
Once you have purchased service vouchers, you can contact a service voucher company like Daenens to call upon the help of one of our household heroes for specific household tasks, such as cleaning, ironing, cooking and shopping.
For over 20 years now, service vouchers are a convenient and accessible way to receive additional household help in Belgium. Service vouchers facilitate outsourcing household chores, from cleaning the house to running small errands. This blog details how service vouchers work, lists the benefits and explains what the system looks like today.
In Belgium, ‘titres-services’ or ‘dienstencheques’ are a payment method that allows individuals to pay for the services of a household help. As the vouchers are subsidised by the government, users only pay part of the actual cost, making domestic help more affordable.
Service vouchers enable to pay for the performance of various household tasks, including:
Cleaning private homes
Washing and ironing clothes
Preparing meals
Running small errands
Service vouchers exist in a paper and a digital version. However, from 1 June 2025, only the electronic version will remain available. In the preceding months, paper service vouchers users will receive detailed information about this transition.
Electronic vouchers are better for the environment and offer other advantages too:
They are immediately available after purchase.
They are more user-friendly for you, your household help and service voucher company.
There is a zero risk of theft or loss.
Switching from paper service vouchers to electronic ones?
Easily change your preference at any time through your secure zone or via the app.
The service voucher system originated from the need to reduce undeclared work in the household sector, to create jobs and to make household help affordable. The system was officially launched by the Belgian government in 2004 as part of a broad socio-economic reform programme.
The system’s popularity grew rapidly, mostly due to its ease of use and the tax benefit it provided users. The system effectively led to a significant drop in undeclared household work and it improved the social protection of domestic workers. In addition, the service voucher system contributes tremendously to the quality of life of many households and families. Today, hundreds of thousands of families in Belgium use service vouchers.
Once you have purchased service vouchers, you can contact a service voucher company like Daenens to call upon the help of one of our household heroes for specific household tasks, such as cleaning, ironing, cooking and shopping.
To pay your household help by means of service vouchers, you first need to buy service vouchers via Pluxee, the officially appointed system manager. Once you have ordered and paid for a number of vouchers, the electronic service vouchers will be added to your account or, until 30 June 2025, you will receive the paper service vouchers by post. Each service voucher corresponds to one hour of domestic work by a registered household help.
Flemish Region
In the Flemish Region, you pay €10 per voucher for the first 400 vouchers purchased in a calendar year. Then, the price increases to €11 for vouchers 401 to 500.
👉 For a family of two, this means you can buy 800 vouchers at €10 and 200 vouchers at €11.
Walloon Region
In Wallonia, you pay €10.20 per voucher for the first 175 vouchers purchased in a calendar year. After that, the price increases to €11.20 for vouchers 176 to 400, and further to €12.20 for vouchers 401 to 500.
👉 For a family of two, this means you can buy 350 vouchers at €10.20, 450 vouchers at €11.20 and, finally, 200 vouchers at €12.20. Service vouchers are still tax deductible in the Walloon Region.
Brussels Capital Region
In Brussels, you pay €10.20 per voucher for the first 300 vouchers purchased in a calendar year. Then, the price increases to €12.40 for vouchers 401 to 500.
👉 For a family of two, this means you can buy 600 vouchers at €10.20 and 400 vouchers at €12.40.
Next, you can call on Daenens to find a household help for specific household tasks such as cleaning, ironing, cooking and shopping. The service voucher system is very flexible and as a user you decide when and how much household help you want.
Once the household help has provided the requested tasks, you pay them with a paper voucher (fill in the date and sign off) or with an electronic voucher (validate the hours worked in a notification message).
Daenens then exchanges the received (paper and electronic) service vouchers with Pluxee and pays the household help. Daenens also provides quality training and support for its household helps.
From 1 January 2025, service vouchers that are about to expire can no longer be exchanged for new vouchers that are valid for longer.
However, you can still request a refund for (still valid) service vouchers. This is possible - free of charge - via your secure zone at Pluxee or by filling in a form.
