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Earlier this year, we began communicating with parents whose children attend our childcare centres, about a shift in our payment process. We are always looking for ways to improve, work more efficiently, and utilize technology to better serve our community. In delivering services, we have a goal of identifying opportunities to be efficient in our operations, and implementing change accordingly; this change is a result of that goal.
The decision to shift away from our former invoicing and payment process was made to support families and staff in a way that offered simpler and more timely billing, collection, and reconciliation. The change in process will ensure that we are better able to manage the billing cycle and work with families to ensure that their accounts are kept up to date and payments are current, limiting financial risk. The scope and requirements of the new solution related to ease of use, accessibility, simplicity, accuracy, and leveraging technological solutions to best support these requirements, which included a shift to auto-pay from the former invoicing and payment process.
In this, privacy and security were and continue to be prime considerations. When researching a new solution, we paid close attention to data privacy and protection, and confirmed that our provider held high security standards, as did the payment processing company. Our hope was to implement a standardized system that is applied consistently for all families. In the end, Lillio was chosen because it offered the functionality that we were looking for, was already well established in its use by families and childcare staff, and offered the security features that we knew would be important.
With the auto-pay system, parents receive invoices on the first of the month for that month, and then the auto-pay for that amount is processed on the 16th. Parents have the choice of the auto-pay coming from a bank account or a credit card, similar to how you might pay for your hydro, insurance, gym memberships, or other services. To partially offset the fee charged to the Municipality for credit card processing, a fee of 2.4% is added to credit card payments so that the person using that service pays the fee, and it is not transferred to other parents or taxpayers.
We are thankful to the parents who have worked through this change with us over the past few months, and look forward to more seamless and efficient payment processing starting in the new year.
Questions can be directed to childcare@mississippimills.ca.
