The list on the administrator's desk
Several of your residents have a third-party top-up: a son, a daughter or a niece pays the difference between the council rate and your fee. Some pay by standing order, and it goes wrong when the fee changes. Some transfer money when they remember, with a reference like 'Mum care'. Two have not paid since the spring and nobody has quite said anything.
At some point the manager has to ring. It is awkward. The relative is grieving, or stretched, or thinks the council pays everything. The call happens at the end of a long day, and gets put off again.
Why top-up arrears creep up
The top-up sits between two worlds. The council deals with its own share. The family deals with the home. But the home often treats the top-up as an informal arrangement rather than a proper account, with no statement, no due date the family can see and no easy way to pay.
Payments are then hard to match. A transfer with a vague reference from a joint account has to be worked out by hand. If it is short because the fee went up and nobody changed the standing order, that difference sits unnoticed until someone looks.
And the chasing is personal. Staff who care for the resident do not want to be debt collectors to the family, which is completely understandable, and why arrears grow.
What informal top-ups cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| No regular statement | Families do not know what they owe |
| Vague bank references | Payments matched by guesswork |
| Fee rise not passed on | Standing orders keep paying the old amount |
| Calls made late | Arrears already large by the first conversation |
| Care staff doing credit control | Strained relationships with relatives |
When arrears are found late, the eventual conversation is much harder than a small reminder would have been at the time.
The top-up account we build
- A payer record for each top-up: who pays, how much, from which date, and the agreement it comes from.
- A monthly statement emailed to the payer, showing the amount due, what has been received and the balance, with a unique reference to use.
- Payment options that suit families: a card or bank payment link through Stripe or GoCardless, and a Direct Debit mandate so fee changes are collected at the new amount after the notice you give.
- Bank feed matching: incoming payments matched to the right payer by reference and amount, with unmatched payments put in a short list for the administrator.
- Reminders on a schedule you choose, written in a tone you approve, with the option to pause them for a particular family when the manager knows there is a reason.
- Payments and balances posted to Xero, Sage or QuickBooks, so the accounts match what families see.
What you do about a family that cannot pay is a decision for the home and, where needed, your adviser. The system simply makes sure nobody is surprised by what they owe.
After the switch
Families get a clear statement each month and a simple way to pay. Most pay without prompting. Fee changes are notified and collected properly. The administrator sees a short list of payments that did not match, rather than trawling the bank statement.
The manager only makes a call when the reminders have not worked, and when they do, they have the full payment history in front of them. The conversation starts from facts, not from a vague feeling that something is owed.
Is this familiar?
- Top-up payers receive no regular statement
- Transfers arrive with references you have to decode
- Standing orders still pay last year's amount
- The manager does the chasing, reluctantly
- You found a large arrear only when a resident left