From Check-in to Check-out: Usage Billing, Demystified

Setting It Up

To start billing based on hourly usage, you’ll set three things:

• Hourly Rate – The base price you charge per hour (e.g. $10/hr).
• Billing Increment (Round-Up) – The time unit you bill in (e.g. 15, 30, or 60 minutes) If your increment is set to 1 minute, no rounding will occur.
• Grace Period – A small window of time where you don’t round up to the next billing increment.

Let’s say your hourly rate is $10, your billing increment is 30 minutes, and a student attends for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Homeroom will round that up to 1.5 hours, and the family will be charged $15.

What’s the Grace Period?

The grace period helps make billing a little more flexible. It defines how much “extra time” a student can attend without being bumped up to the next billing increment.

Let’s say your billing increment is 30 minutes. That means time is billed in 30-minute chunks (e.g. 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours, etc.). Now, add a 5-minute grace period—this allows for a little wiggle room before rounding up to the next chunk.

Here’s how that works:

• A student checked in from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM is billed for 1 hour.
• A student checked in from 4:00 PM to 5:05 PM is still within the grace period and is also billed for 1 hour.
• A student checked in from 4:00 PM to 5:06 PM exceeds the grace period and is rounded up to 1.5 hours.
• A student checked in from 4:00 PM to 4:05 PM (less than one increment) is not billed at all, since they stayed less than the full first increment and within the grace period.

Behind the Scenes: How Billing Is Calculated

Here’s what Homeroom does:

1. It calculates the total time between check-in and check-out.
2. If the remaining minutes after the last full increment are within the grace period, the system rounds down.
3. If those minutes are outside the grace period, it rounds up to the next increment.

Example:

• Hourly rate: $10/hr
• Increment: 30 minutes
• Grace period: 15 minutes

If a student attends for 1 hour 10 minutes → they're billed for 1 hour.

If a student attends for 1 hour 20 minutes → they're billed for 1.5 hours.

Overlap Policy: What Happens When Activities Overlap?

Homeroom also gives you control over how to handle overlapping activities—for example, when a student is enrolled in both aftercare and an enrichment class happening at the same time.

You can set your Overlap Policy to one of three options:

• Deduct Overlap – Time spent in another activity is subtracted from the billed time.
• Bill for Overlap – Time is billed as usual, regardless of other overlapping activities.
• Start Charge After Overlap – Billing begins only after the overlapping activity ends.

Example:

• Aftercare runs from 3:00–6:00 PM, billed hourly.
• Enrichment runs from 4:00–5:00 PM.

Here’s how billing would work depending on the overlap setting:

• Deduct Overlap: Billed from 3–4 and 5–6 → 2 hours billed
• Bill for Overlap: Full time billed from 3–6 → 3 hours billed
• Start Charge After Overlap: Only billed from 5–6 → 1 hour billed

This setting is helpful if you want to ensure families aren’t double-billed when their child is in multiple programs.

How to Maximize Revenue with Usage Billing

Homeroom gives you control over the key levers that affect billing:

• Hourly Rate – Raising your rate increases the base revenue per hour.
• Billing Increment – Larger increments mean more rounding up (and more revenue).
• Grace Period – A shorter grace period leads to more sessions being rounded up instead of down.

For example, billing in 30-minute increments with a 5-minute grace period will typically yield more revenue than billing in 15-minute increments with a 10-minute grace period—even if students are staying for the same amount of time.

So whether you’re focused on flexibility or revenue optimization, you can fine-tune Homeroom’s billing settings to suit your community’s needs.

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