How to confirm your childcare enrolment in Centrelink.

Once you've registered for Child Care Subsidy with Services Australia, there's one final step before the subsidy starts being applied to your invoices. You need to confirm the childcare enrolment in Centrelink through your myGov account. Many families miss this step and pay the full daily fee for weeks before they realise.

What is the enrolment confirmation?

When you start your child at one of our centres, the centre creates an enrolment record with Services Australia. This record contains the details of who is paying, who is being cared for, the days, and the relevant arrangements. Services Australia then sends you a notification through myGov asking you to confirm the record.

Until you confirm the enrolment, no Child Care Subsidy can be paid against the placement, even if you're otherwise eligible. The full daily fee is what you'll see on your weekly invoice until confirmation.

How to confirm

1. Sign in to myGov and open your linked Centrelink account
2. Select the Confirm CCS Enrolment task if it appears on your homepage, or go to My family › Child care › Enrolments
3. Find your child’s enrolment. A new one shows as Pending Confirmation; select View details (the notice usually appears within a few days of your child starting)
4. Check the details against what you agreed with the centre: child, centre, fees and sessions
5. If everything is right, accept the declaration and submit. You’ll get a Receipt ID, and the enrolment status changes to Confirmed

If something doesn’t look right

If the details don’t match what you expect, don’t confirm. The screen lets you dispute the details, and Centrelink will ask what’s wrong. Then contact your centre director: we’ll submit a corrected enrolment, a fresh notice will appear in your account, and you confirm that one instead.

Why you should confirm in the first week

Services Australia is clear on this point: Child Care Subsidy can only be paid once you’ve confirmed your child’s enrolment details. Until then, no subsidy is applied and the full daily fee is what appears on your invoice. Once you confirm, Centrelink assesses the sessions of care your centre has already reported against your CCS entitlement.

Two timing rules make it risky to leave this sitting. A new CCS claim can only be backdated up to 28 days, so if your child has started care and you delay both the claim and the confirmation, you can permanently lose subsidy for those early weeks. And an enrolment ceases automatically if your child has not attended care for 14 weeks in a row, after which the subsidy stops until a new enrolment is set up. The simple habit: confirm the enrolment in your child’s first week, and keep your CCS claim up to date before they start.

What happens if you don’t confirm

You pay the full daily fee with no subsidy applied, for as long as the enrolment sits unconfirmed. There’s no automatic reminder from us, because the notice sits between you and Services Australia, but our directors will mention it during the first week of attendance.

The CCS Estimate

You should also see a CCS Estimate in your account, which shows the percentage you're entitled to and how many hours per fortnight you're approved for. From 5 January 2026, all CCS-eligible families get a baseline of at least 72 subsidised hours per fortnight (the 3-Day Guarantee), regardless of activity. If you want more than 72 hours, the activity test still applies. If the estimate doesn't match what you expected, check that your family income estimate is up to date and that your activity hours reflect your current work or study.