Welcome to the first instalment in our comprehensive series of instructional videos designed to assist you in the completion of the 2024 financial accountability statement, for start strong for community preschools, mobile preschools funded program and start strong for long day care.

These videos have been meticulously crafted to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary for fulfilling your reporting obligations.

We recognise the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respects to elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, song lines, and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in New South Wales achieves their potential through education.

Throughout the series, you will access a diverse array of instructional resources, including:

• example templates – these templates will have helpful annotations to clarify each section's purpose.
• sample data entry – to illustrate the process, we'll provide examples of how to enter data correctly, ensuring accuracy and compliance with reporting standards
• frequently asked questions – where we will address common queries to help you navigate challenges you may encounter during the completion process.
• As well as direct links to information guides – which provide easy access to additional information and resources, allowing for deeper exploration of specific topics relevant to your financial accountability statement.

In this initial video, our focus will be on navigating to the relevant information pages on the Department of Education's website that will assist you in.

Accessing the early childhood contract management system and locating the financial accountability statement, for start strong for community preschools, mobile preschools funded program and start strong for long day care.

So, let's get started.

To begin, please navigate to the New South Wales Department of Education website. Either by searching via your web browser or by clicking on the links provided in this video. Once you have arrived at the website home page, look for the early childhood education drop down tab. This section encompasses a variety of resources tailored for early childhood education providers. Click on this tab and select service providers from the drop-down menu. After selecting service providers, scroll down the page until you find grants and funded programs. This section details the various funding opportunities available for early childhood services. Continue scrolling until you see start strong funding. This initiative is designed to support early childhood education services, providing crucial funding to enhance educational outcomes. Here, you will encounter options for both Start Strong for Community Preschools and Start Strong for Long Day Care. For this video, we will choose Start Strong for Community Preschools.

Now that we have arrived at the 2024 start strong for community preschools program guidelines page, let's explore some key navigation options available to you. At the top of the page, you will find a series of links that allow you to navigate back to previous pages. This feature is particularly useful for retracing your steps if you need to revisit any prior information.

On the left-hand side, there is a vertical menu titled on this page. This menu provides quick links to specific sections within the guidelines, allowing you to jump directly to the information you need without excessive scrolling. The main body of the page contains detailed information related to each topic as you progress downward. This section includes comprehensive guidelines and requirements pertinent to the financial accountability statement. This navigation system is consistent across all sections you will explore, ensuring a seamless experience. As you scroll down the page, you will discover all the necessary information to complete the 2024 financial accountability statement for both community preschools and mobile community preschools.

On the left of the page, you will notice two links. One leading to the 2024 Start Strong community preschools program guidelines and the other to the 2024 Start Strong community preschools FAQ section.

You will find that this page contains a wealth of information designed to assist service providers in completing the financial accountability statement. It is organised as a series of questions and answers, making it easy to navigate. By reviewing the questions and utilizing the drop-down arrows to access the answers, you will acquire the necessary knowledge to proceed to the Early Childhood Contract Management System and begin completing your financial accountability statement.

If you are preparing the statement for long day care, you will encounter a similarly structured layout with relevant information when you select this option from the grants and funded programs page.

If you followed the link to the Financial Accountability Return Guide, you will find that this page offers additional insights and clarifications regarding financial reporting requirements.

Firstly, the financial accountability statement section.

This includes direct links to, the Early Childhood Contract Management System, which is the primary platform for managing funding and contractual arrangements, the Financial Accountability – Information for Services page, offering additional guidance on completing your statements and the Early Childhood Contract Management System provider guide, which is a comprehensive resource for service providers that outlines procedures and expectations.

There is also a section on completing the financial accountability statement in the Early Childhood Contract Management System.

As you scroll down the Financial Accountability Return Guide page to section two, Start Strong for community preschools and mobile preschool funding programs, you'll find a link to the completed financial accountability sample. This sample serves as a practical reference to illustrate the expected format and content.

If you followed the link to the Early Childhood Contract Management System, this is the online platform utilised by the department to manage funding and contractual arrangements with early childhood education service providers.

This is where you will proceed to, when you are ready to begin completing your financial accountabilities for both preschool and long day care.

This page outlines the steps you need to take, and the information you must provide before accessing the early childhood contract management system.

Additionally, a link to a final series of questions and answers is available for you to review before you begin completing your financial accountability statement.

These refer to, getting started with the early childhood contract management system, instructions on how to create an account, and logging in, managing the early childhood contract management system users, guidance on how to add or remove users within your organisation, managing service provider details, information on how to update your service provider details in the system, tracking allocations and payments, tools to help you monitor your funding and financial transactions effectively.

By adhering to the outlined steps and utilising the provided resources, you will be well prepared to successfully complete the 2024 financial accountability statement.

In the forthcoming three-part video series for the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschool Funding Program, you will receive valuable insights on effectively completing the financial accountability statement.

Part one will focus on the completion of the fee relief payment section.

Part two will address the program payment section.

Part three will cover the DOE funding surplus overview and declaration section.

Additionally, a subsequent two-part video series will be available for the Start Strong for Long Day Care Funding Program, which will include part one - guidance on completing the fee relief payment section and part two - instructions for the program payment section.

Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to assisting you through this important process in the upcoming videos.

Yes, all financial accountability statements must be submitted via ECCMS.

If a service received funding within the period captured by the financial accountability, an email notification will be sent to the primary contact of each service provider from ECCMS. To review or update the contact details, please log in to ECCMS and select the Main Details tab under the Service Provider menu item. Providers are responsible for maintaining and updating their service's contact details within ECCMS.

Note: When a financial accountability statement is added in the Early Childhood Contract Management System (ECCMS), it has a status of Draft. After the statement is submitted, its status will change to Submitted.

Completing financial accountability statements is a requirement under the NSW Department of Education’s Grant Programs Terms and Conditions. Providers are required to accept and agree to the Terms and Conditions each year to receive funding.

1. Financial accountability statements can be accessed from the To Do list tab or in the ECCMS left-hand menu by clicking Funding Specification. (Note: Access via the ‘To Do List’ is only available for SP-Admin level access. For SP-User level access please access via the Funding Specification tab). Capital Works Financial accountabilities can be accessed directly from the bottom of the ECCMS left-hand menu.
2. Locate and click the Funding Specification that corresponds with the funding you have received.
3. Click the Accountability tab.
4. Locate the correct Financial Year, and then click the Financial hyperlink, which opens the financial accountability statement to be completed.

More information on how to complete the financial accountability statement can be found here in the Financial Accountability Return Guide.

To access ECCMS, you will need a myID and be linked to the provider in RAM. Step-by-step instructions on how to set this up are available on the ECCMS webpage.

Note: Troubleshooting RAM is provided by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Information about accessing and using ECCMS is available on the ECCMS webpage.

There are also ECCMS FAQs that are helpful when using the ECCMS system.

For enquiries about ECCMS login, please contact 1800 619 113 or email ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au.

More detailed information on using ECCMS can be found in the ECCMS Service Provider Guide (PDF 2.81 MB).

If you require further details on how to complete the financial accountability reporting requirements online via the Early Childhood Contract Management System, please see pages 63 to 66 of the ECCMS Service Provider Guide.

If a service received funding within the period captured by the financial accountability statement, your service will receive an automatic email to the main contact email address in ECCMS. Whichever program funding the email relates to will be noted in the subject heading of the email.

Services should log into ECCMS and navigate to the ‘To Do’ list in the left-hand menu. A list of all outstanding financial accountabilities will be listed.

Start Strong Capital Works financial accountability statements can be accessed directly from the bottom of the left side menu in ECCMS.

Note: A financial accountability statement will show ‘draft’ if it has not yet been submitted.

Click on the underlined Financial hyperlink to navigate to complete the financial accountability statement. When you have finished completing the information, scroll to the bottom of the financial accountability statement and select ‘Submit’.

If ECCMS displays an error message after you click ‘submit’, check the financial accountability statement to ensure all information has been entered into the required cells. It is not correct to enter 1c or $1 into cells to enable ECCMS to accept the financial accountability statement as ‘submitted’. Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for further information on ECCMS error messages.

No, service providers cannot transfer grant funding between services from different grant programs, unless specifically permitted in the program guidelines e.g. Start Strong for Community Preschools Fee Relief funds to Start Strong for Community Preschools Program Payment.

Hello, and thank you for watching. My name is Kathleen, and I am from the Department of Education Performance & Assurance team. This video is the first of three parts designed to assist you to complete your financial accountability statement for the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschools Funding Programs. This video is a follow on from the Introduction to Completing the 2024 Financial Accountability Statement video. The Introduction video will help you learn about financial accountability statements and the Early Childhood Contract Management (ECCMS) system. Now you have worked through the Introduction video and you have located and opened the Start Strong for Community Preschool or Mobile Preschool Funding Program financial accountability statement in ECCMS, you are now ready to start. In this video we will learn how to complete Part 1 – Fee Relief Payment section of the Start Strong for Community Preschool and Mobile Preschool Funding Program financial accountability statement in ECCMS.

So, Lets get started! The introduction video showed you how to find the Financial Accountability Return Guide and Financial Accountability – Information for Services web pages. Lets refer to these two web pages as the ‘return guide’ and the ‘info for services’ web pages during these videos. You can also find a link to the Return Guide and info for services web pages in the ECCMS automatically generated email sent to your primary contact. On your screen you can see an example of a completed 2024 financial accountability statement for the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschool funding program. We will be walking through the completed financial accountability example (PDF 550 KB) which you can download from the Return Guide at section 2 Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschools Funding Programs. You can follow along as we a go through these steps outlined in Section 2. There are links to the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschool Funding Program guidelines in the return guide at Section 2 - should you need to review before completing the financial accountability statement. The Example pdf has light bulb and post it note icons down the right side of the page. Hover over these icons for more information. It is important that Part 1 – Fee Relief Payment is completed before completing Part 2 – Program Payment.

