Filing, stamps and document workflows

Paperwork in a home care agency arrives all day: signed timesheets, care plans, certificates, faxes from doctors. CareComplete handles it in two stages. First a document lands in an inbox, where nobody has to decide anything yet. Then someone files it under the right people, and from then on stamps record what has happened to it.

Why an inbox first

Scanning and filing are different jobs. Whoever is at the scanner should not have to stop and work out each page's type, person and dates. An inbox lets documents arrive in bulk, be split, merged and tidied, and be filed later by someone who knows the people involved.

Your agency can have several inboxes, and each role can be given only some of them (Settings, Roles, Inboxes). Inbox names can be paths, such as Riverside/Scans and Riverside/Faxes, and a role's rule can use * to mean "any". A rule of Riverside/* opens every Riverside inbox to that role.

Ways to use this:

• An inbox per office. Each office's staff file their own office's paper.
• An inbox per kind of paper. Timesheets, hiring paperwork and clinical documents each go to the people who file them.
• A hand-off inbox. When a document needs someone else, Send to moves it to their inbox instead of emailing it around.
• Caregiver uploads. What caregivers upload from their phone can be sent to its own inbox (Settings, Portal Uploads), so it is checked before it is filed.

Filing makes the document part of a person's record

Filing gives a document its type, the people it is Filed under and its dates. One document can be filed under several people, such as a timesheet under both the client and the caregiver. The type decides its folder, and the dates are what compliance reads: a filed certificate with an expiry date is what makes a requirement current.

Who may see a filed document is decided by folder. A role can be allowed the files in some folders and not others, such as hiring paperwork for HR only. This is set once, per role, so it holds everywhere the file appears.

Stamps record what has happened since

A stamp is a coloured mark on a filed document, with who stamped it and when. Your agency defines its own stamps (Settings, Stamps), such as Reviewed, Needs correction, Entered or Approved. A stamp can also:

• Protect the file, locking its details until a stamp that un-protects it is added or the stamp is removed. Use it for documents that are final, such as a timesheet already used for payroll.
• Send it for signing, so a document of a type employees sign reaches them once it carries the stamp. The office checks it first, then stamps it out.

Each role can be given only some stamps (Settings, Roles, Stamps). That way only a nurse can stamp a care plan Clinically reviewed, or only payroll can stamp a timesheet Paid.

Workflows: stamps in order

A stamp can be given a Workflow name and an Order. Stamps of one workflow are listed together, in that order, when you stamp a file. For example, a timesheet workflow might be:

1. Received
2. Checked against visits
3. Corrections requested (if needed)
4. Approved, which protects the file

The workflow is a convention your agency agrees, not an automatic process: CareComplete does not move a document from one step to the next on its own. What it gives you is the record of each step, and the filters to find documents waiting at any step.

Turn each step into a work list

The File Cabinet filters Has a stamp and Has no stamp turn a workflow into lists. For example, timesheets filed this week that have no stamp of Approved are the ones still to approve. Save each list as a bookmark, one per step, and the person responsible for that step opens it each day.

Combine it with Filed under, Person type, Folder and the date filters to split the same step between people, such as one reviewer for clients A to M and another for N to Z.

For how to upload, file and stamp, see Filing documents from the inbox and Files and the file cabinet.