Please note: The ability to use Fixed Rates is available as part of Birdie’s Starter, Core, Advanced and Plus packages as well as Care Management, Rostering & Finance, Premium, Entry and Essentials. Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!
Please note: The ability to override for specific clients and visit schedules is part of all Birdie Finance packages, excluding the Entry package. Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!
Birdie has been introducing more flexibility when creating rate cards. As part of this work, the team has created fixed rates to better support the funding of Overnight visits and Live-in care.
The rate types now available in the Birdie Platform include:
Single - Single rate can be used if you charge an hourly rate for your care
Banded - Rates set up as time bands, with time-banded rates associated with visit length (i.e 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes)
Fixed - Rates set up for a fixed visit length
How to use fixed rates if you have a single overnight visit length
Some agencies will have one overnight visit length for their fixed visits - i.e. 10 hours for sleeping nights, and 10 hours for waking nights. If this scenario applies to your agency, read the below instructions.
To create a fixed rate for your overnight visits first go to the Finance tab and click on Pay rates on the left menu under Manage Payroll, to first create an overnight pay rate.
To set up an overnight pay rate, you can choose to create a new rate card by clicking on the New Pay Rate or you can click on an existing one and click on Edit.
Once you have created or selected the pay rate card, you will then:
Click Add service type rate
Choose the service type, i.e. Sleeping night or Waking night
Click Add rate
Select Day type
Select when the rate Applies
As rate select Fixed
Enter your overnight rate and click Add
Please note: you can add multiple service type rates to one rate card (i.e. if you want to record rates for Personal Care, Companionship, and Sleeping and Waking Night visits on the same card.) And as a last step click Save.
You would repeat the above steps to then create an Overnight Invoicing rate. To read more about how to create an invoice rate card, read this article.
The below showcases an example Overnight Pay Rate card, that includes both Single hourly rates for Personal Care and Companionship as well as Fixed rates for Sleeping and Waking nights.
How to use fixed rates if you have multiple overnight visit lengths
If you have a more diverse set of overnight visit lengths (i.e. a combination of 8-hour fixed visits, 10-hour fixed visits, and/or 12-hour fixed visits) you can set different overnight rates for those different visit lengths.
STEP 1: The best practice for managing it is first setting up the overnight rate for the visit length (i.e. 10 hours) that is most common across your agency. For instance, if you have different overnight rates for 8, 10 and 12 hours visit lengths and your most common visits are 10 hours, you would first set up a rate card for that 10-hour fixed visit by following the steps above and assigning the rate card to your Carer(s) as normal.
STEP 2: In addition, you need to create separate rate cards for each of the other fixed visit lengths that need to be accommodated e.g. one pay rate card for 8-hour overnight visits and another pay rate card for 12-hour overnight visits.
You can create them by following the same steps above. We recommend naming them clearly with the visit length they have been created for.
Please note: At this point, you would not assign these rate cards to any carers.
You would repeat the above steps to then create an Overnight Invoicing rate. To read more about how to create an invoice rate card, read this article.
How do I apply these additional fixed visit rates to a visit?
If a client has a fixed visit length that is different to your most common/default fixed visit set-up (i.e. 8 hours instead of the default 10 hours), you will need to manually override this for that specific client. You would do this by clicking into their visit schedule and applying the fixed rate, much as you would when selecting funding for a visit schedule.
To apply one of those bespoke fixed rates to a particular visit schedule:
Click into the particular Visit (either from within the Roster tab or within Visit Planning on the client profile)
Choose View visit details option by clicking on the particular visit
Click Edit
Then click on More options
Choose Override rate cards
Select the Pay rate you would like to apply for this visit
Click Save
When calculating a pay rate the system will now see the Carer's normal, assigned rate card but also evaluate the schedule-specific rate card, and pick the rate on the latter for visits to this particular client and visit schedule.
By setting the 'default' pay rate card up with the most common length of overnight visits, you can minimise the amount of work required to assign bespoke rate cards to certain visit schedules.
You would then repeat this process to override and select the correct Charge rate card as you did with the Pay rate above.
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