choose, and kept, timestamped.
Medication & consent
Inhalers, EpiPens and prescribed medicine recorded against the child with the parent’s written permission — and a dose can’t be logged without it.
Safer recruitment records
DBS, references, right to work, qualifications and induction tracked per staff member, with expiry dates flagged ahead of time, a “cleared to start” check, and a rota that blocks anyone with no DBS on file or an expired or rejected one.
Policies read and confirmed
Publish safeguarding, behaviour and first-aid policies with version history, assign them to roles, and see who has actually read and confirmed the current version.
Rotas, cover and hours
Publish the club rota to TAs, coaches and playworkers, fill gaps when someone’s off, and let clocked hours feed straight into a timesheet the finance office can sign off.
Training that’s on file
Assign safeguarding, food hygiene, paediatric first aid and the rest from a built-in course library, and keep completions and certificates against the staff record.
Single school or a whole trust
Central oversight. Separate schools.
A multi-academy trust needs both: one place to see the whole estate, and a hard line between the schools so nobody sees a family that isn’t theirs.
Trust office
See everything, in one screen.
Bookings, income and unpaid balances across every school — with the schools that need attention flagged at the top rather than buried in a report.
- ✓Bookings and income per school, side by side
- ✓Which schools need attention, flagged at the top
- ✓Safeguarding oversight — incidents and medication across the trust, read-only
- ✓Invite schools and track their onboarding
- ✓Turn features on or off school by school
Each school
Runs its own, sees only its own.
Every school keeps its own clubs, staff, families and records. Nothing leaks sideways — a school office sees its own children and no one else’s.
- ✓Own listings, prices and term dates
- ✓Own staff, rota and registers
- ✓Own parent list, messages and newsfeed
- ✓Own income and reporting, rolled up to central
- ✓Roles and permissions per person, with a named safeguarding lead (DSL)
Questions schools ask
The honest answers.
Does this replace our MIS?
No, and it doesn’t try to. Your MIS stays the record for the school day — admissions, attendance, assessment. ActivityLane runs everything either side of it: the clubs, the bookings, the payments, the club registers and the staff who cover them. Lists and registers export as CSV for anything you need to move across.
Can parents pay with Tax-Free Childcare or vouchers?
Yes. Alongside card payments, parents can pay from a government Tax-Free Childcare account or with employer childcare vouchers. Each child has a unique payment reference, so when the money arrives you can match it to the right booking and tick it off.
We’re a trust with several schools — how does that work?
Central gets a trust-wide view of income, bookings, unpaid balances and safeguarding, and can switch features on or off for every school at once. Each school is set up as its own site under your head-office account and can only see its own families. Permissions are set per person, so each member of staff sees only what their role needs.
Who is the data controller?
You are. Family and child data belongs to the school or trust that collected it — it isn’t pooled, sold or shared with other providers. Data is held in line with UK GDPR, encrypted in transit and at rest, and our processing terms are published in full.
Our clubs are staffed by TAs, not a separate team.
That’s the common case. Staff are added once, given the roles they need, and rota’d onto clubs around the school day. Their DBS and training are tracked against their name, and clocked hours become a timesheet for the finance office rather than an email.
What does it cost?
A flat monthly fee — never a percentage of what parents pay you, so a full half-term never costs you more. See pricing, or book a demo and we’ll work through your provision.
Schools, academies & trusts
Run wraparound like the rest of the school.
Properly recorded, paid up front, and visible to the people who need it.