Lets look at Part 1 – Fee Relief Payment – Income Section. Start Strong Fee Relief is a calendar year program. ECCMS will capture and pre-fill Fee Relief Payments made to services for the 2024 calendar year. Financial year reporting services who are completing their 2023-2024 financial accountability, will need to extract July to December, and January to June data from their fee relief software system to determine the values for the fee relief section. It is expected that fee relief declaration forms will be collected from families on a calendar year basis. Before proceeding you first need to determine and calculate any reserved fee relief amount. Reserved Fee Relief Funds are funds that were not allocated to an enrolment e.g. the service had fewer children enrolled than funding was provided from the department, or the service had enrolled children where families have claimed fee relief elsewhere. Services are required to reserve these fee relief funds until a new eligible enrolment claims fee relief at the service. Find out more about reserved fee relief by clicking on the link, or following the links to Start Strong for Community Preschools Fee Relief under section 2 in the return guide. The amount in this section is manually entered by the service, refer to the examples under the hover icon. Note: the calculation is a starting point for services that don’t use fee relief software. For services that do, you will be able to find this amount in your software extract. The reserved fee relief amount can be determined by calculating the difference between funding provided by the department, and the actual number of families accessing fee relief at your service. It's your service reserve. Reserved fee relief noted on the financial accountability statement must be returned to the department.

Let's look at reserve fee relief funds and how they have been calculated. We can see here the services noted $8,440 in reserve fee relief funds. If we go to our calculation example, these examples below assume full funding of $4,220 per child, but that may be different for your service. In example one, we can see the service was funded for 20 eligible children but only 18 accessed fee relief funds at the service. The remaining funding for two children, which is 2 multiplied by $4220, totalling $8,440, must be reserved. You can follow the calculation down the page to better understand. We see here a total adjusted income amount of $75,960 and that has been calculated by deducting $8,440 from $84,400.

Let's look now at Example 2. If the service was funded for 20 eligible children but 22 access to fee relief at the service, the funding for the additional two children, which is 2 multiplied by $4,220 totalling $8,440, should be entered as a negative figure on the financial accountability statement. This would demonstrate that the service passed on more fee relief than what they received from the department. The negative figure will be the difference between the amount paid by the department and the total fee relief passed on to families. This shows the department that a fee relief adjustment payment may be required. Let's Scroll down. We can see the total adjusted income of $84,400 has not been impacted by the negative figure. We can see here also that the service passed on a total of 92,840 to families, resulting in a deficit of 8440. If a negative figure has been entered at reserve fee relief funds, it is important to note the balance, surplus or deficit should be the same figure. This is because the service passed on $84,400 from the department as well as an additional $8440 from their own retained profits totalling $92,840. ECCMS will calculate the balanced surplus or deficit at this point.

Let's jump back to the Financial Accountability Statement. We can see in this example that service had a total adjusted income of $75,960. The total adjusted income is the amount of fee relief funds the service had available to use for the number of enrolments. This is the amount the service should show expenditure for in the Funding Used to Reduce Fees expenditure section below. The service will need to clearly show the breakdown of actual fee reduction and additional charges provided to families. Services are required to apply the fee relief funding and follow the hierarchy in the fee relief spending rules. Under the program guidelines, only record amounts where Fee Relief Payment has been used to cover the costs of what families would normally have been required to pay. This would be for enrolment fees, administration fees, resources or excursions if families actually paid the additional fees. That is enrolment gap fees, administration 4th or 5th day fees, resources or excursions if family actually paid these amounts. Don't record these amounts in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment. They must be recorded in Part 2 – Program Payment. After reducing eligible children's daily fees for up to 600 hours per year, any remaining funds must first be used to reduce the cost of additional charges to families accessing fee relief. It is not correct to apply these funding to Line 3AB or C before applying to Line 2. The amount entered in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment Expenditure Item C will automatically be deducted from Part 2 Programme Payment DOE Funds column Operating Expenses line item. This is because the service will be acquitting that amount already under Part 1, Fee Relief Payment Expenditure. We can see in this example that the service passed on and used the entire total adjusted income amount, leaving a fee relief balance of 0. Let's go to the next page. The additional information box here is a mandatory field and ECCMS will not allow you to submit the financial accountability statement without adding a note to the box. You can add a note on how the funds were spent. You can also add a note if the service had a difference in enrolment numbers than what was funded for by the department. For fee relief, don't forget to tick the 2 declaration boxes below. Now you have completed Part 1 – Fee Relief Payment, you are now ready to watch Part 2 – Program Payment to learn how to complete the next section of the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschool Funded Programme Financial Accountability Statement.

Thank you for watching.

Welcome back. This video is a follow on from learn how to complete part one Fee Relief Payment section of the Start Strong for Community Preschool and Mobile Preschool Funding Program Financial Accountability Statement. In this video, we will learn how to complete part two Program Payment section as we have in part one Fee Relief Payment. We will refer to the Financial Accountability Return Guide as the Return Guide and the Financial Accountability Information for Services as Info for Services web pages. You can see that we also have icons down the right hand side of the page that will give you information to help you complete the financial accountability statement line by line to complete part two Program Payment. You will need to use your financial statements from your accountable bookkeeper, particularly your profit and loss. Here is a handy tip – services that receive funding for multiple programs like Disability and Inclusion, Additional Targeted Equity Loading or the Health and Development Program, as well as the Start Strong for Community Preschools or Mobile Preschool Funding Programs, where these programs all have similar expenditure line items during 2024.

For things such as wages or resources, you may find it helpful to download the expenditure across all programs example Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will help you break up income and expenditure across all programs. You can download this spreadsheet from Section two Start Strong for Community Preschool's Mobile Preschool Funding program in the Return Guide. The example shows how all program funding income and expenditure should calculate back to the services profit and loss financial reports. It may be easier to complete the smaller grant programs first before completing part two of the Start Strong for Community Preschool and Mobile Preschool Funding financial accountability statement. Services can apportion the expenditure amount for wages, resources, et cetera relative to each funding grant. If we look at the spreadsheet, we can see there is an example profit and loss on this tab. These figures have been transferred into the relative columns on page one. We can see in this example, the accountant or bookkeeper has separated the income for all grants, rather than noting one lump sum for all DoE grant income on the financial statement. This makes it easier for you to understand the exact income from all DoE grant funding. You'll notice the fee relief amount is $75,960. You might remember from part one Fee Relief Payment, the service had two enrolments less for the full year, totaling a reserve fee amount of $8,440. Reserve fee relief funds should be noted on the liability accounts on your balance sheet. If we scroll down and look at the wages expenditure, we can see a total of $518,140 for wages. In the example, we can see the accountant or bookkeeper has listed salaries and wages separately for each grant income. The total salaries amount of $518,140 has been apportioned across all of these grants. Your accountant or bookkeeper can assist you to establish a costing structure to easily identify income and expenditure activity relating to each of your funding grants from the department. In some financial accounting systems, this is called a funding code or a project number for each grant. We can see from the expenditure across all programs tab, salaries and wages has been broken up into the relevant program column, totaling $518,140.

Amounts noted on the financial accountability statement should clearly agree with the figures reported in the services financial income and expenditure statements from your accountant or bookkeeper. There should be a clear breakdown of income and expenditure from all sources relative to the funding received. If you receive multiple funding grants from the department, for example, Start Strong for Community Preschool, Disability and Inclusion Program and Additional Targeted Equity Loading, remember the income and expenditure amounts shown on your financial income statements from your accountant or bookkeeper are a combination of all grants and other funding streams. Remember to extract the expenditure relative to that program before transferring the amounts to the financial accountability statement.

For more information on costing structures or how to apportion your expenditure across all programs, you can go to the Info for Services webpage where you can find frequently asked questions on this topic. Let's look closer at part two Program Payment. We can see the financial accountability statement has two columns, one for DoE funds noting it is excluding GST, and one for non-DoE funds, excluding GST. The DoE funding column is funding received from the department. The DoE fund surplus carried forward from the previous year, which was noted on the financial accountability statement at the bottom, and expenditure by line item, relating to the Start Strong for Community Preschool and Mobile Preschool Funding Program grant only. The non DoE funds includes funding received from other sources other than the Department of Education, early childhood grants and funded programs. It includes surplus carried forward from the prior year, entered manually by the service, as well as expenditure by item where services have used funds from other sources to cover costs. Let's jump back to the financial accountability statement. In the DoE funds column, the amount here at Program Payment is automatically prefilled by ECCMS based on the total of Program Payments made to the service during 2024. In 2024, it also may include payments for services that participated in the Digital Hub minimum viable product trial. No values are required for the grade areas. The surplus carried forward here in the DoE funds column is automatically prefilled based on the surplus noted on last year's financial accountability statement from the DoE funds column only. Let's look at non DoE funds. In the non-DoE funds column, only include funds received from sources other than the Department of Education. Don't include any other department grant funding amounts. Don't include Fee Relief Payments, Disability and Inclusion program payments, Additional Targeted Equity Loading payments, et cetera. These grants will be acquitted on their own financial accountability statement. At total fee income, enter income received from families paying to attend your service. This is not Fee Relief Payment. It is the fee amount families actually paid after applying fee relief funds. That is, it is the gap payment, if fee relief did not cover the total daily fee or it is the amount for third day fees or fourth day or fifth day, where fee relief did not cover these days.

