Late summer round up 2026

From tracking outbound calls to automatically syncing invoices and payments with Xero, it's been a busy quarter for new features. We've also continued to expand our Knowledge base, thanks to the work of Ross, our dedicated documentation author, making it easier to find the guidance you need, whenever you need it.

A growing Knowledge base

If you find yourself wondering how to do something within CareHQ, it's worth visiting the Knowledge base section of our website, which you can find under the Learn heading in the top navigation bar.

The Knowledge base has grown significantly over the last 12 months, thanks to the work of Ross, our dedicated documentation author. Ross spends his days identifying common (and some not-so-common) support queries and writing helpful articles for other users who might have the same questions.

Each article provides clear, step-by-step instructions to guide you through a particular task within CareHQ. They're designed to be helpful and concise (we aim to keep them to a five-minute read or less), with links to related topics at the bottom if you'd like to explore something in more detail.

The Knowledge base is divided into sections to help you quickly find relevant articles, or you can use the search field at the top of the page if you have something specific in mind.

We publish multiple new help articles every month, but if you can't find the answer you're looking for, you're always welcome to contact the CareHQ support team at support@crmhq.co.uk.

Outbound call tracking is now live

Launched in August, CareHQ now supports making and tracking outbound calls to care seekers.

Calls are initiated directly from within CareHQ. Before each call, users record the reason for calling, and once the call has finished, they record whether the outcome was successful. This information feeds into two new dedicated reports: Call outcomes and Time to call, helping teams monitor follow-up activity and better understand how often outbound calls are made and why.

CareHQ can also retain audio recordings and automatically generate AI summaries of each call. Both features are optional, allowing care providers to decide whether to enable them in line with their own data protection policies and legal obligations.

You can read more about outbound call tracking in our recent update article, or contact support@crmhq.co.uk if you'd like to discuss setting it up for selected care homes or across your entire portfolio.

Two-way API sync with Xero

In September, we introduced a new two-way integration with Xero, offering an alternative to the existing process of exporting invoices and credit notes from CareHQ and manually uploading them to Xero as CSV files.

With the new integration, approved invoices and credit notes can be automatically synced with your Xero account. Payments, refunds, credit allocations and write-offs are also automatically fed back from Xero, allowing you to view accurate invoice and credit note balances and payment histories within CareHQ.

If you're using Xero to send invoices to customers, the integration can also update the sent status of invoices in CareHQ whenever it changes in Xero.

While recommended, syncing invoice balances and sent statuses is optional and can be disabled if preferred.

For care groups consisting of multiple companies, each with its own Xero account, CareHQ supports multiple integrations. This allows you to connect each Xero company separately and allocate the relevant care locations to each integration.

You can learn more about the two-way Xero integration in our recent update article, or contact support@crmhq.co.uk to discuss setting up Xero for the CareHQ integration.

Other updates & fixes

• A list and export of all rooms across your portfolio is now available, including the option to specify a date when viewing the list so that you can view room statuses historically.
• Added support for setting up departments within location contacts. Departments are especially useful for councils and ICBs where you may bill multiple departments separately within the same organisation.
• Added support for recording additional contacts (people) against location contacts. This change was made to make it easier to track multiple key contacts against an organisation and was part of the work towards allowing location contacts and their key contacts to be associated with care enquiries.
• Added a new write-off tally report which allows you to see a tally of written off amounts for a given period by reference.
• Billing contracts can now be excluded from the billing rate by using a ruleset with the Exclude from booking rate option.
• Brevo integration now supported (Brevo is an email marketing platform competing with the likes of Mailchimp).
• Support for importing the billing party set against service users to pay their expenses has been added to the import engine.
• New documentation available:
  • How to manage returning respite residents
  • How to import service user expenses
  • How to set up day care
  • How to manage day care bookings
  • How to change a resident's booking rate
  • Customise how service users are identified within invoices to specific billing parties
  • Outbound call tracking setup, call outcomes and reporting
  • How to make an outbound call to a care seeker
  • How to set up Mailchimp integration with CareHQ
  • How to write off outstanding invoices individually or in bulk

