One shift feeds payroll and billing

In CareComplete there is no separate payroll timesheet and billing timesheet. Each shift is worked once, its times are approved once, and both payroll and billing are made from those same approved times. The caregiver is paid for, and the client billed for, the same visit.

That removes a whole class of mistakes: hours paid but never billed, hours billed that nobody worked, or two sets of numbers that slowly drift apart. When something looks wrong on an invoice, you can open the shift and see the times and the pay side by side.

Each side still follows its own rules

The two sides start from the same times but are not forced to be identical. Each applies its own rounding, its own code and rate, and its own treatment of miles, expenses and relieved time such as a meal break. When one side genuinely needs different hours, you can override that side alone. A red flag can warn you when the pay and bill hours differ, if your agency wants to know.

Finalising is the sign-off

A shift moves through its statuses as things happen to it: Open with no caregiver, Scheduled, Incomplete or Complete as times are approved, then Finalised, and finally paid and billed. CareComplete works the status out from the shift itself; nobody sets it by hand, so it always matches what the shift holds.

The one deliberate step is finalising. It says "this shift has been checked, and payroll and billing may use it". A shift can only be finalised when:

• it is Complete, with both an approved start and end;
• every red flag on it has been reviewed;
• its payroll and billing have finished being worked out, so the flags that depend on them have had a chance to appear.

Whether the shift was shared or confirmed does not matter here. Those are scheduling records, and a shift that was really worked is paid and billed either way.

Locks protect what has been used

Each step locks a little more, so nothing that has already been relied on changes underneath it:

• Finalised locks the visit itself: its times, its people and where it took place.
• Billed also locks the client's side: the bill code and rate.
• Paid also locks the caregiver's side: the pay code and rate.

If a finalised shift needs a correction, unfinalise it, fix it and finalise it again. Once it is paid or billed, it can no longer be unfinalised, because an invoice or a paycheque already depends on it.

The same thinking lies behind cancelling. A shift is cancelled, not deleted, so the record of it stays. Deleting for good is only possible after cancelling, and never for a shift a caregiver has clocked or answered tasks on, because that is evidence of work done.

A weekly routine

1. Early in the week, open Timesheets on last week.
2. Work the Needs attention chips: missed clocks, missing approved times, open red flags.
3. Finalise everything under Ready to finalise in one go. Shifts that cannot be finalised are named with the reason, and the rest go through.
4. Check Earlier outstanding so nothing from previous weeks is left behind.

For the steps, see Finalising and unfinalising shifts and Checking a shift's pay and bill.