Remember the handy hint we said in part one Fee Relief Payment. If services used Fee Relief Payment to cover the costs of attendance fees, administration, or excursion, then record that amount in part one Fee Relief Payment. If families actually paid additional fees such as attendance gap fees, administration, fourth or fifth day fees that were not covered by fee relief, then record this in part two Program Payment section under total fee income. Actual gap payments paid by families are recorded in the income section in part two Program Payment under total fee income. Something you can chat with your accountant. You can ask your accountant or bookkeeper to show Fee Relief Payment and gap or third or fourth or fifth day fee income separately on your financial statements. This will assist you when completing both parts of the financial accountability statement. Enter any income from fundraising and donations. For grant funding from other sources, remember, don't include any other Department of Education grant funding. Enter any grant income received from other sources not provided by the Department of Education Early Childhood funding. This may include funding from other NSW government departments, local councils, commonwealth funding and local community associations for things like land care projects, water tanks, playground equipment, et cetera. In sale of assets, enter profit or gain from the sale of an asset that was purchased with department funding. In other income, remember, also don't include any other Department of Education program funding. Enter other income as reported in the services financial income and expenditure statements that has not been acquitted elsewhere. This could be things like traineeship payments. These payments are from the Department of Education but from state training services not from NSW Department of Education Early Childhood Outcomes. It could also be payments like paid parental leave from the Australian Government. In the non DOE surplus carried forward from prior years, unlike the DOE funds column, surplus funds carried forward from prior years will need to be manually entered. The carry forward amount in the non DOE column is not the surplus noted on your financial statements from your accountant or bookkeeper. Please don't enter a deficit amount here. The surplus amounts noted on your financial accountability statement will most likely differ from the services financial income and expenditure statements from your accountant or bookkeeper, especially where the service has expenditure relative to multiple programs. We suggest you use the expenditure across all programs example spreadsheet to break up your income and expenditure from your financial income and expenditure statements from your accountant or bookkeeper. We can now see the totals for the DOE funds column and the non-DoE funds column. Now we are ready to move on to expenditure section below.

As per the income section above, please split and show expenditure between DoE funds and non DoE funds columns. The department encourages services to spend the entire department grant first and then use the other income you receive from other sources to cover further costs. You must enter values into each column. Get this information to spread across both columns from your financial statements from your accountant or bookkeeper. If you are not sure on how to break up your income and expenditure, please refer to the guidance notes in the Return Guide and Information for Services web pages. You can also use the expenditure across all program spreadsheet example to help you break up your expenditure between all program grants from the department. Let's go to the first expenditure line. Salaries and wages – where services had a similar expenditure line such as salaries and wages under multiple grants, like Disability and Inclusion, Start Strong Pathways or Additional Targeted Equity Loading programs, remember to first deduct the wages paid to staff or resources or operational expenses under these other grants from the line item on your services financial income and expenditure statement from your accountant, before transposing into the wages line items on the financial accountability statement. It is not correct to transpose the total wages line item amount on your financial statements to the financial accountability statement without extracting these other program amounts.

Service delivery staff enter expenditure for staff directly involved in service delivery. Administration and management staff enter expenditure for employees not directly involved with the service provision such as administration, management, accounting, or coordination. A note about traineeship and paid parental leave payments – if the service received traineeship payments or paid parental leave payments during the funding, these amounts should be noted in the income section above. You will need to record the corresponding expenditure also in the non-DoE column in either service delivery staff or administration and management staff. This is because these funds were received from other sources and not the NSW Department of Education early childhood funding grants. Traineeship wages paid using the Grow Your Own funding grant should not be recorded on the Start Strong for Community Preschools or Mobile Preschool Funding Program financial accountability statement. Record these wages, income and expenditure amounts on the Grow Your Own ECEC program financial accountability statement.

You may notice that there are two new expenditure line items under salaries on the financial accountability statement for 2024. Support capability uplift of early childhood teachers and educators through professional development and further study. Examples of this could be study leave, support staff to upgrade their qualifications from a certificate to a diploma or backfilling of staff undertaking professional development and further study. The next item is reduce non-fee related barriers that families face when accessing quality preschool. Examples of this could be transportation initiatives, food initiatives such as breakfast programs, clothing related such as hats, or assisting families to complete enrolment forms. Services may have previously included this expenditure under the operational costs. This expenditure should now be extracted from operational expenses and recorded in their relative line item above. Under operating costs record the day-to-day operational expenses not directly involved with service provision. Remember, don't include wages, resources, et cetera that has already been acquitted under another program financial accountability statement. For depreciation, this is a non-cash expense, which represents the decline in value of an asset over an asset's estimated useful life. This expense will be noted in your profit and loss. If the asset was purchased using department funding, Record that amount in the DE funds. If not, record that amount in the funds. Asset and capital acquisitions – record expenditure relating to the purchase of assets or capital acquisition. In the DoE funds column, only enter expenditure in this column if the asset or capital acquisition was purchased with DoE funds. If not purchased with department funding, enter this amount into the funds column. Loss on sale of assets – enter the loss incurred from the sale of an asset that was purchased with department funding in the DoE funds. If not purchased with DoE funds or department funding, enter this amount in the DoE funds column. Under other expenses, enter other expenses reported in the financial statements that have not been reported elsewhere. This could be financing expenses, compliance costs, legal and consultancy fees for mobile preschool operators. This could be for vehicle costs including usage and maintenance and leasing arrangements. In 2024, for services that received a payment under the Digital Hub minimum viable product trial, include any expenses relative to the participation in the trial under other expenses. These expenses should be entered into the DE funds if the entire payment was spent. We can see at the to the hash symbol less funds used for operating expenses from Fee Relief Payment above, the amount here has been noted as a negative figure. If we go back to part one, we can see the service noted an amount of $5,000 from surplus funds to use towards operating expenses. The amount is deducted from part two because it has already been acquitted under part one Fee Relief Payment. Here we can see in the total expenditure line, the service had $440,000 in DoE funds expenditure. The service also had $128,440 in non-DoE funds expenditure. ECCMS will calculate the difference between the total income in the DOE funds column and the total expenditure in the DoE funds column to give a total Program Payment balance surplus or deficit. The same calculation will happen in the non-DoE funds column. It is expected that services will expend the full amount of department grant funds noted in the DoE funds column. Spend this first then cover any expenses over and above the department funding amount from other sources of funding in the non DoE funds column. We can see in this example, the service had a surplus in the funds column of $10,000 with a surplus in the non-DoE funds column of $100.

Let's look at another example. If a service has used all department funding, the DoE funds column total surplus of balance at this section should be zero, showing all department grant funds have been spent. It is acceptable for the service to have a surplus fund in the non DoE funds column after all, grant funds have been expended.

Let's look at another example. There should not be a deficit noted in the DoE funds. If a surplus is noted in the non DoE funds column. Services would have used their non DoE funds to cover the deficit noted in the DoE funds. In this example, the services showing a deficit of $10,000 in DoE funds column and a surplus in the non-DoE funds column. The expenditure in one of the line items in the DoE funds colun should be adjusted down by the $10,000 and the expenditure added to the same line item in the non-DoE funds column to give a balance in both columns of zero.

Let's look at another example. A deficit in both DoE funds and non-DoE funds columns is also acceptable. In this example, the service has a deficit of $10,000 in the DoE funds column and a deficit of $100 in the non-DoE funds column. This means the service used all funding income as well as all of their non-DoE funds income for the period and were required to use their retained profits to meet the shortfall to keep operating. However, in this example, the service could decide to move the $10,000 deficit in the DoE funds to the non-DoE funds column. This will show a zero balance in the DoE funds column and a total deficit of $10,100 in the funds.

Let's jump back to our original example. Any Program Payment balance surplus will carry over to part three DoE funding surplus overview and declaration section. This is applicable to Start Strong for Community Preschools only. It doesn't apply to Mobile Preschool Funding Program, so this section will not be visible on the financial accountability statement for Mobile Preschool Funding Program. For Star Strong for Community Preschool Program, we will learn more about this section In the next video.

In the additional information box, add any additional notes on how the funds were spent. At a note if fee relief surplus funds were used towards your program operational expenses. Ensure you have ticked the declaration boxes under Part one Fee Relief Payment. Check all figures entered on your financial accountability statement are correct. Check for any typos.

Upload the required financial attachments at the bottom of the financial accountability statement. These attachments are different for tier one and tier two services. Mobile Preschool Funding Program services will complete the financial accountability statement at this point. Tick the declaration acknowledgement box once you have read the acknowledgement. Finally click the submit button at the bottom of your screen to submit the financial accountability statement.

For Start Strong for Community Preschools, now you have completed part two Program Payment. You are now ready to watch the next video, part three DoE funding surplus overview and declaration section to learn how to complete the next section on your financial accountability statement.

Thank you for watching.

Welcome back. This is the third part of a three-part series of videos on how to complete your 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschools program financial accountability statement. In this video, we will learn how to complete part 3 DOE funding surplus overview and declaration section. This section is applicable to Start Strong for Community Preschools only and is not relevant to the Mobile Preschool funding program. We have already learned how to complete part one Fee Relief Payment section. Then we learned how to complete part two Program Payment section. Now let's look closer at part 3D OE funding surplus overview and declaration section. Before starting, it is recommended that service providers read information on surplus and refunds in the Start Strong for Community Preschools program guidelines for 2024. A surplus amount will be noted on the financial accountability statement. In the blue highlighted row, we can see an amount of $10,000 has been noted next to total surplus. This is a carryover of the surplus from part two.

