Reporting and record keeping

CCS regulations state.

Approved providers must keep the following records:

  • the provider and service approval certificates issued by the state or territory where the service operates
  • the session reports (attendance reports) for every child provided with care
  • documents relating to a child at risk
  • copies of receipts given to individuals who have paid child care fees
  • records that establish the arrangement between the parent and provider for the delivery of child care services (the Complying Written Arrangement)
  • statements or documents related to absences and additional absences
  • policies and other documents related to insurance
  • accounting records, cash books and journals
  • Register of Specified Circumstances for Family Day Care (FDC) educators and a copy of the evidence that supports the inclusion in the official register.

All records must be retained for a minimum of seven years (starting at the end of the financial year in which the care, to which the information or event relates, was provided).

The Family Assistance Law requires that these records be retained even if the service closes or is sold.

Session reports

Accurate attendance records must be kept for each child. Session reports, including attendance information, must be submitted for each child, for each week, through the Child Care Subsidy System (through third party software or the Provider Entry Point). Session reports must be accurate and complete. If the Department of Human Services has concerns about the accuracy of session reports, it can stop processing payments until the information has been verified.

Note : this information is provided as a summary only. Childcare Providers are directly responsible for understanding the legislation and regulatory requirements to operate as a childcare provider.

SmartCentral Compliance with CCS regulations

SmartCentral is an approved software provider for the Child Care Subsidy and has passed all relevant tests for Centre Based Care, Outside School Hours Care and Family Day Care.

SmartCentral is a ‘Cloud’ solution and in compliance with CCS requirements all data is stored onshore in a government approved data centre.

Data stored by the centre in SmartCentral is retained for 7 years while an active account is maintained. If you intend to deactivate your account you should either make arrangements to extract and separately retain archive information or contact us to switch to an archive access account.

It is the centre’s responsibility to have its own policies and procedures in place to ensure only appropriate and trained people are granted access to their account and to ensure the data is entered and maintained accurately.

SmartCentral provides a range of features to assist centres to meet their record keeping and subsidy allocation obligations however it is the centre’s responsibility to decide which SmartCentral features they use.

  • Create, update and submit enrolment notices
  • Generation of Session reports from bookings
  • Email notifications to parents of changes to permanent bookings
  • Editing, submitting , varying or cancelling of session reports
  • Live running parent balances with fees , CCS payments and parent payments
  • Parent statements for print and/or email delivery
  • Reconciliation reports to identify any discrepancies for rectification
  • Document store for adhoc records
  • Online enrolment process with enrolment application capture and parent confirmation tracking
  • Payments process linked directly to CCS notified payments for accurate parent billing