CareFree provides a very powerful system that can do both pay and invoicing. Since we already use CareFree for managing the rotas it makes sense that we can use this data to work out exactly how much a carer will get paid, and also how much we would need to charge our clients for the care provided.
Not only this but the system can be further used to work out mileage and travel time if that's something you do as a provider.
Pay and Charge rules can become quite complex, and this short knowledge base article will not detail every aspect of the system - if your organisation is starting to do financials for the first time then we recommend you speak with the CareFree training team to organise a days training which will be tailor made to your organisation.
That being said lets take a look at setting up rules for pay.
First using the top menu bar, press the rules button as follows:
This will open the following screen, notice how this is a completed Rule for Pay, we will examine this before looking at how to add one.
The rules
There are seven rules, typically only six are used within Care Companies.
Its important to note that more than one rule can be selected within any given rule which will work with the others to get the desired pay, so for instance if you payed more than £70 on a weekend, you would have rule 2 and 5 selected with the correct pay amount as pictured (Red 6).
Adding/Building the rule set. If you have never used the rules screen, unlike the pictures above yours will be blank. But now you know what each rule does its just a case of adding the rules needed for your company.
Start by looking at the bottom, it will have the default hourly rate checked just like this:
This is important to note, because when you click “New” you will be presented the “Problem Penny” screen, this is where you will enter 0.01 pence instead of the usual default hourly rate.
Once added you will then see this checkbox move over to edit rules just like this:
Again press the new button, instead of a popup box this time you will see the list with the 1 to 7 rules have become available. You are now able to create the rules needed for your business.
Looking at charge rules
The good news is that once you know how to add the pay rules, then you also understand the charge rules because they are exactly the same.
Take a look at this screenshot:
A word on ordering
You will notice in the last screenshot at option 6 we have some ordering buttons. These buttons are really important to the flow of execution. (the order in which rules run)
The screenshot actually shows an incorrect assignment because “Sleepin” is below the “Normal Rate”. What you would have here is the CareFree system reading the “Normal Rate” value and then adding up the time our Carer was on site, then charging hourly for the time they were there back to the client, when in fact what we wanted was for the client to be invoiced a flat rate of £70.
Due to the flow of execution, the rules would have stopped processing when the system read a rule which worked for the situation. The general rule of thumb is to always have rules with ticks enabled above any which don't, and typically the default hourly rate or “Pro-rata” rate usually doesn't have any ticks applied.
Ordering is also important for pay for the same reasons, anything which requires enhancements to be paid like unsocial hours must be read before the last default hourly rate.