Pricing and what you're billed for

ARC is billed per home, not per user. Staff accounts are unlimited on every plan. What varies is how many homes you have and how big each one is.

The bands

A home's price comes from the number of places it is registered for with Ofsted — its registered beds. Three bands cover every size:

Annual billing is ten months' money for twelve months of service, so a home paid annually works out cheaper than the same home paid monthly. When you choose the billing period during setup, annual is marked "2 months free".

There is no upper limit on the top band — a 12-bed home and an 8-bed home are both priced at the 7+ rate.

The Prepare plan

A home that is not registered with Ofsted yet can go on the Prepare plan instead: £29 per home per month, whatever its bed count. It leaves out the features that are about children, and lasts up to 12 months before the home moves to its band price. Prepare is monthly only, and discount codes do not apply to it. See The Prepare plan.

Each home is priced on its own

Homes in one company can sit in different bands, and your bill is the sum of them. The billing screen shows one line per home with its band beside it, then a Total per month (or Total per year) underneath. In the setup wizard each home shows its band and monthly price as soon as you enter its beds, with a running Your price total at the bottom of the screen.

If a home has no bed count recorded, its line reads Beds not set and the total shows as Unavailable rather than a number. ARC will not guess a band or quietly leave a home out of the total.

Two weeks free, then you pay up front

A new company's first two weeks are free, whatever discount it has. After that every period is paid at its start: the first month or year when the two weeks end, then each renewal. A company that cancels and comes back pays straight away. A monthly plan can be cancelled at any time and stops at the end of the month you have paid for. An annual plan can be cancelled too, but the full year is charged, nothing is refunded, and the service runs to the end of the year you have paid for. See Getting set up and paying and Set up your company with the setup wizard.

The interval is per company, not per home

Every home on your account bills on the same cycle, monthly or annual. You choose it when you first pay. That is a constraint of how the subscription is built, not a setting per home.

Discount codes

A code takes a percentage or a fixed amount off, either from your cheapest home or from the whole subscription, for a set number of months or just the first invoice. A £ amount comes off each invoice the code covers. On annual billing a code covers whole years only: "12 months" means the first annual invoice.

A company can use one code. If the home a code discounts is archived or suspended, the discount ends with it; it doesn't move to another home.

What changes the bill

Adding a home. On a paying account the new home is charged for the rest of the current period straight away, and goes live once that payment is through. Until then it shows as Awaiting payment in your homes list, with Retry payment if the charge didn't go through. You add one home at a time. See Add a home.

Changing a home's bed count, where it moves the home into a different band:

• Moving up a band adds the difference for the rest of the period to your next invoice.
• Moving down a band takes effect without a mid-cycle credit (ARC's standard setting).

Archived and non-active homes are not billed. Only homes with a status of active, and not archived, count towards the bill.

VAT

All prices are exclusive of VAT. Where VAT is chargeable, ARC adds it at the applicable rate. ARC is not VAT registered at the moment, so no VAT is added to invoices today.