Just to note, deficit amounts from part two will not carry over to part three. The robe beneath is a calculated percentage of what that surplus amount is compared to the funding paid under the 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschools Program Payment. it should be noted in 2024, the percentages calculated on the annual Program Payment funding only. In 2023, that percentage was calculated on the overall star for community preschools program. That was the Fee Relief Payment plus the Program Payment. If this section of the financial accountability statement does not display a surplus or a percentage, this means the service did not have an overall program surplus leave options A and B unchecked. Let's scroll down now and have a look at the surplus thresholds and options for providers.

In Option A. Services can choose to retain surplus funds below 10% or $30,000, whichever is higher of the Start Strong for Community Preschools annual Program Payment funding or choose to return the funding to the department for option B. Services can choose to retain surpluses up to and greater than 10% or $30,000, whichever is higher of the Start Strong for Community Preschool's annual Program Payment funding for option B, where the service has an operational need to retain the surpluses, the service will be required to make application to retain the surplus funds by completing a separate surplus application form and checking the confirmation box at option B. On the financial accountability, the service can also decide to return the surplus amount that is greater than 10% or $30,000 or choose to return all surpluses to the department. The financial accountability guide provides a few scenarios where services can choose to retain surplus program funding.

Hams will automatically convert the 10% calculation into a percentage in the part 3D RE funding surplus overview and declaration, so you don't need to do the calculation yourself. If you hover over the green icon, you can see these two scenarios. Again, if you would like to see how it calculates, we can look at the two scenarios below. In scenario one, the service received $450,000 In total Program Payment income, the surplus amount in the DRE expenditure is $10,000. The service will calculate the 10% of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools Program Payment that is 450,000 times 10% equals $45,000. ECMs will calculate the surplus amount into a percentage. For example, $10,000 divided by $450,000 times 100 equals 2.2% as the surplus of 2.2% and $10,000 is up to 10% or $30,000 of the annual Program Payment funding. The service can select the first option, a box to carry over the surplus to next year, or they can select the second option, a box to return the surplus funds to the department. Let's look at scenario two.

In this scenario, the service received $450,000 in total Program Payment income. The surplus amount in the DoE column expenditure is $49,000. The service will calculate the 10% of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools Program Payment that is $450,000 times 10% equals $45,000. Kins will calculate the surplus amount into a percentage that is $49,000 divided by $450,000 times 100 equals 10.88% as 10.88% is greater than 10% of the annual Program Payment funding. The service can choose to keep the $45,000, which is up to 10% of the Program Payment funding, and then decide to keep the additional $4,000, which is the surplus amount above the $45,000, higher than 10% or $30,000. The service will firstly be required to complete the surplus application form to apply to the department to carry over the funds by also selecting the second box at option B. The service can also carry over the additional $4,000, which is the amount above the 45,000, which is higher than 10% or $30,000. This would mean that both the first box and the second box would be selected in option B if the service chooses to carry over the entire $49,000, which is both up to and over the 10% of the Total Start Strong Program Payment amount.

If the service decides they don't require to carry over the surplus funding and would like to return both up to 10% and over 10% back to the department. This can be done by selecting the third box at option B. Remember to complete the surplus application form to apply to the department to carry over the funds. There is a link to the surplus application form in section 2.3 0.1 in the financial accountability return guide, or you can click on this section here. Further information on surplus thresholds and options for providers can be found. That section 5.6 financial accountability, sun funding compliances in the 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschool program guidelines.

In the additional information box, you can add any notes on how the funds were spent. You can also add a note if any fee relief surplus funds were used towards your program operational expenses. Now you have completed part 3D OE funding surplus overview and declaration section. You are now ready to attach your financial statements and submit the financial accountability, but before you do ensure you have ticked the declaration boxes under Part one Fee Relief Payment and also check. All figures entered in your financial accountability statement are correct. Check if you've made any typos in the financial attach section. Upload the required financial attachments at the bottom of the financial accountability statement. These attachments will be different for tier one and tier two services. Financial statements must be at the service level, not the hierarchy level. If your service is part of a large provider, hams will only accept PDF documents up to 20 megabytes in size. You can break up your attachments and scan and upload them separately if they are too large, or you can scan and upload all documents together in the first attachment. Don't upload and combine files multiple times. For information on the required documents to attach under the section, please refer to the Financial Reporting Requirements section in the Financial Accountability Return guide. Further down, you can tick the declaration acknowledgement box. Once you have read the acknowledgement, finally click the submit button at the bottom of your screen to submit your financial accountability statement.

ECCMS will confirm with an on-screen message. Once you have submitted, you are then able to download a PDF copy of the submitted financial accountability statement for your records. So what do you do? If you think you have made a mistake in the data entry or you have forgotten to include a particular financial attachment, or you may have forgotten to include some information, you can email us at ECE audit funding@detdonw.edu au. Our team will assist you to send the financial accountability statement back to your to-do list in hams for you to make the updates and then resubmit. After the submission deadline, the department will review accountabilities and contact you should we need to ask you any questions. Congratulations. You have now completed all three parts of the Financial Accountability Statement for the Start Strong for Community Preschools and Mobile Preschool Funding Programs. Should you require any further assistance, please contact us at ECEaudit.funding@det.nw.edu au.

Thank you for watching.

Reserved Fee Relief Funds are funds not allocated to an enrolment due to:

• the service had fewer children enrolled than funding was provided for
• enrolled children claimed fee relief elsewhere
• families did not sign a declaration form.

Services are required to reserve (set aside) these fee relief funds. The funds can only be used if a new eligible enrolment claims fee relief at the service.

The amount in this section is manually entered by the service. More information can be found on Understanding reserved and surplus fee relief funds for Community Preschools and Section 4.2. Fee Relief Payment spending rules in the 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschools program guidelines.

Before proceeding you first need to determine and calculate any reserved fee relief amount.

The reserved fee relief amount can be determined by calculating the difference between funding provided by the department, and the actual number of families accessing fee relief at the service for the reporting period.

Note: This is a starting point for services that don't use fee relief software. For services that do, you will be able to find this amount in your software extract.

The example below assumes full funding of $4,220 per child which is based on the projected annual hours of enrolment.

Note: Financial year reporting services will need to consider the rate increases for the 2025 fee relief funding amount for the full 600 hours to $4,347 per child.

Example 1

If your service was funded for 20 eligible children but only 18 accessed fee relief, funds for the remaining 2 children (2 x $4,220 = $8,440) would have been reserved.

Note: Only enter the reserved fee relief amount, where funds were not allocated to an enrolment because the service had fewer children enrolled than funding was provided for, or for enrolled children where families have claimed fee relief elsewhere.

The process of identifying and managing reserved fee relief funds will occur through the annual financial accountability process. Under the 2024 program guidelines services that reported reserved fee relief funds in their financial accountability statement, these funds were to be offset against a future fee relief payment. However, under the 2025 program guidelines services will now be required to return reserved fee relief funds to the department. The department will review financial accountabilities and may request repayment of reserved fee relief funds.

Before proceeding you first need to determine and calculate any reserved fee relief amount.

The examples below assume full funding of $4,220 per child.

Note: Financial year reporting services will need to consider the rate increases for the 2025 fee relief funding amount for the full 600 hours to $4,347 per child.

Example 2

If the service was funded for 20 eligible children but 22 accessed fee relief, funds for the extra 2 children (2 x -$4,220 = -$8,440) should be entered as a negative figure to demonstrate the service passed on more fee relief than what was received. This negative figure will be the difference between the amount paid by the department and the total fee relief passed on to families.

This indicates to the department that the service had a fee relief **deficit (shortfall) for the reporting period.

**The department uses fee relief data submission data to calculate any fee relief adjustment payment as this is the most accurate and up to date information. Fee relief data submission should agree with the financial accountability statement.

Note: This negative figure does not impact the Total adjusted Income calculation.

Services should cover the cost of additional families claiming fee relief from their retained profits. The preschool funding team is available to provide support, advice, or answer any questions relating to the Start Strong Program.

All services can access support by contacting the funding team on 1800 619 113 or ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au.

Providers funded under 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschools program or Mobile Preschool Funded Program were invited to submit a fee relief top up data submission for their service via SmartyGrants to address a 2024 fee relief accrued deficit (shortfall) because of providing fee relief for more enrolments than the service was initially funded for in 2024.

The 2024 fee relief top up data submission process was open from 24 February 2025 to 7 March 2025. The timeframe to submit fee relief data is closed. See more information at 4.3 Fee Relief spending rules in the 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschool guidelines and at 4.2 Fee Relief spending rules in the 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschools guidelines.

Note:

• 2024 Top Up Payment - If the service has already received a top up payment in 2024 for a 2024 fee relief shortfall, the top up amount has been included in the 2024 total payment on the 2024 financial accountability statement. Expenditure relating to the 2024 fee relief top up payment should be included in the 2024 financial accountability statement.
• 2023 Adjustment Payment – If the service received an adjustment payment in 2024 for a 2023 fee relief shortfall, the 2023 fee relief adjustment amount has not been included in the 2024 financial accountability statement. Services should not include the expenditure relating to the 2023 fee relief adjustment payment in the 2024 financial accountability statement.

Additional information

Add a note if the service had a difference in enrolment numbers than what was funded by the department for Fee Relief Payment.

No, only record amounts where Fee Relief Payment has been used to cover costs in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment. Services should only record amounts where fee relief funds were actually used to cover the costs of what families would have normally been required to pay.

If families actually paid additional fees such as enrolment/administration, resources, excursions etc, do not record that amount in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment.

Actual ‘gap’ and 3^rd day fees paid by families are recorded in the INCOME section in Part 2 Program Payment.

