Setting up Pay and Charge Rates

Setting up Pay and Charge Rates

After configuring the system and creating new users, the first step to building a new system is to start the data entry process by entering your current rates. 

The financial hierarchy of the system sits in 3 tiers. At the top level are your rates, at the middle level are your contracts, and at the bottom level those contracts sit against an individual. 

So for Workers you have Pay Rates, which link to Worker Contracts, which sit against the Worker and will be effective in the care they give. 

For Clients you have Charge Rates, which link to Client Contracts, which in turn sit against the Client and will be effective in the care they receive. 

It is worth mentioning that both Clients and Workers can have several contracts if necessary. We will look at this in the coming articles, however for now we will focus on entering the Rates themselves. 

Happily, the method for entering both Pay and Charge Rates, as well as the look of the screens they are entered on, is identical and therefore can be covered in one article

• To enter Pay Rates navigate to Pay > Pay Rates, to enter Charge Rates navigate to Invoicing > Charge Rates. If these are not present you may not have correct permissions to enter rate sets
• A list of current rates will be displayed if you have any. If not, we will need to create some. Think of each rate set as the variances of rates you pay your workers or charge your clients. For workers, it is likely you may pay Carers, Seniors and Nurses differently and thus will need a different rate. For charges, each Local Authority may have different charge rates. All connotations of the rate, such as the weekend rate being different, are held within the rate set itself and do not require a separate one.
• Click New to create a new rate, or double click to edit a current one. Avoid the Wizard button
• Add a Name and Description for the Rate Set, as well as the Group for which the Rate
  applies. Any Group will do, the system will not hold you to it.
• The Description is only needed where the Name does not provide sufficient detail
• Fill in additional information about the Pay (or Charge if talking Invoicing), Distance and Travel. Think whether you pay/charge on Actual or Booked times, perhaps better described as ‘Minute to Minute’ or ‘Planned’ times.
• Distance is how much you pay/charge back per mile. Again you can select the Actual (based on Google maps) Mileage or the Booked
• Travel is the amount of Travel Time as an hourly rate you pay/charge back.
• Split Pay allows you to split the pay/charge for a Visit that crosses pay boundaries. In other words if the visit runs into a time period where you pay differently then the system will acknowledge this.
• Right Click in the white space at the bottom of the screen, click Add
• Set the Name and Description and set the Hourly Rates. Different rates for weekend, bank holiday and special days are present. See Important Notes below for more information
• Per Visit Rates are selected as soon as you amend the Duration, so if you have a rate that is not directly attributable to an hourly rate, you can use this. Be aware you can repeat this process to build all the characteristics of your rate set. You could set one to a duration of 30 mins and set the per visit pay/charge to £5, then repeat and set the normal hourly rate to £8. This would mean that the system would pay/charge £5 for half an hour, but as soon as that rate is surpassed it begins calculating at an hourly rate of £8
• It is also possible to amend the time of day you want the rate to apply for. You may wish to set one rate for 7am-7pm and a different rate for the late evening and night. To do this, create one rate with the Time of Day set to 19:00 (your day rate) and another with the time set to 07:00 (your night rate). You are setting the END time of the rate
• Select an Effective Date and a Review Date if necessary. Effective dates should be in the past if a new project to ensure no errors occur. Review dates relate to alerts which can remind you to look again at the rate at a future time
• Select which Visit Types this rate applies to if it is not a global rate. In other words, if the rate applies to all work, leave this dropdown blank. However, if the rate is specific to a type of care you provide such as Personal Care, you can select the Visit Type from this dropdown. The process can then be repeated for other Visit Types. Other common Visit Type rates include Sleepovers, which are often paid/charged as a block.
• Click OK. Right Click and Add again to build more properties such as different rates for
  different times of day.
• Click OK when you are done to finalise your Pay or Invoicing Rate set.

Notes:

Within the Rate Sets, the name ‘Holiday’ relates to Bank Holiday rates. If the rate is simply the same as all others please fill this in as such.

The system works from an internal calendar that will have all the Bank Holidays entered by default. Once one of these days’ rolls around the system will look to the Holiday rate automatically, uplifting rates if this is what you do.

The same works for Special Days, which by default are Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, the theory being that a different rate again may be needed on to top of Holiday Pay. If not, just set the rate to the same as the rest, don’t leave it blank.

It is important to know that the internal calendar can be amended if necessary, so you can add or remove Holiday and Special Days as you see fit. Ensure you contact Support for assistance with this.