January-February round-up: Lock dates, accounting periods and more

In January and February, we introduced lock dates and accounting periods to simplify the transfer of financial journals to your accounting software. We also implemented a host of improvements and fixes based on feedback from our users.

Lock dates

A financial Lock date can now be set within CareHQ which prevents financial documents such as invoices and payment receipts being added, updated or removed if they were issued or received on or before the lock date. Phew! That was a mouthful.

This mechanism is often called a soft lock as the lock can be removed or set to an earlier date if necessary, and select users can be given permission to make changes within the lock date. Even users who have been granted permission to make changes within the lock date are still warned about their actions.

The purpose of the lock date within CareHQ is to allow the finance team to review and close the prior accounting period while allowing other users to continue to use CareHQ safe in the knowledge that the financial documents within that period cannot be affected.

A frequent complaint received from clients moving from other billing enabled CRM applications, has been that for the first couple of days of each month they have to lock everyone, except the finance team, out while they review and close the accounting period. Whilst users are locked out, updates to data within the CRM application are delayed or sometimes missed. Lock dates resolve this issue, allowing all users to access CareHQ while an accounting period is closed.

Accounting periods

You can now set accounting periods within CareHQ. We support monthly, quarterly and annual periods as well as flexible periods (for example 4-4-5). Accounting periods are used when exporting journal entries (a.k.a. postings) from CareHQ for the purpose of importing them into your primary accounting software.

Up until they are exported, financial documents such as invoices or receipts can be changed (though if they fall on or before the current lock date only users with the relevant permissions can modify them).

When exporting journal entries, users specify the accounting period they are exporting and whether they want to include previously exported entries, or only those that have not yet been marked as exported (known as pending entries). If the user is exporting pending journal entries, then they will only be able to export for an open accounting period and only entries that are dated within or before the period will be included. Entries dated after the period are excluded from the export.

On exporting pending entries users have the option to mark the journal entries. Marking a journal entry sets the period against it and prevents the related financial document (e.g. invoice, receipt, etc.) from being modified.

After all journal entries for an accounting period have been exported, the period can be closed preventing any further journal entries being posted to it.

Snapshots

What's missing from accounting periods currently are snapshots. Snapshots ensure copies of relevant reports are retained for the period which cannot be affected by future changes. Snapshots are currently scheduled for release in March 2025.

Other updates & fixes

• Added a new knowledge base article explaining how a service user's primary funding type is determined by CareHQ when there are multiple funding sources.

• Required document uploaded notifications are now sent when documents are added / updated against care enquiries (previously notifications were only sent for documents uploaded against a service user).
• It's now possible to configure fields which are optional against a care enquiry by default as required for your account.
• The email display name used when CareHQ sends emails to care seekers, service users and other contacts can now be set on a per location / care home basis (by default the name of the location is used).
• Additional columns have been added to the care fund tracker report export:
  • Service user reference
  • Service user Id
• A file reference can be set when exporting Direct Debit transactions. The reference is appended to the start of the file name downloaded from CareHQ.
• Direct Debit mandates can now be transferred with a service user when they transfer to a new location (under the same provider).
• Additional columns have been added to the occupancy report export:
  • Care type
  • Duration type
  • End of life
• Added a new filter to all invoice listings to show or exclude invoices relating to service user expenses.
• Added a duration type column to the admissions, discharges and deaths report section for service users.
• Care enquiries now require a first or last name for the care seeker rather than previously only requiring a last name.
• It is now possible to allow an open care enquiry to be associated with a service user currently residing at the location. This helps link care enquiries with service users where the admission process was inadvertently performed separately from  the care enquiry.
• Admitted care enquiries can now be reopened by a user with account owner privileges.
• The service user's National Insurance Number has now been added as a column on the TV ARC license report.
• The weekly rate report now includes a total booking fees figure for the reported period.
• A file reference can be set when exporting finance journals. The reference is appended to the start of the file name downloaded from CareHQ.
• Added a company field to bank accounts to support cross company posting in journal exports. Currently this functionality is only supported for OpenAccount integrations.
• Added a new column to the room listing export: Service user Id.
• Finance journal exports now support an incrementing value (which increases on each export). This can be useful when importing into accounts applications that require unique import references, such as Pegasus Opera.
• Add a new By location table to the sales cycle report allowing the sales cycle to be viewed for all locations at once. Previously the report had to be filtered by each location to collate the data for all locations separately.
• Duplicate care enquiries are now excluded from target metrics and the acquisition, geography, location performance and sales cycle reports.
• Direct Debit exports are now available for:
  • Finastra Direct Debit Manager application
  • Sage/SIG Pegasus Opera
• The expense category label is now included in the invoice line item description generated for expense invoices. This removes the need to enter a description for common items such as papers or a hair dressing appointment.
• Added support for exporting financial journals to Pegasus Opera.
• The terms balance sheet and P&L account have now been replaced with cost centre and profit centre against locations.
• When adding a receipt you can now select to save the current receipt and add another receipt as the next step. This cuts down on the number of clicks required when manually adding multiple receipts at once. We also preset the bank the receipt is being added to for the new receipt, cutting down the steps required to add the next invoice.
• You can now send messages to a service user through CareHQ if they have an email address set for their billing comms.

