End of year update

November and December were an especially busy period for us as we worked towards the release of the new billing engine which went live the week before Christmas.

This release includes a significant number of features designed to simplify and automate complex billing processes including historic fee adjustments and generating final invoices for bookings and contracts.

The new engine also makes way for a host of requested features scheduled for release in the first half of 2024, including; Direct Debit mandate generation, credit control tools and contract reconciliation (allowing users to review invoices and credit notes raised for a contract to check for and correct over and under billing).

It's worth noting that the billing and reconciliation features available in CareHQ are included in the monthly subscription; there are no additional charges for these features (or any features). So if you're an existing client who would like to use CareHQ for billing or reconciliation just get in touch and if you're not using CareHQ yet why not request a demo.

The rest of this update provides details on each of the features released over November and December, so we'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our users for their support and feedback in 2023 and to wish you all a happy and prosperous 2024!

Billing schedules

We've introduced support for defining common (shared) billing schedules, for example Private (monthly in advance), and the ability to set up multiple schedules for a billing party.

There's also a new billing schedule report which provides information on the upcoming (and historic) billing periods including the amount to be invoiced in a given period.

Billing rulesets

Alongside billing schedules we've introduced support for defining common (shared) billing rulesets and the ability to set up multiple rulesets for a billing party.

Rulesets allow you to define the set of rules that govern a contract, including:

  • the types of funding they are applicable to,
  • the number of days to charge after a resident's death,
  • and any discount that applies if a resident is absent.

Configurable discounts for absences

Configure discounts for residents who are absent. Discounts can be applied as a percentage and only after the resident has been absent for a given number of days.

Absences appear as a discount item within an invoice or generate a credit note if they apply to a period that has already been billed.

Historic fee adjustments

Adjusting contract fees at a point in time in the past is now a simple process.

Adjusting historic contract fees

When a fee is adjusted for a contract, CareHQ automatically:

  • Ends the existing contract the day before the rate fee (or cancels the contract if the change is from the start of the contract).
  • Generates a new contract on the day the new fee starts.
  • Generates a credit note for any days billed for against the existing contract on and after the date the new fee starts (each billing period credited is added as a separate line item in the credit note).
  • Raises an invoice for the new contract covering the period up until the most recent scheduled billing run for the contract (as with credit notes, each billing period invoiced is added as a separate line item in the invoice).
  • (Optionally) Generates a new booking from the date of the fee change with an adjusted rate to accommodate for the change in fee.
  • If you're using CareHQ's reconciliation feature then the credit note generated will be automatically allocated against the invoice raised.

More automation

As well as automating historic rate adjustments CareHQ will automatically generate relevant invoices and credit notes in the following scenarios.

Scenario Result
Setting the end date for a booking Ends any associated contracts on the same day the booking ends.
Generates credit notes for any contract with days billed after the booking's end date.
Generates an invoice for any contract with days after death charges.
Ends any open absence on the same day the booking ends and generates applicable credit notes per contract.
Setting the end date for a contract Generates a credit note for any days billed after the booking's end date.
Setting the end date for an absence Generates a credit note for any contract with days billed which receive a discount for the absence.
Ending a contract Generates a credit note for any days billed after the contract's end date.
Cancelling a contract Generates a credit note for any invoices generated for the contract.
Requesting a credit note for a given period Generates a credit note for the contract for the defined period.
Raising all outstanding invoices Generates all outstanding invoices for a contract up to the current date.

Real-time statements

Real-time activity and outstanding statements are now available for all billing parties. Select any period to report on and export as a PDF file or spreadsheet (Excel, CSV).

Real-time statements in CareHQ

Funding at risk

There's now a check box against service users allowing you to flag that their funding may be at risk. When checked, relevant persons (such as the finance team) are notified so that they can take steps to manage the transition in funding.

There's also a dedicated report detailing the number of residents with funding at risk as well as the total weekly revenue at risk across your portfolio.

Funding at risk checkbox against a resident

Other updates & fixes

  • Added a new filter to the length of stay report to support filtering by funding type.
  • Separate payment instructions can now be set to appear on resident expense statements.
  • An additional worksheet has been added to the complaints report which includes full details of complaints used to generate the report.
  • Move and swap room shortcut feature now supports updating pending/future as well as current bookings.
  • Added support for filtering actions by subject and tag in the action overview report.
  • The required documents report export now includes a new worksheet listing all missing documents within the report by location, resident and document type.
  • Billing contracts and invoices for residents can now be filtered by billing party.
  • Added support for sub-customers in Quickbooks exports of invoices via the CustomerFunded column.
  • Updated geography report to handle filtering out service users with no geographic location data.
  • We now require a phone number and address when converting a service user to day care from respite/permanent.
  • Added room name/no. to the columns for the service user list on the admissions, discharge and deaths report.
  • Fixed form validation for add/update complaint so that if an outcome date is entered but not a reported date a 500 error isn't raised.
  • Fix for average stay report not including the full length of stay per resident in some scenarios.
  • Fix for issue where when service users left a home the associated contact email addresses were not flagged for update: specifically they were not removed if the service user had died and the association was personal.
  • Assigning a care enquiry to another user on add now works; previously the care enquiry would remain assigned to the user adding the care enquiry.
  • Fixed validation of colour fields would accept invalid values.
  • Fixed issue with the calendar where birthdays would only appear for the current year; they now correctly appear for any year viewed.