December and November round up

A very busy end to 2024 saw the new fees summary report go live in beta as well as support for exporting receipts and service user documents, a new automated email to care seekers when an assessment is successful and a host of other improvements and fixes based on feedback from our users.

Introducing the fees summary report

The new fees summary report focuses on providing clients with accurate figures for accruals and deferrals and is a replacement for the existing accruals reports.

Why we are replacing the existing accruals reports

Currently deferrals (overbilled) are obtained by reviewing the Accruals report and accruals (underbilled) by reviewing the Accruals (projected) report.

The new fees summary report provides access to both accrued and deferred figures in a single report and addresses a number of limitations with the existing accruals reports:

• The accrued figures now account for invoices that should have been raised for the period and were not. In contrast the accruals (projected) report worked on the basis that all invoices that should have been raised for the period had been, which means extra steps were needed to account for missed invoices.
• Prior period adjustments are now calculated based on the issue date of invoices and the period of care covered by an invoice line item (more on this shortly). Previously they were based on the billing date for the period of care covered, which lead to over-reporting of prior period adjustments in some scenarios.
• Billing discrepancies - the difference between the agreed rate for a resident's care and the contracts in place to cover that care - are now displayed in the fees summary report and include the accrued amount for the period. Previously users would have to review the billing discrepancies report separately to identify and calculate the accrued amount.

Addressing limitations in other platforms

As well as addressing limitations in our existing reports we've worked with clients to ensure we resolve issues that they experience with their previous billing platforms:

• Performance - A key concern raised by clients moving to CareHQ was that similar reports can take minutes if not hours to generate within their previous platforms. More than one client explained that they have to generate reports overnight. CareHQ's fees summary report generates in seconds (typically less than 5 seconds) even for clients with over 50 locations.
• Summary - Another frequent request from clients was for a summary report covering all care homes or defined groups of care homes. A number of clients explained they previously needed to download a report for each location then manually combine these spreadsheets to generate a summary report. CareHQ's fees summary report includes a summary view for all locations which can be filtered by location group.
• Prior period adjustments - Several finance teams raised that the way in which prior period adjustments are calculated in their previous platforms can lead to incorrect figures. A common example given was when a rate adjustment is made for a period of 6 months resulting in multiple credit notes and invoices being raised, each with an issue date relevant to the period of care (e.g. not the current date). Invoices with an issue date in a prior period are then assumed to be a prior period adjustment, but this isn't always the case. If an invoice spans across the current and a past period the adjustment figure should only consider days of care provided in the past period not those in the current. CareHQ addresses this limitation in 2 ways: first we only generate a single credit note and invoice for any rate adjustment and this is given an issue date of today (which can be adjusted if required). Secondly we generate line items (not invoices) for each billing period in the adjustment and store the dates of care covered by each. This allows us to correctly account for prior period adjustments that are split over the current and a past billing period by only adjusting for days of care before the current period.
• Transparency - We heard numerous war stories from finance teams about times when "the figures just don't add up" in their previous platforms, and the required hours of checking through multiple reports and exports to identify the cause of such issues (if a cause can be identified at all). CareHQ addresses this by providing a complete breakdown of how any adjustment figure within the fees summary report is calculated, including links to each invoice and contract the figures are derived from.

The new Fees summary report is available now to all clients using CareHQ for billing. To view the report select Reports from the primary navigation, select the Finance tab and then select Fees summary from the available reports.

Initially the fees summary report displays an overview of fees for all your care homes. To view a detailed breakdown for any home simply select it from the Location column.

When viewing the fees summary report for a care home you'll see a breakdown of fees by service user, billing party and nominal code. To view details of how the adjustment figures for a row were arrived at, click on the row within the report and a popup will appear showing the data used in calculating the figures.

It's important to note that while the Fees summary report is replacing the accruals reports it is currently in beta testing and the existing reports will remain available until we have confirmed with all existing clients that they are happy to move over.

Other updates & fixes

• Added support for exporting service user documents.
• Added support for exporting receipts.
• Added a new automated email notification for care seekers when an assessment outcome is recorded as able to support needs. This new notification is optional and can be enabled for your account by making a request to the CareHQ support team.
• Added a new change log report allowing changes  across an entire account to be reviewed for a given date range. Previously change logs could only be reviewed against a document or under the activity log for a user.