Simple Rule: If families actually paid ‘gap’ fees, include these fees in Part 2 Program Payment section. If the fee relief funding was used to cover fees, and families did not pay, include these fees in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment section. Do not include initial daily fee amount prior to applying fee relief funds. Only record fee relief passed on.

No, services must apply the funding in the order noted in Fee Relief Payment Spending Rules in the 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschool program guidelines and 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschool program guidelines. That is, if there is any surplus after applying the funding to level 1 ‘reduce the daily fees as much as possible for 600 hours per year for eligible children accessing fee relief at the service’, you must firstly apply any surplus to level 2 ‘reduce the cost of additional charges to families accessing fee relief at the service’.

If there is any surplus after applying against level 2, then any surplus funds can be applied against one or all the options a, b. or c. at level 3. which includes reducing the operating expense of the service per the Program Payment spending rules.

Note: The amount entered in Expenditure item 3. c. # will be automatically deducted from the operating expenses noted in Part 2 Program Payment.

For more information, see the 2024 Start Strong for Community Preschool FAQs and 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschool FAQs.

Services participating in the Digital Hub Pilot Trial during 2024 will have this payment included in the total program payment amount in Part 2 Program Payment on the financial accountability statement.

Expenditure relating to the Digital Hub Pilot Trial should be included in Expenditure line item ‘Other expenses’ in Part 2 Program Payment.

Yes, financial reporting requirements depend on whether the service provider is classified as a Tier 1 or Tier 2 organisation under NSW Fair Trading guidelines. Services registered with ACNC will still need to attach the required documents relative to Tier 1 or Tier 2 organisations under the NSW Fair Trading guidelines when completing their financial accountability statement.

More information can be found under Financial Reporting Requirements of the Financial Accountability Return Guide, and on the NSW Fair Trading website.

Yes, surplus funds noted in the Non-DoE column on the previous year's Start Strong for Community Preschools/Mobile Preschool financial accountability statement should be manually entered on the current year financial accountability statement. Please do not enter a deficit amount.

Note: The surplus amounts noted on the financial accountability statement may differ from the service’s audited/non-audited financial income and expenditure statements.

No, where services receive multiple funding grants from the department e.g. Fee Relief Payment, Start Strong for Community Preschools/Mobile Preschool funding, Disability and Inclusion funding, Attendance and Enrolment Technology Grant, Additional Targeted Equity Loading, Health and Development Program funding etc, the income and expenditure amounts shown on the service’s audited/non-audited financial income and expenditure statements from their accountant/bookkeeper may be combined (including funding received from non-department sources).

Remember to extract the income and expenditure relative to each program, e.g. Disability and Inclusion Program funding, Additional Targeted Equity Loading Attendance and Enrolment Technology Grant, Health and Development Program funding when completing the financial accountability statement.

Note: It is not correct to transpose the total line-item amount from the service’s audited/non-audited financial income and expenditure statements unless Start Strong for Community Preschools, Mobile Preschool Contracts or Mobile Preschool Funding Program grant funding is the only grant income the service received from the department.

If you received funding for the Disability and Inclusion Program, Additional Targeted Equity Loading, Health and Development Program etc, remember to first deduct wages paid to staff using these other grants, from the total wages line-item on the service’s audited/non-audited financial income and expenditure statements from their accountant/bookkeeper.

Services that received funding for multiple programs with the same/similar expenditure line items e.g. wages, resources, during the 2024 and 2024–25 reporting periods may find it helpful to download Expenditure Across all Programs Example (XSL 27 KB) to break up income and expenditure across all programs if not already presented on service financial statements.

It may be easier to complete the smaller grant programs first before completing the Start Strong for Community Preschool Part 1 and 2 sections. Services can apportion the expenditure amount relative to that funding grant.

The financial accountability statement now has 2 new expenditure line items in Part 2.

The 2024 and 2024–25 Financial Accountability has 2 new staffing expenditure line items:

From 2024 to assist the department with evaluating the program, services are now asked to provide a breakdown of expenditure for the two categories below:

1. Support capability uplift of early childhood teachers and educators through professional development and further study
   Services may previously have included expenditure relating to the support capability uplift of early childhood teachers and educators through professional development and further study as part of their staff training expenditure under the operational expenditure line item. This expenditure can now be extracted from the operational expenditure line item and included at this new expenditure line item.
   Examples of this expenditure could be:
   1. study leave
   2. support staff to upgrade their qualifications from a certificate to a diploma
   3. backfilling of staff undertaking professional development and further study.
2. Reduce non-fee related barriers that families face when accessing quality preschool
   This expenditure may have previously been captured under the service’s operational expenditure line item. This expenditure can now be extracted from the operational expenditure line item and included at this new expenditure line item.
   Examples of this type of expenditure could be:
   1. transportation initiatives
   2. food initiatives such as a breakfast program
   3. clothing related (hats)
   4. assist families to complete enrolment forms.

If the service received traineeship grants (through Training Services NSW) or paid parental leave payments (through the Commonwealth Government), or previously JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments (relating to previous funding periods) the wages expenditure of these amounts should be noted against wages expenditure line items for service delivery staff or administration and management staff in the ‘Non-DoE Funds’ column. This is because these funds were received from other sources, and not the NSW Department of Education Early Childhood funding grants

If the service received funding under the Grow Your Own (ECEC) program, any wages paid for trainees using Grow Your Own funding should not be recorded on the Start Strong for Community Preschools/Mobile Preschool Funding Program financial accountability statement. Record these wages amounts on the Grow Your Own (ECEC) program financial accountability statement.

The Start Strong for Community Preschools/Mobile Preschool Funding Program Fee Relief Payment and Program Payment are part of a single accountability.

In Part 1 Fee Relief Payment Section, only include the fee relief passed on to families, or where administration costs were paid for using the fee relief payment. Do not include any other expenditure here.

In Part 2 Program Payment, do not include Start Strong for Community Preschools Fee Relief funding, Start Strong Free Preschool, Disability and Inclusion, Quality and Participation or any other department Early Childhood Outcomes grant funding in either income or expenditure under this section. These grants will be acquitted on their own financial accountability statement.

See notes at the bottom of Part 1 Fee Relief Payment on the accountability template.

#Less funds used for operating expenses from Fee Relief payments.

Note: The amount entered in Part 1 Fee Relief Payment Expenditure item iii) # reduce the service’s operating expenses per the Program Payment spending rules will be automatically deducted from the DoE Funds column operating expenses. This is because the service will be acquitting that amount already under Part 1 Fee Relief Payment expenditure.

Services should enter values into each column in Part 2 Program Payment section on the Start Strong for Community Preschools financial accountability statement.

For some expenditure categories where splitting is difficult (such as 'Salaries and Wages'), a revenue % apportion basis can be used as a guide e.g. if the total income for 'DoE Funds' is $60,000 and 'Non-DoE Funds' is $40,000 totalling to $100,000 then 60% of expenditure can be apportioned to the 'DoE Funds' column and 40% to the 'Non-DoE Funds' column.

If the NSW Department of Education is the major funder e.g. if total income for 'DoE Funds' is $90,000 and 'Non-DoE Funds' is $10,000 totalling to $100,000, then expenditure should be shown first in the 'DoE Funds' column bringing the balance to $0, and remaining expenditure shown under the 'Non-DoE Funds' column.

Service providers should contact their accountant/bookkeeper to request the breakdown of each grant program for the income and expenditure sections in their financial statements.

The service provider’s accountant/bookkeeper can assist you to establish a costing structure to easily identify income and expenditure activity relating to each of the funding grants from the department. In some financial accounting systems this is called a ‘funding code’ or a ‘project number’ for each grant. Each funding code can have a break down by account code for each income and expenditure transaction.

Once each grant has an identified funding code, you will be able to attribute expenditure, e.g. delivery staff wages, across one or more fund codes or project numbers. If you have a staff member who works 2 days per week under the Disability and Inclusion Program, and 3 days per week under the Start Strong Program, then part of their wage can be expensed against the Start Strong program payment funding, and part against the Disability and Inclusion Program funding.

An income and expenditure report can be printed by funding code or project number, which can assist services to easily complete the financial accountability statements.

The total income and expenditure from all funding codes or project numbers together should tally to the total income and expenditure on the service’s audited/non audited financial statements from the accountant/bookkeeper.

An Asset Register showing Early Childhood Outcomes and non-Early Childhood Outcomes funded assets must be submitted if any depreciation, capital expenditure or sale of assets has been reported in the accountability statement.

It is expected that services will utilise the full DoE funds first, then cover any expenses over and above the DoE grant funding from other sources of funding (Non-DoE Funds) and any retained profits.

If a service has used all department funding, the DoE Funds column total at this section should be $0.00 showing all DoE grant funds have been expended.

Note: There should not be a deficit noted in the DoE Funds column if a surplus is noted in the Non-DoE Funds column. Services would have utilised Non-DoE Funds to cover the deficit noted in the DoE Funds column.

It is acceptable for the service to have surplus funds in the Non-DoE column after all DoE grant funds have been expended (showing $0.00 balance).

A deficit in both DoE Funds and Non-DoE Funds columns is acceptable if a service used all DoE Funds income as well as their Non-DoE Funds income and were required to use any retained profits to meet the shortfall and keep operating.

From 2025, services funded under the Mobile Preschool Funding program may also choose to retain surplus program funding. Previously, this option was only relevant to Start Strong for Community Preschool program. For Mobile Preschool Funding program financial year reporting services, this will begin from 2025–26 financial year.

Before choosing to retain any surplus up to or greater than 10% of the annual program funding, service providers should read information on Surplus and Refunds in Section 6.6 of the 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschool guidelines and Section 6.5 of the 2025 Mobile Preschool Funding program guidelines.

