A payment that is short again
Your agency works for two councils and takes a few health-funded packages. Each council has its own portal. One pays on planned time as long as the carer logged in. The other pays on actual minutes from electronic call monitoring, rounded in its own way. Payments arrive with a remittance listing hundreds of calls.
This month, one council paid noticeably less than you expected. Some calls show as unmonitored because a carer's phone had no signal and they logged manually. Some are paid at 15 minutes where you delivered 30. A client's package was increased three weeks ago, but the council's system still shows the old hours. Working it out takes your finance person most of a week.
Why the numbers never line up
Each commissioner sets its own rules. Planned versus actual time, rounding, minimum call lengths, tolerance for early or late arrival, treatment of two-carer calls, and what happens to manually logged calls. Your rostering system may not hold those rules.
Call monitoring data is imperfect. Poor signal, a client's landline no longer working, a carer's phone out of battery. Each gap turns into a query or a lower payment unless it is fixed on the portal before the deadline.
Package changes are the third cause. The social worker changes the package, the agency starts delivering the new hours, and the council's system is updated later. Until then, the extra calls look unauthorised.
What the gap costs
| Cause | Effect on income |
|---|---|
| Rounding or tolerance rules | Calls paid at less than delivered |
| Unmonitored calls not corrected | Calls unpaid or queried |
| Package changes not updated | Extra hours treated as unauthorised |
| Portal deadlines missed | Corrections too late for the period |
| No per-call comparison | Shortfalls accepted without challenge |
Home care margins are thin. Small differences on many calls make a real difference to whether you can pay carers properly.
How we reconcile each commissioner
- A rules profile for each commissioner, taken from your contract: planned or actual time, rounding, minimum lengths, tolerances and handling of manual logs.
- Planned calls read from your rostering system and monitored calls read from your call monitoring data, through APIs or exports.
- An expected payment per call, calculated under each commissioner's rules before the remittance arrives.
- Gap alerts during the period: unmonitored calls, calls outside tolerance, and calls with no matching authorised package, so they can be fixed on the portal before the deadline.
- Remittance reading and matching line by line against the expected payment, with differences grouped by reason.
- Matched income posted to Xero, Sage or QuickBooks through their APIs, and a list of queries ready to send to each council.
We apply the rules as they appear in your contracts. Whether a council has applied its contract correctly is for you to raise with them, with the evidence the system gives you.
A payment you can explain
During the month, the coordinator fixes monitoring gaps while there is still time. Package changes that are not yet authorised show up early, so the social worker can be chased. When the remittance arrives, most of it matches and the differences are listed with a reason.
Finance time goes on the queries that matter, and the conversation with the council is specific: these calls, these dates, this rule.
Is this what happens to your payments?
- Council payments are regularly less than expected
- Each council's payment rules live in someone's head
- Unmonitored calls are found after the portal deadline
- Package changes are delivered before they are authorised
- Reconciling a remittance takes days