The problem
Care providers bill several kinds of payer for the same kind of work: local authorities, health commissioners, individuals paying privately, and combinations of them for a single person. Each has its own rates, rules and invoice expectations.
In many providers, billing is the point where the care system stops and a spreadsheet takes over. Someone exports the visits, applies the rates by hand, splits the charges between funders and builds the invoices. It is slow, it depends on one or two people, and errors surface weeks later as disputed invoices.
What we set out to build
We wanted billing in Onarvo Care to be a consequence of recording care properly, not a separate job done afterwards. The design goal was simple: if a visit has been completed and recorded, the system should already know who pays for it and how much.
How it works
Billing from what actually happened
Charges are calculated from completed visits and the care package each service user receives. Planned visits that did not happen are not billed, so billing follows delivery rather than the rota.
Funding rules, not manual splits
Each service user can have multiple payers and funders, with the rules for who pays what held in the system. The split is applied automatically every billing period.
Pay and invoice rates kept separate
Providers set the rates they pay carers and the rates they invoice funders independently, so margin is visible and neither depends on the other being updated.
Billing periods and invoice export
Billing is run by period. The system produces the charges for each payer and exports invoices, removing the spreadsheet step entirely.
Design decisions
- One record, many uses. The visit record that a carer completes on the mobile app is the same record that drives billing, reporting and compliance. Nothing is retyped.
- Rules in configuration, not code. Rates and funding rules are set by the provider, because they change far more often than the software does.
- Billing as part of a wider platform. Billing sits alongside service user records, care plans, visit scheduling, carer compliance and incident reporting, so the data it depends on is already there.
What this means beyond care
The same pattern applies to any organisation that bills from delivered work: councils' traded services, shared services and anyone running billing from spreadsheets. Contracts and rules live in the system, delivery drives the charges, and invoices are validated before they go out. We describe that approach in our contract management, billing and invoicing solution.
Find out more about Onarvo Care.