Childcare is already one of the largest line items in a family’s budget. The software you use to collect tuition shouldn’t quietly add to that line. Tuition settles directly to your school’s own Stripe account, on Stripe’s standard payout cycle. Parents pay by card or bank transfer. Clear Day never marks up the processing rate; whatever Stripe charges your account is the cost. No monthly minimums, no markup stacked on a failed payment.
Your money lands in your own account.
Tuition runs on Stripe and settles to your school’s own connected account. Clear Day never holds or routes the money, and never marks up the processing rate Stripe charges you.
Card or bank, no surprise add-on.
Parents pay by card or bank transfer on the same screen, and see the dollar cost of each before they confirm it.
No monthly minimum, and no NSF markup.
There’s no volume tier, no monthly minimum, and no platform surcharge stacked on top of the bank’s NSF fee when a payment fails. The cost is the cost.
Connect your bank account once for a low-cost transfer, or use a card for the points or the float. Same payment screen, same flow.
Autopay is yours to control. Turn it on so tuition just happens. Turn it off whenever. If a payment fails, Stripe retries it automatically over the following days instead of letting it silently roll into next month.
Childcare billing is already complicated enough. Subsidy programs, sibling discounts, mid-month enrollment, late fees. Clear Day builds each one right into the system, instead of making you work around it.
When a payment fails, you and the parent both find out, and Stripe keeps retrying it rather than letting it disappear. Refunds and chargebacks live in your own Stripe dashboard, where you have the full record beside the original charge.
Clear Day uses Stripe Connect, so tuition is charged directly into your school’s own connected account and settles on Stripe’s standard payout cycle: typically two business days in the US. Clear Day never holds, routes, or sweeps the money. We never touch it. (If a payment dispute ever leaves a negative balance, that’s on Clear Day, not your school. It’s the standard protection built into a Stripe Connect setup like ours.)
Other childcare platforms run their own payment processor, insert themselves into every transaction, and decide at their own discretion whether to credit your subscription fees. You could be quoted one rate at signup and charged a different one a quarter later. We don’t want to run our business that way.
Mandatory autopay that locks the saved card
Autopay is opt-in for the parent. Always. They can turn it off any time. They can remove the card on file any time.
Failed-payment rollover that doubles next month
When a charge fails, Stripe retries it automatically over the following days and the parent and school are notified. We don’t let a missed charge silently snowball into a stealth double-charge.
Pocketing platform fees on a payment that was reversed
Refunds are issued from the school’s Stripe dashboard, next to the original charge. Clear Day adds no markup to any transaction, so there’s no platform fee left behind on a refund. The only cost is whatever Stripe’s own policy keeps.
Billing questions that route to a phone tree
If a parent wants to dispute a charge, they raise it with their school, who can refund it straight from their Stripe dashboard. The person who makes it right is your director, not a vendor call center.
Card-deposit carve-outs that surprise the parent
If a school sets a fee policy, that policy applies to every channel. No hidden “check deposits always pass fees regardless” clauses.
Hidden monthly minimums on the school side
We don’t charge a school a minimum monthly processing volume. If a center has one parent paying $50 a month, that’s the cost.
Promotional pricing that auto-expires at 12 months without notice
Other childcare-software contracts let the vendor raise your price after your first 12 months, with no advance notice. Procare’s terms (§8.4) allow exactly this. With Clear Day, the price on this page is the price you pay. If we ever raise it, you’ll hear about it well before your renewal, not after.
Acceleration on early termination
Some childcare platforms promise “no contracts” in the marketing and still make the full remaining term due the moment you cancel early. Clear Day has no acceleration clause. Cancel and you stop paying.
Capitalized “PURCHASE IS FINAL” refund waivers
Some childcare-software contracts ban refunds outright, in capital letters, and only let you out if you cancel a full 30 days before renewal. Clear Day works the opposite way: refunds in your first 90 days, no questions asked, and cancel anytime in two taps from inside the app.
Implementation and training fees layered on top of subscription
Other childcare software often charges implementation and training as separate line items on top of your subscription. We don’t. Migration is free, and training during your 14-day trial is a few short walk-throughs, plus a real human if you want one.
Vendor-owned payments with sole-discretion fee credits
Some vendors run their own payment processor and reserve the right to credit your subscription fees at their “sole discretion.” That means you could be quoted one rate at signup and charged a different one after a quarter. Clear Day uses Stripe and never marks anything up. Whatever Stripe charges your account is exactly what you pay, no discretion involved.
Support that refuses to talk to parents
Real Clear Day humans answer parent emails. A billing or login problem gets a real answer from us. We don’t bounce families back to the school to sort it out on their own.
The 14-day trial seeds Clear Day with your families and your tuition rates so you can walk through what payment day actually looks like, both as the school and as a parent.
Billing questions? Email [email protected]. A person answers.