Before setting up bookings or invoicing in Nursery Story, it’s important to ensure your Opening Hours and Attendance Calendar are correct. These two settings control:
When your nursery is open
How term time vs holidays are recognised
Where sessions can be placed on the calendar
How bookings flow into invoices
Go to:
Settings → My Nursery → Opening Hours / Attendance Calendar
1. Set Up Opening Hours
Your opening hours determine which days and times your nursery operates.
Edit your opening and closing times
Open the Opening Hours tab
Click any time box to change the start or end time
Adjust hours for each day of the week
Mark a day as closed
Click the X on any day to mark it closed
A message will warn you that all bookings for that day will be deleted
This is why opening hours should be set before adding bookings
Re-open a closed day
Click the closed day
Add an opening and closing time
Click Save
Once your opening hours are correct, move to your attendance calendar.
2. Set Up Your Attendance Calendar
Your attendance calendar tells the system:
Which dates are term time
Which dates are half-term holidays
Which dates are end-of-term breaks
When the academic year begins and ends
Go to the Attendance Calendar tab and click:
Add Academic Year
This opens a window where you can configure your calendar.
3. Add an Academic Year
Academic year name
Enter a name such as:
2025–2026
Date range
This updates automatically based on the term dates you add.
You do not need to edit this.
4. Create Your Terms
Most nurseries use three terms, but you can add as many or as few as needed.
For each term:
Add a term name
Add the start date
Add the end date
Add a half-term holiday (optional)
Must sit inside the term date range
Select the start and end dates for the break
Add an end-of-term holiday (optional)
The start date auto-fills (the day after the term ends)
You only select the end date
Add additional terms
Click Add new term and repeat until all terms are entered.
5. Review and Save Your Academic Year
After saving:
Left-hand panel shows:
Academic year name
All terms listed
Overall date range
Right-hand calendar shows:
Blue = Open days
Yellow = Half-term holidays
Light yellow = End-of-term holidays
Double-check this matches your local authority term dates before continuing.
Once your opening hours and attendance calendar are ready, you can move on to bookings and invoicing.
6. Set Up Sessions, Extras, Funding & Invoicing Layout
Go to:
Finance → Settings
Along the top, you’ll see five tabs:
Sessions – Your bookable session types
Extras – Meals, nappies, consumables, additional fees
Funding – Funding types and rates
Layout – Invoice layout and payment details
Controls – Price per item and financial preferences
Once these are configured, you can assign sessions and extras to each child in their contracted hours, and the system will automatically feed these into registers and invoicing.
You’re all set!
Your core Nursery Story setup is complete — your opening hours, term dates and holidays will now guide all bookings and invoices.