• Service user documents now support a new workflow to prevent files being lost. Now only account owners can delete documents and they must be archived. Files removed from the documents are retained in the previous files section and can be viewed/downloaded.
• When generating expense invoices you can now filter by Payment method: Not set.
• Added invoice line item data to invoice API endpoint responses.
• Added a notes field against rooms.
• Added a Ready to move into flag to rooms.
• Added last comment against a care enquiry to cards on the sales pipeline report.
• Added Broadcare number and patient Id for service users to the receipt items that are reconciled.
• EFT payment method added for billing parties.
• The service user expenses detailed listing and export now show if items have been invoiced and offer an option to filter items based on if they have been invoiced.
• Added an option to disable sending notifications for failed Direct Debit collections.
• Added support for configuring Mailchimp to remove service user contacts from Mailchimp if they become inactive. Also updated rules around deceased for service user contacts so that they are removed if the relationship is personal or no relationship is defined.
• Added a BACS standard 18 export format that works for Barclays (Barclays break from the BACS standard 18 format on 0N and 0C transactions).
• Added a background task to clear up (delete) non-exported direct debit collection transactions associated with cancelled direct debit mandates.
• Added support for sending PeopleSoft journal entries in chunks (for larger providers this is required to ensure a sync can occur overnight).
• We've changed the billing contract import to now use FEE_CONTRIBUTION_UNIT_SET_AS instead of FEE_CONTRIBUTION_UNIT and this provides support for setting fixed_month_monthly or fixed_month_weekly.
• Added support for excluding a department from Tradeshift.
• Added Tradeshift fields to the location contact export.
• Added account codes to the credit control UI.
• The service user API create endpoint now supports billing_enabled flag.
• Added patient Id to export for Xero.
• Moved zero rate booking config into service users settings not finance (so it can be set even if invoicing isn't enabled).
• Service user status column tag added to the billing discrepancies report.
• Integrations with services such as Carehome.co.uk, Mailchimp, Autumna etc. now run every 30 minutes (reduced from 60).
• Added tag and location group filters to location contact > people listings.
• Broadcare number now appears when reconciling receipts.
• Tax amount is now shown separately in the invoice preview.
• Added support for automatically suspending users who are inactive for an extended period (configurable by account, defaults to 365 days).
• Location contact people can now be synced to Mailchimp.
• Added room notes column to room listings.
• Added last comment column to the care enquiry export.
• Added support for setting a reference against a write-off.
• Added an option to write off multiple invoices / credit notes at a time.
• Added support for adding tags against service users.
• Added service user status tag to the assigned to options when adding or updating a receipt.
• Added support for setting the day for the month for monthly billing schedules to days 29-31.
• Added an additional tab to the Acquisitions by source report showing all details for the care enquiry.
• Added shortcut to add care enquiries and service users from the related search UIs.
• Added a location group filter to the billing schedule report.

• Credit allocation export file name now correctly labels credit allocations - previously it was mislabelled write-offs.
• Fixed issue where paused billing contract report would error if a paused contract was a fixed month contract.
• Fixed issue on service user balances page where the date filter wasn't applied and the balances always reflected the balance on the current date.
• Aged debt by service user now scopes the locations shown to a user with a custom role to the locations they are assigned access to.
• Resolved issue where in some scenarios contracts cannot be linked to an existing contract that was previously linked to by a cancelled contract.
• Fixed issue where it was possible to partner a resident with more than one resident.
• Prevented receipts being assigned to a contact without billing enabled on import.
• Branding on statement PDFs and emails fixed.
• Multiple events on the same day now show correctly on the calendar month view.
• Export billing schedules and rulesets no longer errors when applying a text search.
• Fixed issue where absence start and end date/times did not correctly handle time zones.
• Additional validation added to prevent dementia being set to true when a service type does not support it (such as for bariatric care).
• Statements for location contacts can now be viewed by users without scope of all locations the location contact is associated with, provided the statement is for an in scope location or service user.
• Non-UK mobile numbers are no longer shown as an option for sending SMS messages to (since this is not supported by CareHQ and results in an error).
• Fixed issue with user activity stats not being recorded.
• Fixed issue where Direct Debit bank exports would show a format as NONE in the export log.
• Resolved issue where merge location contacts didn't maintain their multiple location flag correctly.