Six surgeries, nine physios and a spreadsheet per contract
Your physiotherapy business supplies first contact practitioners to several GP practices and primary care networks. Each surgery has agreed a number of sessions a week on particular days. Your physios work across two or three surgeries each. When someone is on leave, the surgery expects cover or a credit.
The rota is a spreadsheet per contract. Leave requests arrive by email. Surgery practice managers email to ask who is coming on Thursday. At month end, someone works out sessions delivered per surgery from the rota and timesheets, allowing for cancellations, and raises invoices that sometimes do not match what the surgery thinks it received.
Why FCP supply is admin-heavy
FCP work sits inside someone else's organisation. The physio uses the surgery's clinical system and follows its processes, but is employed or contracted by you. The contract is between your business and the practice or network, with its own terms for sessions, cover and payment.
Every change ripples. A physio's leave affects one or more surgeries. A surgery closing for training affects your physio's week. A new contract changes everyone's pattern. With spreadsheets and email, each change is manual and some are missed.
Practice managers at the surgeries have their own pressures. They need to fill their appointment books for the FCP sessions and tell their reception teams which days are covered. When they cannot see your rota, they ring or email, and each query lands on whoever at your business happens to pick it up.
Invoicing needs to reflect sessions actually delivered, which means knowing about every cancellation, swap and extra session, often recorded in different places.
What the spreadsheet approach costs
| Problem | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Rota changes by email | Surgeries unsure who is coming |
| Cover arranged late | Sessions lost, credits owed |
| Timesheets separate from rota | Invoices built by hand, sometimes wrong |
| Contract terms in documents | Cover and cancellation rules applied inconsistently |
| No overview | Hard to see capacity for new contracts |
How we run FCP contracts from one place
- Each contract is recorded with its agreed sessions, days, locations and terms for cover, cancellation and payment.
- A rota is generated from the contracts and your physios' patterns, and each surgery sees its own upcoming sessions and named physio through a simple view.
- Leave requests go through the system, show which sessions they affect, and open those sessions for cover by other suitable physios.
- Physios confirm sessions worked on their phone, including any change on the day, which becomes the timesheet.
- At month end, invoices per contract are drafted in Xero or QuickBooks from sessions delivered, with credits applied according to each contract's terms.
- A capacity view shows how many sessions each physio can still take, which helps when bidding for new work.
The clinical work happens in the surgery's own systems under their governance. We only handle the scheduling, timesheets and invoicing on your side.
What changes for the business
Surgeries know who is coming and when, without emailing. Cover is arranged as soon as leave is approved. Timesheets are accurate because physios confirm sessions on the day. Invoices match what surgeries received, so they are paid without argument. And you can see your capacity before promising sessions to a new network.
Your physios benefit as well. They see their whole week across surgeries in one place and can pick up extra cover sessions if they want them.
When a network asks, at renewal, how many sessions were delivered and how cover was handled, the answer comes straight from the record. That is a stronger position than a folder of spreadsheets, and it makes your business look like the organised supplier it is.
Is FCP admin taking over?
- Each contract has its own rota spreadsheet
- Surgeries email to ask who is coming
- Cover for leave is arranged at the last minute
- Invoices are built from rotas and timesheets by hand
- You are unsure how much capacity you have for new contracts