• Credit notes raised automatically to cover a period of absence for a service user no long double credit the absence period if it spans two billing periods.
• Exporting receipts when the search field is populated no longer generates an error.
• Fixed issue where in some scenarios notifications about a new booking being below the target rate would be sent when the rate was not below target.
• Fixed issue where the Last stayed flag displayed in the room availability checker and booking process would show the first room a service user previously stayed in and not the most recent.
• Fixed issue where service user expense invoices generated en masse via CareHQ did not have the comms preference (e.g. send by post, email and do not send) set.
• Fixed an issue in the occupancy report where the graph would show a discrepancy with the table data for specific days. The issue was caused by bookings which overlap not being accounted  for in the graph figures (e.g. where a booking ends and a new booking starts on the same day for the same room).
• Attempting to export Direct Debit re-presentations when there are none to export no longer generates an error.
• Fixed an issue where in some scenarios making an adjustment for a period that spanned multiple bookings would result in an incorrect adjustment amount being invoiced. Only days within the initial booking within the period would be included in the adjustment, not days with subsequent bookings.
• When importing Direct Debit mandates into CareHQ via a CSV, the payment method is correctly updated for the associated service user or billing party to Direct Debit.
• Entering an invalid value in the fee contribution field when adding / updating a billing contract now generates a warning message, previously a page error would be raised.
• Fixed an issue where days after death invoices were not automatically raised for billing contracts billed per night (per day contracts were not affected).
• Attempting to set an issue date for a refund or write-off before the issue date of the associated invoice or credit note now generates a warning message; previously an page error would be raised.
• The way in which credit notes are generated when a service user's stay ends for fixed month billing contracts has been updated. We now credit the entire billing period during which the stay ends, and raise a new invoice covering up until the checkout date. This is to reflect that the amount charged per day changes for a partial month.
• Reopening a care enquiry now clears the previously set closed reason.
• Fixed issue where the billing party for a service user's expenses would always be shown as the service user even if it was set to a key contact for the service user. This issue did not affect invoicing and invoices were still raised for the correct billing party.
• Optimised the occupancy report. We monitor execution times for a provider with 50+ locations when reviewing a period of over 2 years and on multiple occasions the report took more than 60 seconds to complete. With the new optimisations in place the report now takes just under 2 seconds to complete.
• Fixed an issue where marking a Direct Debit transaction as returned when the associated receipt is already marked as returned would generate an error.
• Fixed issue where discharging a service user as deceased removed any pending Direct Debit mandate for the resident but did not remove transactions associated with the mandate. This would cause issues when attempt to export the collection file.
• Direct debit transaction and mandate listings now load consistently within the expected time frame of under 2 seconds. Previously page load times could occasionally spike as high as 20 seconds.