Please note: The following feature is available as part of Birdie’s Starter, Core, Advanced and Plus packages (Also known as Care Management, Rostering & Finance, Premium, Entry and Essentials). Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!
When it comes to getting ready for payroll and invoicing, you will first start by reconciling and confirming your visits. You will do this in one central place, which then feeds into both your Generate pay runs and Generate invoices pages.
Step 1: Go to the Confirm Visits tab
Go to the Confirm Visits tab in the top left sidebar of your Finance tab. Here, you will see a selection of filters at the top of the screen as well as a list of all visits that are waiting to be confirmed.
This table of visits is organised into helpful columns, including:
Date of visit
People (client and carer)
Planned time
Actual time
Discrepancy (gap between planned and actual timings)
Paid time
Invoiced time
Tags (Visual cues for Finance Managers)
On this screen, you will also see additional options, allowing you to identify if you pay and/or invoice by planned or actual times.
Step 2: Filter the results
Use the filters at the top of the Confirm visits screen to filter the table down to the most relevant information before reconciling or confirming visits.
Tip! We first recommend that you filter by the time period you wish to review visits.
You can filter to select all in the carer and client fields to quickly select all the relevant persons.
Once you have selected your filters, the table will then reflect that selection. You can also select multiple visits efficiently by using the small checkbox above the list of visit dates for bulk confirmation.
Step 3: Filter and confirm visits that have been completed
Once you have filtered down to the visits within a specific time period, we recommend that you filter to visits that have been completed.
Birdie defines a completed visit as one that has a check-in and check-out time recorded from the mobile app.
To do this, click on the Visit completed filter at the top of the screen and select Yes from the drop-down menu.
Once you have selected this, the table below will show only visits that have been completed.
Looking at the table, you can easily see if there are visits where actual and planned times match - or if there is a small discrepancy.
For those that match or meet your discrepancy threshold, you can confirm these in bulk.
To bulk confirm visits, use the small checkbox located above the list of visit dates to select multiple visits for the selected date range efficiently.
Then click Confirm in the top right-hand corner.
You can select all (or some) of the visits on the confirmation page, and choose to Confirm only for invoicing or Confirm only for payroll. This is relevant to those who use shift pay.
Upon choosing one of the options, all the selected visits will be confirmed in that section and discarded in the other.
It is critical that you carefully review the timings and the actions you are taking to avoid the visit being accidentally discarded and therefore not paid or charged for.
When you confirm a visit, you will get a pop-up like below. In order for the visit to be successfully charged and paid for, you should see two green ticks.
You can now click Confirm.
Please note: If you try and confirm a visit and you see the below pop-up where there are one or more errors, this is because visits that show "N/A" in their paid/invoiced time columns cannot be successfully paid or charged for and will be discarded from payroll/invoicing.
Visits that are discarded will not be added to the invoice or the care professional's payslip.
See images of the warnings below.
If you want to confirm for invoicing only or payroll only, click the arrow next to the Confirm button. Once you have selected the visits, you can decide whether they are confirmed for both payroll and invoicing or just one.
Step 4: Reconcile visits that require further investigation
For any completed visits that require further investigation, for instance, there is a large discrepancy between the actual and planned times, we recommend that you review them further.
You can first filter by the discrepancy by clicking the Discrepancy filter and selecting visits that run under or over your limits.
Once you have filtered your visits, click the notepad icon to the left of any visit. This will pull up a menu:
Edit timings
Record expense
Manage expenses
Please note: You will not see the record or manage expense options on the drop-down menu if the visit has not been completed.
Click on Edit timings. This will open up the visit card, allowing you to review and make any edits needed.
Within the visit card, you will see the planned visit timing as well as the actual visit timing. Below that, you will also see the paid timings and charged timings.
We recommend that you check what times have been recorded under paid times and charged times to ensure you are paying your carers and charging your funders for the appropriate timings.
You can make adjustments if something looks wrong, and you can use the quick action buttons. These will let you:
Select that Planned visit timing be Use as paid and/or Use as charged
Select that Actual visit timing be Use as paid and/or Use as charged
If you click on these buttons, you will see that the timings below will change to reflect the actual or planned timings, depending on what you have clicked.
Or you can go in and manually edit the paid or charged timings by using the time and date selector.
If you edit manually, you will need to select the date and time they are Paid from and Paid until. Once happy with these timings, click Save.
Once you are happy with these reviews and any adjustments you have made, you are now ready to confirm the visit.
Please note: It is critical that you review the timings and the actions you are taking to avoid the visit being accidentally discarded and therefore not paid or charged for.
When you confirm a visit, you will get a pop-up. In order for the visit to be successfully charged and paid for, you should see two green ticks. You can click Confirm.
Step 5: Reconcile visits that have not been ‘Completed’
After you have reviewed and confirmed all visits that have been completed, we recommend you review any visits that have not been completed.
Birdie defines a visit that has not been completed as one where we do not have a record of your carer checking in or out on the mobile app.
To see visits that have not been completed, click into the Visit completed filter at the top of the screen and select No from the drop-down menu.
Once you have selected this, the table below will then reflect that selection.
You can then go in and further investigate these visits. If you want to pay your carers or charge for these uncompleted visits, you will need to ensure you edit the paid timings and/or charged timings within the visit card.
See Step 4 for how to reconcile and edit visits that require further investigation.
You can then confirm these reconciled visits as before.
Step 6: Review any visits in the unscheduled visits or discarded tabs
As a final step in the confirmation process, we recommend you take a look at any visits that are in the following tabs:
Unscheduled visits
Discarded from Payroll
Discarded from Invoices.
On the Confirm visits tab, click on Unscheduled visits. If there are any visits here, you can click on the individual visit to edit it.
As necessary, you can add funding info to these visits if you have set up the client's funding via the Funding: Clients tab, which allows you to confirm and charge them.
Once you have selected the funding information, click Save funding information.
Once saved, you can then choose to invoice for this visit. To do so, tick the Should charge box.
You can then edit the timings that you want to use for the charged timings.
Once happy with those adjustments, click Save.
We advise that you review both the Discarded from Payroll and Discarded from Invoicing tabs to ensure a visit meant to be confirmed has not accidentally ended up in the discarded tabs.
You can restore a visit if you have accidentally discarded it. Click the Discarded from payroll or Discarded from invoicing tab to view these visits.
Here you will see the visits that have been discarded. You can use the filters to search through if need be.
Once you have found the visit, click the box next to the client's name and then click Restore. These selected visits will move back to the list of visits to confirm.
Tags on the Confirm visits page
When getting ready to confirm visits, you may see information populated in the Tags column. These aim to give you information about that visit so that you can decide whether to confirm it or not.
Some examples:
Double booking tag
You will see a double-booked tag on the visit confirmation page, which will prompt you to confirm only one of these visits to payroll so that the carer is paid correctly.
This will appear when a carer has 2 or more visits starting and ending at the same time.
Confirmed visits & the Birdie app
Once you have confirmed your visits for payroll, these will be shown on the carers app.
They will see the past month of confirmed visits, which gives them visibility over what visits they have completed and allows them to raise any concerns they may have regarding their pay.
Please note: They will only see visits that have been confirmed. For more information on what they will see in the app, please read this article- How to view your timesheet on the Birdie app.
Troubleshooting
For troubleshooting and commonly asked questions, see the article here.
Remember!
Promptly confirm visits to prevent delays in payroll or invoicing
Regularly check flagged or discarded visits to ensure they are correctly processed
Manual adjustments may be necessary to resolve flagged entries
Step-by-step guide
You may find the below visit confirmation flowchart helpful, click here to download the PDF!
Birdie Academy video