Invoicing for self-employed carers

Almost every self-employed carer we have spoken to does their invoicing on a Sunday night, from a diary, a notebook and a spreadsheet that has been copied forward since the first client. It takes hours, it is the least enjoyable part of the week, and it is where the money quietly goes missing.

The Sunday night problem

The work has already happened. You know who you saw, roughly when, and roughly for how long. The trouble is that the record of it is in three places — the diary, the notebook in the car, and your head — and by Sunday one of those has gone cold.

What gets lost is rarely a whole visit. It is the twenty minutes you stayed late, the trip to the pharmacy, the Tuesday that was cancelled at the door, and forty miles. Individually they feel too small to chase. Over a year they are a fortnight's income.

What has to be on a carer's invoice

If you are a sole trader and not VAT registered, an invoice is simpler than people fear. It needs to identify you and the person being billed, carry a unique invoice number, state the date, itemise what is being charged, and total it. If you are VAT registered the requirements are stricter and gov.uk sets them out.

The part worth getting right is the itemising. “Care, September — £840” invites a question you then have to answer from memory. A dated list of visits, hours, mileage and any cancellation charges answers it before it is asked, and it is the difference between being paid on time and having a conversation.

How it works in Carer Companion

Lines that build themselves

Every time you confirm a visit, its line joins that client's next invoice. Mileage joins it from your journey log. A late cancellation joins it at whatever percentage you have set. By the end of the month the invoice is already written, and your job is to look down it and press send.

Your rates, including out of hours

You set an hourly rate for your business and, if you charge one, a separate out-of-hours rate for evenings and weekends. Both can be overridden per client, which matters more than it sounds — almost nobody charges every client the same thing, and the exceptions are exactly what gets mis-billed.

Late cancellations

You can set your own cancellation terms as tiers — for example a percentage if a visit is cancelled within a certain number of hours, and a different one within a certain number of days. When a visit is cancelled inside that window, the charge goes onto the invoice as its own line with the reason on it. Most carers have a cancellation policy and almost none of them enforce it, because enforcing it means an awkward conversation from a standing start. It is easier when it is simply on the invoice, in writing, the way you told them it would be.

It looks like yours

Your logo, your colours, your invoice numbering and your payment details. It should look like it came from your business, because it did.

What bills: the planned time, not a stopwatch

This is a deliberate decision and worth stating plainly, because it is the first thing people ask.

A visit bills the time it was planned for, not the time you happened to be in the building. If a call is booked for an hour and you stay seventy minutes because someone needed you, the invoice still says an hour unless you change it. You can adjust the time on a visit when you confirm it, so a genuinely longer visit can be billed as one — but that is you making a decision, not the software billing by stopwatch.

The reason is simple: the alternative turns every kindness into a line item, and it makes the bill unpredictable for a family on a fixed income. Neither of those is the relationship a carer wants with the people they look after.

What it does not do

• It is not an accounting package. It raises and records invoices. It does not do your books, your Self Assessment or your VAT return, and it does not pretend to.
• It does not take the payment. Your payment details go on the invoice and the client pays you the way they already do. There is no card processing and no cut taken.
• It does not chase the money. You can see what is outstanding; the phone call is still yours to make.

Questions

Does the invoice fill itself in?

Largely, yes. Each visit you confirm adds its line to that client's next invoice, mileage comes across from your journey log, and any late-cancellation charge is added at the percentage you set. Month end becomes checking it over and sending it rather than building it from scratch.

If I stay longer than planned, does it bill more?

Not on its own. A visit bills the time it was planned for. You can adjust the time when you confirm the visit if a longer call should genuinely be billed as one, but that is your decision each time rather than the software billing by stopwatch.

Can I charge different clients different rates?

Yes. You set a standard hourly rate and an optional out-of-hours rate for the business, and either can be overridden for an individual client. The same applies to mileage.

Can I charge for visits cancelled at short notice?

Yes. You set your own cancellation tiers — a percentage within a given number of hours or days — and when a visit is cancelled inside that window the charge goes onto the invoice as its own line.

Does it take payments or take a cut?

No. Your payment details go on the invoice and the client pays you directly, however they do now. There is no card processing and we take no percentage of what you bill.

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