In the 2024 and 2024–25 Start Strong for Community Preschools program guidelines the surplus threshold is based on the total program payment balance after completing Part 2 Program Payment expenditure on the financial accountability statement.

The threshold is based on the program payment balance divided by the total program payment. For more information see Surplus Thresholds and Options for Providers at Section 6.6 Financial accountabilities and funding compliances in the 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschools guidelines and Section 6.5 Financial accountabilities and funding compliance in the 2025 Mobile Preschool Funding program guidelines. Visit Start Strong for Community Preschools to access the program guidelines.

If this section does not display a surplus, you don’t need to do anything further. You did not have an overall program surplus.

The department understands that some providers may have a surplus at the end of their reporting period which needs to be returned to the department according to the Terms and Conditions.

After completing the financial accountability statement, services can calculate their surplus threshold and choose how they would like to manage their surplus (if any) from the relative Option A or B.

A service can then apply to retain surplus funding (where applicable) under the total Start Strong for Community Preschools program. See the instructions noted in Section 2.3.1 of the Financial Accountability Return Guide.

The service will firstly need to calculate 10% of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools program payment.

See the examples below:

1. The service will calculate the 10% of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools program payment e.g. $380,000 x 10% = $38,000.
2. ECCMS will calculate the surplus amount into a percentage e.g. $27,000 ÷ $380,000 x 100 = 7.1%,

If the surplus is up to 10% or $30,000 (whichever is greater) of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools program payment, the service should select Option A.

If the surplus threshold is greater than 10% or $30,000 (whichever is greater) of the annual Start Strong for Community Preschools program payment, the service should select Option B.

Service can choose to keep the amount below 10% of program funding or $30,000 (whichever is greater).

As $27,000 is less than $38,000 (10% of the annual program funding), the service can opt to keep the surplus to carry over to the next funding period.

Service can choose to keep $38,000 (up to 10% of program funding).

Additionally, where the service has an operational need to retain the surplus, they can apply to the department to keep the surplus amount which is greater than 10% or $30,000 (whichever is higher).

The service is first required to complete the Surplus Application Form and then select the confirmation box (the top box at Option B) on the financial accountability statement.

When completing the Surplus Application Form the service can choose to keep the additional $4,000 which is the amount above the $38,000 (higher than 10% or $30,000).

No, DoE surplus funds cannot be transferred to other service providers, between services or across funded programs, unless it is permitted specifically in the program guidelines.

This year under the Start Strong for Community Preschools program/Mobile Preschool Funding program, services can choose to reduce their operating expenses relating to their program payment by ‘transferring’ any final surplus funds under Part 1 Fee Relief Payment to Part 2 Program Payment section. This is performed automatically by ECCMS when the amount to ‘transfer’ is entered into the cell in item iii) # reduce service’s operating expenses in the Fee Relief Payment expenditure table.

1. Did you receive funding from any other source other than the department? e.g. grants from other NSW or Commonwealth government departments or local councils? If so, you must display this in the in the ‘Non-DoE’ column income section.
2. If you have entered any amount into the ‘Non-DoE’ column income section on the financial accountability statement, you will need to show a corresponding expenditure amount in the ‘Non-DoE’ column expenditure section. ECCMS will see income has been recorded in the ‘Non-DoE’ column and will require you to enter an expenditure amount in the ‘Non-DoE’ expenditure section showing how some/all of this funding was spent e.g. Paid Parental Leave income received from the Commonwealth Government should be recorded in the ‘Other Income’ line item in the ‘Non-DoE’ column in Part 2: Program Payment. The corresponding expenditure will then be recorded in either of the ‘Salaries and wages’ line items in the ‘Non-DoE’ expenditure section.
3. It is not correct to enter $1 or 1c in the ‘Non-DoE’ column expenditure section line items to enable ECCMS to accept the submitted financial accountability statement. Services are required to record expenditure in both DOE and Non-DOE columns.

These charges often arise when there is a central administration or head office cost centre that supports multiple units within an organisation. It is acceptable for service providers to allocate a reasonable portion of overhead costs to Early Childhood Outcomes funded programs. This however must be performed on a consistent basis and as part of an appropriate costing methodology or refer to question above “I do not have an exact breakdown of the DoE portion and the non-DoE portion of my yearly expenditure. How much should I apportion to the DoE expenditure column?” to use a similar approach.

No, if a service has incurred a deficit in prior years in the financial accountability statement, this deficit cannot be carried forward and should be absorbed by the service provider.

Hello, and thank you for watching.

This video is going to provide a step-by-step guide on how to complete your 2024 Financial Accountability Statement for the Start Strong for Long Day Care program. This video will specifically focus on Parts 1 A and 1 B of the accountability document relating to the four-year-old plus and three-year-old Fee Relief Payments. You will find a separate video on this page relating to Parts 2 A and 2 B of the document, and that relates to the four-year-old plus and three-year-old Program Payments.

When you do open your financial accountability statement, it will look a little bit like what you see on my screen now. You will notice that I'm completing a PDF document. So, obviously, it will be a little bit different, but all the wording and all the boxes are the exact same, so you can follow along with me. When you first open it, you'll see the funding program name, the year, and your service details all there at the front. You know what you're working on straight away.

Let's begin with Part 1 A, which is for the 2024 four-year-old plus Fee Relief Payment. The first line in the income table, labelled 2024 four-year-old plus Fee Relief Payment will always be prefilled with the amount of income that was received under this payment category for the four-year-old fee relief in the 2024 year. Now, just a quick note that all amounts in the financial accountability are excluding GST as it outlines in all the tables, and as such all the expenditure needs to be entered by the service excluding GST.

Okay, the next box we want to focus on is the Reserve Funds box just under that income figure, and the purpose of the Reserve Funds box is to determine whether there were any differences between the funding received and the estimated enrolments for 2024 and the actual number of families that enrolled to access fee relief through that year. There is a very handy light bulb icon that you'll see around the bottom of that box on your screen. If you hover over that or click on it, it'll provide a couple of different scenarios, the two most common scenarios in which you'll enter a figure into that box and how to calculate that.

I am going to go through those scenarios now, just with the figures that we have on our screen here so we can put it into practice. So, if at any point you're unsure around how many children you were funded for, your service was funded for in 2024, for example, what does this $52,750 mean? What does the income figure equate to in the number of children or consent forms that were provided to give this funding? So, it's important to know what that is. If you're unsure and you can't quite recall what was funded for in this year, we can work this out very quickly ourselves. So, as outlined in the example in that hover over in the light bulb icon, we know that each child or each family is funded for a total of $2,110 per year. So, what we can do is we can divide the $52,750, or whatever income figure that you see on your form, we divide that by the $2,110 that each child receives. That gives us a total of 25, which means that this service particularly, XYZ childcare centre, was funded for 25 children in 2024.

Now that we have an idea on what this service was funded for, let's explore some scenarios with what the reserved funds is going to look like. First, I'll explore a scenario where this service, provider XYZ childcare centre, they did not have all the enrolments that were estimated – they had less enrolments than what was estimated for 2024.

So, of the 25 enrolments that we've just determined that this childcare centre was funded for, they only actually had 22 families access fee relief in 2024. What that means is that there were three placements, basically three lots of funding, that were provided to the childcare centre that weren't required. Those families never came along and never consented to access fee relief. So, as we know, for each child that receives $2,110, we then need to multiply those three placements by the $2,110. That's it. That's the simple calculation we need to do. We want to work out the difference in enrolments that were received and work out what those funds were. The reason being is that these funds weren't required by this service. These three children never came along. Of an estimated amount of number of enrolments, they had less. So, we put this figure of $6,330 into the reserve funds box. They become reserve funds. They must be reserved from any other expenditure, and they need to be returned to the department because they weren't required. There weren't any children that came to take up those placements. So, as you can see, the total adjusted income just below that adjusted, the $6,330, is deducted from the $52,007.50. The reason being is that we immediately know that it needs to be returned to the department. We don't need it to be included in this section down here when we tell the department how it was spent. So, we take it off straight away, and we know that we are left with a total of $46,420 to work with.

Now that's just one instance of entering a figure into the reserve funds box. Let's explore the scenario where XYZ childcare centre did not have 25 children or families access fee relief in 2024. They had more, so they had 27. There were two additional families that came throughout the year and consented, signed consent forms to access fee relief. What that means is that we'll delete this figure out of here, everything goes back to normal, and what it means is that this service likely passed on more funding than what was provided because families came in and accessed it. We want to run a very similar calculation. We'll bring the calculator back up, and we want to work out what the difference of those two children equates to. So, we know that each family has access to $2,110 throughout the year. We multiply that by two once again and we have $4,220. Simple calculation just tells us exactly the enrolments and lots of $2,110 that aren't required or that were required in addition to the funding that was provided. Now what we would like to do in this situation is enter that figure as a negative. We don't want to enter it as a positive like we did in the previous scenario. It's not a surplus and that we don't want it to be deducted and returned to the department. What we're saying here is we immediately calculated that we were out of pocket. We could see that we should have received funds for more children than what we did, and we put that figure in there. Now having considered whether we need to enter something in the reserve funds box, we will move forward.

Keep in mind that if you did experience or have the exact number of enrolments accessing fee relief in 2024, you may not need to enter something here, but it is important to consider before moving forward.

Moving down to the expenditure table for the funding used to reduce fees. What we're trying to find out in this first box here, box number one, what was the amount of four YO + fee relief payments? So, for that age group, what was the fee relief payment applied or allocated to families' daily fees or gap fees? So, of this $52,750, how much was used to relieve families' daily fees? In this scenario, we've noted that this service experienced more enrolments accessing fee relief than what they were funded for. Now, we can assume that when this service goes to their childcare software, it's going to spit out a figure that might be higher than that $52.07 50.

