The December 31 checklist for a licensed child care centre.

Before December 31

Nine things that cannot be fixed afterwards.

1. Compare spending to your program cost allocation. Underspending is recovered, and it shrinks the amount in lieu of profit or surplus with it, because that amount is recalculated from your actual costs. If there is room left, the question is what eligible cost the program genuinely needs — not what can be bought quickly.
2. Test anything unusual against the three principles. Attributable, appropriate, reasonable. A cost can be partly eligible, in which case the unreasonable portion is trimmed. If something is borderline, ask your service manager before you incur it, not after.
3. Get the quotes for non-arm's-length purchases first. Work done by a family member, a friend, or a related company is eligible only at or below fair market value, and in Peel at least two quotes must be obtained before the purchase. A quote gathered in March to justify a December invoice is not the same thing.
4. Check the wage enhancements were paid with each pay, all year. GOF, WEG, WCF and any wage stability amount must be paid at the same time as the base wage they enhance, on every cheque, including on overtime hours at the same hourly rate. One-time year-end payments of wage enhancements are not permitted, so a December catch-up does not cure a year of missed payments.
5. Confirm the floors held all year. $25.86 an hour for RECE program staff and $26.86 for RECE supervisors, the WEG ceiling at $33.81, benefits claimed within the 17.5% cap. Raises, promotions and new hires part-way through the year are where the stacking order usually slips.
6. Use the planning time and the professional learning money. Four paid hours a month for eligible program staff, and up to $500 a year per eligible full-time-equivalent for professional learning costs or paid learning time. Unspent, it is simply underspending.
7. Count the closure days. The 20-day maximum for paid planned closures is a service-level condition, not an accounting one — and going over it puts funding at risk rather than just creating a recovery.
8. Reconcile enrolment and base fee revenue to date. You want to know before year-end whether actual base fee revenue is running above the expected offset, and whether vacancy is running above the 5% the 2026 calculation assumes. A high-vacancy centre should be talking to its Early Years Specialist now, not in the spring.
9. Stop charging mandatory fees you meant to drop. Every mandatory fee is base fee revenue, and base fee revenue reduces your funding pound for pound. If you resolved to drop one, the change has to be made and communicated before the year ends to affect this year's offset.

The attestation

Someone signs for this.

After the year ends, the licensee submits an annual attestation, signed by an officer with signing authority — a director or equivalent — confirming that CWELCC funding was used for its intended purpose. That signature is the reason the year-end work matters: it is a representation about a year that has already happened, made by a named person, on figures that a third-party practitioner may later test.

It is also why "we will sort it out at reconciliation" is a poor plan. By the time the attestation is in front of a director, the wage enhancements were either paid with each cheque or they were not, the two quotes were either obtained before the purchase or they were not, and the closure days were either inside twenty or outside.