Rates
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Written by Dec Norton
Updated over a week ago

Carer/Client billing and payment rates are defined in service/carer contracts. By default, contracts will calculate using hourly rates, but fixed rates can be enabled if required.

Default Rates

Each contract needs to have a base hourly rate, whether fixed rates are being used or not. The base hourly is used when none of the rules described below are applied. This is the ideal place to set your most commonly used hourly rate, i.e. your day time rate.

Non pro-rata rates

These rates allow you to define an amount for a specific period of time, for example you may wish to charge £16 for a 30m visit whereas you would normally charge £24 for an hour.

ℹ️ If no non pro-rata rates are defined, the system will use the proportional amount of the hourly rate.

The system will attempt to find a matching non pro-rata rate first, and then calculate the remainder as a proportional amount of the hourly rate. For example, if you have non pro-rata rates set up as £16 for 30m and £20 for 45m, with an hourly rate of £24; given a visit duration of 50 minutes, the result would be £20 + (5m x £24) = £22.

Please note that only one non pro-rata rate can be used in a given calculation, multiple rates can not be stacked. If you are expecting multiple non pro-rata rates to be combined, we would suggest adding an additional rate.

ℹ️ The default hourly rate is not automatically counted as a 1h non pro-rata rate, so it's important to add this in.

Unsociable Hours

Here you can override the hourly rate for certain time periods, whether weekday/weekend, bank holidays, or 'Special Days'. See Calendar for more information.

Each entry for unsociable hours is referred to as a range. You can specify the hourly rate, and any non pro-rata rates for the range.

If none of the entered ranges match, the default rates will be used.

The order of priority for which the "When" parameter uses is as follows:

  1. Special Day

  2. Public Holiday

  3. Day of Week (Mon-Sun)

  4. Weekday/Weekend

Fixed Rates

Fixed rates can be used if you want to charge the same amount irrespective of the length of the visit. You can add as many fixed rates as you like, and optionally set a default.

⚠️ If a default is chosen every item associated with the contract will use that fixed rate, unless you assign a specific fixed rate against that item.

If no default is chosen, hourly calculation will be used unless a fixed rate is specified. This can be used if a contract only occasionally requires a fixed rate, such as on-call shifts for a carers or a night visits for service users.

Rules

A fixed rate can have rules applied in order to increase, decrease, or override the amount on certain days. For example, you may wish to add a surcharge of £10 on bank holidays, or set the overall rate to a new amount. When increasing/decreasing the amount a separate item will be added to the invoice, whereas setting the amount will replace the existing.

Duration Rounding

When you have chosen to calculate based on Actual visit times, you can optionally choose to apply rounding to the duration.

There are two available "styles":

  • Round to nearest - This is traditional rounding, meaning the duration can be rounded up or down

  • Round up to nearest - The duration will not be rounded down.

Once a rounding style has been chosen, you are presented with additional options:

  • Always Use Planned Duration As Minimum - Actual billing would only take effect when the visit has run longer than planned. If it was shorter, the amount will be calculated at the planned duration.

  • Minutes (required) - The increment that you wish to round to, e.g. 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes.

  • Middle Point (optional) - Adjust the boundary for rounding in the increment. By default this will be half of the increment.

    • For example if rounding in increments of 15, you may wish to use a middle point of 10, meaning < 10 would be rounded down, and >= 0 would be rounded up.

    • When 'Round up to nearest' is used, the duration will not be rounded unless this midpoint is met.

  • Minimum Duration (optional) - The absolute minimum duration you would bill for.

Calculation Options

Calculation options vary for carer and client contracts, please see relevant articles below:

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