Let's say that XYZ childcare centre went to their childcare software, and it indicated they had allocated, let's say, $56.09 70 to cover daily fees, for their fee relief funding. So, as you can see, the balance then changes at the bottom. It calculates and deducts the 56 from the 52, leaving a deficit of $4,220. Now that obviously exactly matches that reserve figure. What we would expect is that we would have a figure that would somewhat match that, and that looks good. Essentially, we've said this is what we would expect to be out of pocket due to the additional enrolments that we saw in 2024, and this was the actual figure that we pulled from our software to kind of show that, yes, that's exactly what happened. So here we've got a deficit balance. We've reached zero. We've surpassed it. We have passed on more funding than what we were provided. We don't have any balance left over to focus on in the second box here, items 2, 3, and 4. You could move forward if this is what your financial accountability looks like and focus on the next sections of the form.

I do want to just explore one final scenario where we don't have this deficit here. We do have a positive balance. So, we'll delete this out, and I also just want to go back to the example I provided before where we had a positive Reserve balance. So, $6,330 - we'll put that back in there. What that meant was that XYZ childcare centre, had three fewer families come and access fee relief in 2024. So that is deducted from $52,007.50. Our total adjusted income is $46,420. That balance shows at the bottom of the expenditure table, and we have that to allocate out. XYZ childcare centre went into their software this time, and they saw that they actually allocated $40,000 to families in fee relief throughout the whole year. Nice round number for us to work with, and that left us with a balance of $6,420. That means you can then allocate these funds to items 2, 3, and 4 in the second box of the expenditure table. Review section 4.3 of the Start Strong for Long Day Care program guidelines for some handy examples on what they look like. You're able to allocate that out at your discretion so long as you have considered item 2 first, and then you can focus on 3 and 4 as you need. But once we've got a figure in here, we want all the funds to be expended. We want you to be able to utilise those funds. If you did not expend all the funds in this area and you simply did not have that number of additional charges and fees to cover for families, after considering all your families, that's okay. You may have a surplus there, and that can also be provided back to the department. But what we've got here in this scenario is this service was able to allocate the remaining $6,000, to help families out even further. Again, we've reached a $0 balance, which is great. We've allocated all funding out, and we have nothing left to spend. This all looks very clean and great.

So, scroll down slightly, and you will see an additional information box. This is a great area to provide information on what enrolments help determine the Reserve Funds or any other factors, and obviously how any other funds were allocated. How else did your service support families and their fees? They are mandatory sections, so you will need to complete that box before you move forward. That's a great section to give us some extra information.

Now we've completed Part 1 A, we can move down to Part 1 B.

Part 1 B is again for a fee relief payment, but it's for the three-year-old age group. This was the trial fee relief payment that came in for this age group in 2024.

It is a new section in the accountabilities for 2024. As you can see, it looks very similar. We still have a Reserve Funds box. We still have the same expenditure table with the same spending rules. So once again, have a look at section 4.3 of the Start Strong for Long Day Care 2024 program guidelines. Have that available while you're going through it. It's always very handy. So, the only difference that you're going see throughout is not only the age group that we're allowed to allocate the funds to, but the amount of funding and the amount of funding that is allocated to three-year-old children per year.

So have a look at the little light bulb once again. If you click on that, you'll see a couple of examples that break it down in a written manner for you.

And, very similarly to above, what you want to do is have a look back at how many children you were funded for. If you need to, do a quick calculation of the $6,000 divided by the $500 per child. That's 12 children that this service was funded for.

If they had more children come along and access fee relief, let's say that they had 15 families of three-year-olds consent to fee relief. That's three children in addition that this service has likely passed funding onto, or has passed funding onto, which we want to complete a similar calculation of the 3 times $500. Now again, that's a negative. They had more families come in and access fee relief, so we want to express that as a negative figure. They've had three lots of $500, which they weren't funded for, and they likely have passed on to those families. Again, that doesn't adjust the income. And if vice versa, the service had, less children come in excess fee relief, they may have only had 10, we can multiply $500 by two, because that's the difference between the 12 that they were funded for. So, in that scenario we would put $1,000 in as a positive figure. It would adjust down to $5,000. It would deduct from the six, and we are left with the total adjusted income here. So, it's the same scenario.

We're just working with different funding amounts. So, keeping this here, let's scroll down, and we have our balance of $5,000 to work with. This $1,000 we know is going to be returned to the department. We go into our childcare software to find out how much fee relief trial payment for the three-year-old age group was allocated as a weekly reduction to the family's gap fees or session fees or their daily fees.

XYZ childcare centre had a look at theirs and they allocated $4,800. They were a little bit closer to the mark here, with the amount of funding and the amount of funding provided to the families.

So once again, they've reviewed the spending rules. They've had a look at how they have helped families in other ways such as enrolment fees or administration fees. Levies or families not accessing fee relief at their service. They've got all the relevant consent forms that they need for these as well, and they were able to allocate the additional $200 to help in that area. Again, that brings us to a $0 balance. That all looks perfectly complete. We could expect that that would show a deficit, or we could expect it would show a surplus.

So long as you're happy with the way that you have allocated the funds and that they do follow the guidelines, that's fine. You're ready to move forward and complete the additional information box. Here you will Include any information on how you came to these calculations and any information on how these funds may have been allocated out. Very helpful.

One final thing before we sign off on the video is the Fee Relief Declaration. So, you do need to tick these before moving forward, and that is your legal declaration that, signed declaration and consent forms were received from parents and that fee relief payment has been passed on to families in accordance with section 4.3 of the Start Strong for Long Day Care program guidelines. So, they must be ticked before moving forward. There must be some info in the additional info box and you're ready to move on to the last two sections of the form.

Now that you've completed Parts 1 A and 1 B of the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care Financial Accountability, you're ready to move on to Parts 2 A and 2 B. These areas focus on the 2024 Program Payments for both the three-year-old and four-year-old plus age groups.

You will find a second video on this page that will provide another step-by-step guide on these areas just as this video did.

Thanks for watching.

Hello, and welcome to our second video helping to guide you through the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care Financial Accountability Statement. This video will specifically focus on Parts 2 A and 2 B of the document relating to the four-year-old plus and the three-year-old program payments respectively. In case you missed it, there is a video on this web page that will outline Parts 1 A and 1 B of the financial accountability statement. These areas relate to the four-year-old plus and three-year-old fee relief respectively.

After completing the first two sections of the financial accountability statement, you'll scroll down the page, and you'll see Part Two relating to the 2024 Program Payment for the four-year-old and above age group. The income table as above will be prefilled with the income received under this payment category for this age group in 2024. You'll also notice the links surrounding these tables that you can click on to bring up the Program Payment spending rules and the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care program guidelines. This appendix two relating to the spending rules is also an important section of the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care program guidelines that will give you a little bit more information around the spending rules for this payment category in this program.

So, we know our income figure to work with, and hopefully, we've got all our resources in front of us and open so we can follow along with them for any additional information we might need while we complete this section. So, we scroll down to the expenditure table where we see several boxes that relate to the specific spending rules that will help us in outlining how this income figure was spent. Now you can see that same income figure reflecting at the bottom of the expenditure table as the Program Payment balance.

Prior to focusing on the first line item under the expenditure table, we do suggest focusing on some of the other line items first. We know that the income figure here can be eaten up quite quickly by the salary and wages, but it's important for the department, and can be much more beneficial to see where the funding was allocated in some of these other areas, such as developing the program and purchasing the functional educational resources. So XYZ childcare centre in this scenario, has revisited their expenditure for the 2024 calendar year period. They can see that of the $23,379.00 that they were paid, they allocated $500 to wellbeing support for their early childhood teachers and early childhood educators. They also allocated $800 to the uplift of the capability or qualifications for these teachers through further study. They spent $9,000 developing the quality early childhood education program based on the Early Years Learning Framework. Now that's linked directly in the financial accountability statement for your ease so you can view it while you are completing the document.

They also spent $11,000 on the purchase of functional or educational resources required to provide the program to the four-year-old and above age group. Now as it clearly outlines there, that excludes larger capital works projects like renovations and building work. After completing all these sections here, noting they did not have any expenses in two of the areas, they had $2,079 left over, and they were able to allocate the remainder of those funds to assist with their staffing costs. Having allocated all the funds available to this service to the expenditure table, we have a $0 balance. We can move forward.

Scrolling down, as is the case in every section on this form, there is an additional information box so you can outline any surplus funds in this area or further comments on how these funds were allocated. This is a mandatory area, and it's a great place for you to provide any detail about the expenditure listed above. Now that we've completed Part 2 A of the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care financial accountability, we can move down to Part 2 B.

Now this is the final section in the Start Strong for Long Day Care accountability document. And as you can see, it relates to the 2024 Program Trial Payment for the three-year-old age group. Looking at the expenditure table, you will notice that it is very similar to the table that we've just completed above in Part 2 A.

The primary difference in this section is the amount of funding received per child and subsequently the amount of funding, that we are acquitting in this area. Just as we've done in Part 2 A above, we want to scroll down to the expenditure table. We can see our balance here is the income figure that we received in the 2024 calendar year, and we want that to reflect as a $0 balance once we are finished with allocating that out to the expenditure line items in the table above.

