Posted: August 17, 2026
Imagine the relief of hearing professional development is paid in full! Or using leftover grant dollars for future staff learning instead of losing them. Banked course prepayments make both possible—saving budget and stress.
A person at a desk in a classroom holds a red credit card while navigating the BKC On Demand website on a laptop. A red arrow points to the "Course Prepayment" option under the user profile dropdown menu.
Prepayment Codes
Better Kid Care has a prepayment opportunity where program administrators (or anyone…you can buy a prepaid code for yourself if it is less hassle) can buy professional development in bulk with one credit card transaction.
In June, a record number of purchases were made using this prepayment option.
- 352 prepayment codes were purchased, representing a $57,210 investment in staff professional development.
- 188 of the codes were purchased by programs in Pennsylvania. 164 were non-Pennsylvania-based programs.
- 100% increase over June 2025 purchases.
Want to get in on the action?
Want to save your fiscal office lots of work by requesting fewer reimbursements? A minimum $15 value is required for a bulk purchase, and the amounts are sold in $5 increments. The code can be replenished if the account gets low. There is no expiration on the codes. If your staff/you don’t use up the banked course purchases this year, they remain in your account and are available for future learning. For details on bulk purchasing, visit the Better Kid Care course prepayment page.
The “owner” of the code can request a notification each time the code is used to pay for a course. This is an easy way to track staff professional development AND gives supervisors a timely prompt to ask a staff person about their learning experience and how they might support them in enhanced caregiving ideas. Follow these prepayment code setup instructions (PDF) to configure notifications.
Every Better Kid Care learner should know that our courses can be previewed for free as part of our education outreach commitment with Cooperative Extension. The cost is for those who need verification and documentation of professional learning. And all learners can return to and review the content of a course they’ve taken in the past. Maybe there was a video or a handout they’d like to use again. They can just jump into the course and access it at no charge.
If a program director would like to check out a course before recommending it to staff, feel free to sign in to On Demand and select the course from the alphabetized list of courses available in your state. Browse the content in the same way your staff would. Anyone going through the content the first time will be subject to activity and video timers which remind a learner to take their time soaking up the information and examples provided in the course.
If our team can be of help to you as you anticipate professional development needs this year, feel free to contact us at betterkidcare@psu.edu or 800-452-9108.