• A company registration number field has been added against locations. If set, it will appear on financial PDFs such as invoices and statements.
• Added support for customising the values of the Brand, Reference and Tracking option 1 & 2 columns in Xero invoice exports. For example, the reference field can now be set to the date range of care covered by an invoice, helping finance teams when reconciling in Xero.
• A location filter has been added to the invoices listing for location contacts where the contact funds residents across multiple locations.
• Service user documents can now be filtered by date range against when they were uploaded or when they expire.
• Additional columns have now been added to the care funds tracker export; Admission date, Booking rate, Date of birth, Location name and NHS number.
• The paid balance of an invoice or credit note has been added to the PDF (this only applies when the receipts module is enabled on CareHQ).
• Additional columns have been added to the export for the missing documents report: Service user account code and Service user reference.
• A new Do not send billing comms preference has been added for billing parties. For location contacts you can also add exceptions to this rule so that invoices are only sent for a given list of residents.
• The billing review report now has an option to include draft invoices in the figures.
• A new shortcut has been added after reconciling a receipt, allowing users to add a new receipt without having to return to the receipts listing page.
• The absence report UI has been updated to show a more detailed breakdown of each service user absence within the report period. The update means that details for all service user absences in the report are listed, not just those that began or ended within the period.
• Receipts can now be added where the entire amount relates to a clawback and no payment has been made.
• The reconcile receipt UI now includes links to the service user and invoice record for each match shown in the finder.
• Added additional columns to the service user expenses balance export: Service user account number and Billing party (paying for the expenses).
• Added a funding type column to the service users listing in the admissions, discharges and deaths report.
• The code that calculates the billing dates and periods for billing schedules has been significantly optimised which has improved the performance of features and reports using billing schedules (such as the invoice run and billing review report).
• Added additional columns to the service user export: Check-in, Checkout.

• When viewing a receipt the Assigned contact field now links to the contact's invoice listing page (previously it linked to the update contact page).
• Fixed the average total figure on the average stay report. Previously the total figure was calculated from the average of all rows while it is now correctly calculated based on the total number of stays.
• Added field allowing users to set the number of results returned when listing invoices against a billing party.
• Archived rooms are now excluded when calculating the average target rate in the weekly rate report.
• Fixed an issue where brands were not applied to PDFs sent automatically by the scheduler (e.g. invoices and statements).
• Fixed issue where invoices to be sent by post were sent as a zip file but with the wrong extension. Previously the extension was set as .pdf and this has now been corrected to .zip.
• Monthly billing now correctly handles billing schedules with offset dates. Previously an offset date would result in monthly billing being calculated using the partial month rule and not the fixed month amount.
• The booking export duration column now correctly shows the duration type (respite or permanent). Previously the duration type was always set to respite.
• Carehome.co.uk have recently updated their API to support additional categories (care enquiry via phone and care enquiry by care help team). We've updated the CareHQ integration to capture these new categories.
• The unallocated funds report now handles receipts that were posted over 150 days ago. Previously the report would generate an error in this scenario.
• The billing party filter now works when viewing invoices for a service user (previously the filter was never applied).
• Fixed issue where in some scenarios using the convert to respite helper would generate overlapping bookings for a resident.
• Group notifications are now sent for regional managers where their scope is defined by a set of location groups and not locations.
• Fixed issue where viewing a key contact with billing enabled against a care enquiry (rather than against the service user) would generate a page error.
• Fixed month billing now correctly handles multiple consecutive bookings within a billing period (e.g. indicating a change in rate and/or room). Previously multiple bookings in the same period always resulted in the partial month rule being used to calculate the fee. The partial month rule is now  only applied if the resident checked out during the billing period.
• The total value figure shown at the bottom of the invoice run UI now correctly handles multiple invoices with multiple line items. Previously it would show an incorrect total for the period if any invoices included multiple line items.
• Added a new restriction when generating an overpayment for a receipt associated with a service user or their key contact. Previously an overpayment could be assigned to any other service user at the location, but the new restriction means overpayments can now only be assigned to the service user the receipt is associated with.