Multi-Client Properties

Although we’re optimised for homecare, there are workarounds which can work for supported living and residential care setups.

Checklist

Here’s a quick checklist to summarise how to create multi-client properties, which can be used for supported living and residential care setups:

Create a separate team for your residents
Give each resident at a property their own client record
Assign a relevant service contract to each client
Setup daily/weekly charges with minimum contract values
Use clients’ schedules to create their permanent visits
Enable “Overlap carers” on each schedule entry
Group visits at the same property into rounds

⚠️ Although these workarounds can work for supported living, residential care, and other multi-client property setups, CareLineLive is primarily designed and optimised for homecare.

Teams

There are two ways to setup your teams in this situation:

Create one team for each property
Create one team for each group of properties (recommended)

Although you could have one team per property to make sure it's fully broken down, it’s recommended to have one team per group of properties instead. This is normally the tidiest way to break down your teams.

Clients

There are two ways to setup your clients in this situation:

Create one client record for each property
Create one client record for each person (recommended)

Although you could have one client record per property, it’s recommended to have one client record per person instead. This means each client’s personal information can be easily found and attributed to them. It also means each client can have their own addresses, tasks, medications, and care plans stored independently from each other, without accidentally affecting other clients.

ℹ️ In some situations - such as when using Overarching Bookings below - you may need to create client records for both your properties and your clients, rather than just one or the other.

Read more on creating client records here: Creating Client Records.

Invoicing

Every client must have a service contract type assigned to receive bookings. You can create a separate service contract type for supported living and residential care clients in Clients → Service Contract Types by clicking the + icon in the top right.

Read more about creating service contract types here: How to create Service Contract Types.

Once a service contract type is created once, you can then assign it to multiple clients as needed. Clients can also be assigned multiple service contracts if they have different rates for separate services.

Read more about assigning service contract types here: How to assign a Service Contract Type to a client to make the client active.

In the service contract type, you can specify a set charge on a daily or weekly basis if needed using the Minimum Contract Value.

⚠️ Minimum contract values are only charged against days or weeks (depending on if it's set to charge on a daily or weekly basis) which have at least one visit of any length.

Read more about the different types of rates here: Rates.

If you decide to charge on a daily or weekly basis, please make sure that the default hourly rate at the top of the service contract type is set to £0 per hour (which is the default until it's changed anyway), otherwise it may cause the invoices to show wrong amounts.

If you decide to charge on a monthly basis instead, you'll need to manually add the charge in each month yourself. You can either add this as a one-off debit transaction in the client's financial tab, or as a custom line item at the bottom of their invoice.

Read more about transactions here: One-off credit/debit transactions.

Read more about custom line items in invoices here: Invoicing.

Booking Types

In larger properties with high numbers of clients, it may become unmanageable to require your carers to check-in and check-out of every visit at the same time. In this case, you could create a new booking type where "Require check-in" is unticked that you can use for these visits.

Read more about booking types here: Booking Types.

Scheduling

Each client at a property will need their own visit. Normally, all the visits will be set to happen at the exact same time. Each visit can have multiple carers allocated to it if needed too. This can be created on the clients' schedules if it's a regular visit, or on the roster or the clients' agendas if it's a one-off. If using the schedule, you'll only need to create the schedule once, but you must generate the bookings whenever you need them on the roster.

Read more about creating client schedules here: Creating a Client Schedule.

Read more about generating bookings here: Generating Bookings.

Read more about one-off bookings here: Ad Hoc Bookings.

To make it faster to locate and allocate multiple bookings on the roster at the same time, you can assign all the schedule entries / ad-hoc bookings to the same round, enabling you to drag-and-drop them together.

Read more about rounds here: Create and use Rounds.

By default, one carer cannot attend multiple different visits at the same time. However, you can enable this by ticking "Overlap carers" on all visits at the same time.

Read more about overlapping here: Overlapping Visits.

Overarching Bookings

In larger properties with high numbers of clients, requiring carers to check in and out of every single visit can be impractical. However, you may still want a record of when and where they check-in and check-out around a property for auditing purposes. In this situation, you can use the overarching booking technique.

With this approach, carers check-in and check-out of just one visit which is made for the property itself, meaning they don't need to check-in and check-out of all the clients' individual visits one-by-one anymore.

To set this up:

Assign a booking type with "Require check-in" unticked to all your clients' visits
Create a new client record to represent the property itself
Create a schedule entry or booking on the property's client record at the same time as the clients' visits
Assign this property's visits to the same round used for the clients' visits
Assign a booking type with "Require check-in" ticked to just this property's visits

ℹ️ Read more about booking types above.

Carers will then only need to check-in and check-out from the property's visit on their carer companion app. They can still open each client's visit separately though to view and complete tasks, medications, notes, and documents for that client as normal.

Checking In

To clarify, carers can check-in to multiple visits at the same time if needed on the carer companion app if needed. Although each client will have their own visit QR code marker (which the carer can use to check-in and check-out of each visit at the property), you can also allow carers to check-in and check-out without a QR code marker too in Settings → App Config.

Read more about configuring the carer companion app here: App Config.

⚠️ If carers are checked into multiple visits at the same time, they'll need to make sure they're looking at the correct client's visit for the correct tasks, notes, and documents to appear.