Service vouchers are valid for 12 months in Flanders, 8 months in Wallonia and 6 months in the Brussels Capital Region.
Service vouchers offer many advantages for both users and household helps. These advantages help explain the system’s popularity in Belgium.
Service vouchers make your life a lot easier as you are able to outsource household tasks flexibly. You can count on the services of a household help from a registered company and you pay one service voucher per hour worked. Whether you still use paper vouchers or electronic ones, ordering is simple and quick. If you use the electronic versions, you always have a clear overview of your orders and usage, making management even easier. This allows for more, carefree time and convenience in your daily routine.
Paying with electronic or paper service vouchers ensures you are using a secure means of payment that renders cash unnecessary and gives you a clear overview of your expenses.
With electronic service vouchers, you confirm the hours worked through your secure zone or the mobile app ‘Dienstencheques Vlaanderen’.
With paper service vouchers, simply write down the date, the activity and your signature. Pluxee carefully checks all registered services to prevent fraud.
You can use service vouchers for different household services. Moreover, you decide for yourself how often and when you use a household help. This makes the system very flexible and allows you to adapt it to your personal needs.
The service voucher was introduced in 2004 to, among other things, substantially reduce undeclared work. Quite successfully too, as a study by KU Leuven in 2021 shows that undeclared work in Belgium has been halved thanks to the system. Besides preventing undeclared work, the system also offers numerous other benefits.
The fact that families can call on a household help creates a better work-life balance with more free time for many. It also relieves the burden for elderly people who can continue to live at home for longer.
To quantify the exact return on the government's investment, Hilde Crevits, former minister for employment and social economy, commissioned a study on the payback effects a few years ago.
As many as 95% of users stated they experience a better quality of life thanks to the system.
92% are less stressed thanks to the services of their household helps.
83% have fewer physical complaints thanks to the system.
98% of over-80s can continue to live in their own homes for longer thanks to the system.
18% can continue to keep working the same number of hours thanks to the service voucher system. If they would not use it, they would ‘lose’ 5 hours of work time a week and 20 hours per month, 2.5 days less than with the system.
7% even indicates that the system allows them to work more, up to 7.3 hours a week, so almost a full day per week more.
98% of over-80s state they can stay in their own home longer thanks to the service voucher system
Since the regionalisation in 2014, differences have popped up in the three separate regions of Belgium. In Flanders, service voucher companies were allowed to charge additional fees. This was necessary to compensate for years of lagging trade-in value adjustments and the failure to increase the service voucher price. In Brussels and Wallonia, the option of charging additional costs was limited.
You may use service vouchers purchased in Flanders, Brussels or Wallonia at a registered company in another region under the sole condition that that company is also registered in the other region. If you want to be sure that your service vouchers are valid, it is best to check with the company itself whether or not it is registered in the other region. This way, you may be able to use your service vouchers across regional borders.
In recent years, there has been a lot of commotion regarding the price of service vouchers and the related wages of domestic workers, resulting in several strikes. For years, our CEO Nico Daenens has been fighting for better pay and working conditions for all household helps. However, the price of a service voucher remained unchanged for over 10 years, while everything else in life became more expensive. The service voucher companies themselves also faced rising costs.
That is why the price of a service voucher truly needed to be raised. It is the only way in which service voucher companies can improve the pay and working conditions for its domestic workers. However, Nico Daenens does stress one important condition for a price increase for the user: it should only be applied in a social way, requiring a social tariff to ensure that service vouchers remain affordable for everyone.
The Flemish government has decided to abolish the fiscal benefit for users from 1 January 2025 and to increase the voucher’s price with 1 EUR per service voucher. In combination with the rescinded tax deduction, the price per service voucher in Flanders will rise to 10 EUR.
If the sector is to remain sustainable in the long term, service voucher companies should also receive support. Indeed, profitability is at an all-time low, with as many as 42.4% of companies making an operational loss today. So the price increase is definitely a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work ahead to keep this valuable sector sustainable and healthy.
Do you have more questions about service vouchers or would you like more information? Feel free to contact us and we will gladly help you along!
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