In this scenario, XYZ childcare centre reflected on their expenditure for the 2024 calendar year period, and they could see that they spent $300 in advertising to attract or retain childhood teachers and educators. They spent $1,200 in developing the early childhood education program. They spent $1000 in purchasing resources for the three-year-old early childhood education program, and they were able to allocate the remaining $965 to salary and wages for the early childhood teachers and educators delivering that program.

Having completed the expenditure table under Part 2 B for the three-year-old trial Program Payment, scroll down and you'll see another additional information box, another mandatory field for you to provide some information on any surplus funds or how funds were spent as you've detailed above.

You've now completed Parts Two a and Two B of the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care Program Financial Accountability.

Thank you for watching.

Reserved Fee Relief Funds are funds that were not allocated to an enrolment e.g. the service had fewer children enrolled than funding was provided for, if the service had enrolments ineligible for fee relief or the service had enrolled children where families have claimed fee relief elsewhere.

Where a child leaves the service, funding for that enrolment is also considered Reserved Fee Relief funds until the next eligible child that takes up that enrolment.

Services are required to retain reserved fee relief funds until a new eligible enrolment claims fee relief at the service. The amount in this section is manually entered by the service.

Before proceeding you first need to determine and calculate any unexpended (reserved) fee relief amount.

The reserved fee relief amount can be determined by calculating the difference between funding provided by the department, and the actual number of families accessing fee relief at the service.

Note: This is a starting point for services that don't use fee relief software. For services that do, you will be able to find this amount in your software extract.

The two examples below are calculated where the service has less or more enrolments than what funding was provided for a flat rate of $2,110 per child for 4YO Fee Relief payment.

Note: 3YO Fee Relief Trial payment can be calculated in the same manner with a flat rate of $500 per child. Enter the 3YO Fee Relief Trial payment calculation into Part 1B 3YO Fee Relief Trail Payment on the financial accountability statement.

Example 1:

If the service was funded for 20 eligible children but only 18 accessed fee relief, funds for the remaining 2 children (2 x $2,110 = $4,220) would have been reserved.

Note: Only enter the reserved fee relief amount, where funds were not allocated to an enrolment because the service had fewer children enrolled than funding was provided for, or where the service had enrolments ineligible for fee relief, or for enrolled children where families have claimed fee relief elsewhere.

This amount is not the unspent funds from Fee Relief payments after applying fee relief as a weekly deduction to reduce session or gap fees, additional charges, or operating expenses, and should not be included in the ‘Funding Used to Reduce Fees/Expenditure’ section below. This reserved fee relief amount must be shown separately as noted above.

Nothing else needs to be done with this amount on the financial accountability statement. This shows the department the amount of reserved fee relief funding being held. The amount will be reviewed and returned to the department.

Before proceeding you first need to determine and calculate any reserved fee relief amount passed on from the service’s retained profits.

The examples below assume full funding of $2,110 per child.

Example 2:

If the service was funded for 20 eligible children but 22 accessed fee relief, the funds for the extra 2 children (2 x -$2,110 = -$4,220) should be entered as a negative figure to demonstrate the service passed on more fee relief than what the service was funded for. This negative figure will be the difference between the amount paid by the department and the total fee relief passed on to families.

This indicates to the department that a fee relief adjustment payment may be required.

Services should cover the cost of additional families claiming fee relief from their retained profits. The long day care funding team is available to provide support, advice, or answer any questions relating to the Start Strong Program.

All services can access support by contacting the funding team on 1800 619 113 or ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au.

Services may be eligible for a **Fee Relief Adjustment Payment to address a fee relief related deficit accrued because of providing fee relief to more enrolments than the service was initially funded.

**The department uses fee relief data submission data to calculate any fee relief adjustment payment as this is the most accurate and up to date information.

The 2024 fee relief data submission process was open from 31 January 2025 to 31 March 2025. Providers funded under 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care were invited to submit a single voluntary submission covering 12 months, from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024. Outcomes and eligible payments were communicated to providers from 31 March 2025.

The timeframe to submit fee relief data is closed. If your service requires a 2024 fee relief funding top up, please email the department at ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au

Refer to Appendix 1.1 ‘Fee Relief Funding Adjustments’ section in the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care program guidelines.

The service will need to clearly show the breakdown of how this funding was used to reduce session or gap fees, additional charges, or operating expenses by entering a breakdown in the 'Funding Used to Reduce Fees/Expenditure’ section below.

Notes:

• 2024 Fee Relief Adjustment Payment - If the service has already received an adjustment payment in 2024 for a 2024 fee relief shortfall, the adjustment amount has been included in the 2024 total fee relief payment on the 2024 financial accountability statement. Expenditure relating to the 2024 fee relief adjustment payment should be included in the 2024 financial accountability statement.
• 2023 4YO+ Fee Relief Adjustment Payment – Services that received a 2023 4YO+ Fee Relief Adjustment payment in 2024 for a 2023 fee relief shortfall, should complete the 2023 Fee Relief Adjustment payment section within the 2024 financial accountability.
• The 2023 4YO+ Fee Relief Adjustment Payment has not been included in the 2024 total fee relief payment on the 2024 financial accountability statement. Services should only include the expenditure relating to the 2023 fee relief adjustment payment in the 2023 fee relief adjustment payment section on the 2024 financial accountability statement.

Please contact the Early Childhood Outcomes Long Day Care Program team on 1800 619 113 or ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au should you require further information on the 2023 4YO+ Fee Relief Adjustment payment on the 2024 financial accountability statement.

No, this option is not available under the 2024 Start Strong for Long Day Care guidelines. Services will be required to return any surplus fee relief, as well as any reserved fee relief funds to the department.

Services must apply the funding in the order noted below, and in Section 4.3 4YO Fee Relief Payment and 3YO Fee Relief Trial Payment spending rules:

1. Firstly, as a weekly reduction to a family’s gap fees across the total service operating weeks for the calendar year, then, if there are remaining funds after applying the funding to level 1 above, funds must then be applied to level 2.
2. The Approved Provider must then spend the funds to cover any additional charges imposed on the eligible children, such as levies.
3. Remaining funds may then be used to reduce the fees for eligible children not accessing fee relief at the service, e.g. children of families with greatest need; or ‘to cover any additional charges imposed on the eligible children, such as levies.
4. Remaining funds may be used to further reduce the fees for children already accessing fee relief at the service, or to reduce fees for children whose families did not nominate the service on the declaration and consent form (a declaration form must be obtained for these children).

There is now only one cell to capture the expenditure for Levels 2 to 4 above. These amounts should be calculated together and entered in the one cell on the 2024 financial accountability statement.

Surplus (unspent) Fee Relief funding is to be returned to the department.

Any Reserved Fee Relief funding will be reviewed and returned to the department. For more information, see the 2024 Start Strong Long Day Care FAQs.

No, it is not correct to show the total wages line item from the financial statements from your accountant/bookkeeper against the salary and wages line item in Part 2A or Part 2B on the financial accountability statement.

Only show expenditure to acquit the grant amount paid from the department, for example, the service received $20,000 in program payment. Only acquit a total of $20,000 for all line items in the expenditure section in Part 2A or Part 2B on the financial accountability statement.

Inclusive Environments Program funding was previously called Minor Capital Works funding under the Disability and Inclusion Program. The new Inclusive Environments funding program has two components: Child Based funding and Service Based funding.

Inclusive Environments payment amount noted on the financial accountability statement is a combined total of payments for both Child Based Funding and Service Based Funding. See Section 2 Funding of the 2025 Inclusive Environments Funding Program Guidelines.

Services that received both components of Inclusive Environments Program funding should combine like expenditure items into the same line item on the financial accountability statement, e.g. Minor construction or specialised equipment/furniture.

Note: this funding is separate to the High Learning Support Needs funding and Start Strong Fee Relief funding.

Services should only include the portion of expenditure relating this funding program where funding was used to cover *Start Strong Fee Relief, salaries and wages, resources or operational expenses noted in the program spending rules, e.g. If funding was used towards staff salaries and wages as per the ATEL spending rules, only record the amount relative to ATEL funding. The other portion(s) of salaries and wages would be recorded against Disability and Inclusion Program or Start Strong for Community Preschool Program Payment.

* Where ATEL is used to reduce fees, it can only be applied after all Start Strong Fee Relief funds have been exhausted.

Services should only include the portion of expenditure relating this funding program where funding was used towards the purchase of multiple items included in the program spending rules.

If other program funding was used towards the purchase of multiple items, services should only include the portion of the expenditure relative to the AETG program, with the other portion of expenditure recorded against the respective program’s financial accountability statement e.g. Disability and Inclusion Program, Additional Targeted Equity Loading, Health and Development Program or Start Strong for Community Preschool Program Payment.

Services should only include the portion of expenditure relating this funding program where funding was used to cover salaries and wages, staff training or resources expenses etc. noted in the program spending rules, e.g. If funding was used towards staff salaries and wages as per the HDPG spending rules, only record the portion relative to HDPG funding. Other expenditure relating to these line items should be reflected in the respective programs’ financial accountability statement, e.g. Start Strong for Community Preschools, Disability and Inclusion Program.

It is not correct to record greater expenditure for salaries and wages than funding received for HDPG when the service had funding from other programs to cover salaries and wages.

Services should only include the portion(s) of expenditure relating to the Formative Assessment in the Year Before School funding program where funding was used to cover salaries and wages as noted in the program spending rules, e.g. The other portion(s) of salaries and wages etc would be recorded against the respective programs’ financial accountability statements, e.g. Disability and Inclusion Program, Attendance and Enrolment Technology Grant, Health and Development Program or Start Strong for Community Preschool Program Payment.

Note: It is not correct to record greater expenditure for salaries and wages than funding received for Formative Assessment Project when the service had funding from other programs to cover salaries and wages.