Billing home care: invoices, taxes, insurers, and payments

CareKindle generates client invoices from the visits your caregivers complete. Each invoice is built from real service lines, so the amount a family sees maps to the care that was actually delivered, not an estimate.

When you mark an invoice as taxable, CareKindle reads the country and region on the client’s primary address and applies the matching rate and label: GST/HST by province in Canada, state sales tax in the United States, VAT across the United Kingdom and the EU, GST in Australia and New Zealand. An Ontario client and an Alberta client are taxed correctly off the same workflow, and so are a London client and a Texas one. Some places charge more than one tax on the same supply, so what an invoice carries is an ordered list rather than a single number — each part prints as its own line with its own label, rate, and amount, and each is rounded on its own so the rows you print add up to the total you print.

What the invoice records is what it charged. The label, the rate, and the amount of every tax line are written onto the invoice when it is created, not looked up again when it is printed, so a statutory rate change months later never rewrites a document your client already received — reprint it in five years and it comes back exactly as they saw it.

Canada’s provincial sales taxes — BC and Saskatchewan PST, Manitoba RST, Québec QST — ship as rates CareKindle knows but never charges on its own. Every one stays off until your agency turns it on in Settings → Tax & invoicing, because whether your service sits on a province’s taxable list is a registration question only you can answer. Turn one on and it is charged as a second line alongside the 5% GST for clients with an address in that province, and invoices you have already issued are not changed. As a worked example: a $1,234.50 invoice for a BC client shows a single GST (5%) line of $61.73 by default; with BC PST turned on, the same invoice shows GST (5%) $61.73 and PST (7%) $86.42, for a total of $1,382.65.

Those built-in rates are a practical starting point, not tax advice, and they do not try to be every tax a jurisdiction can levy — the US county and city rates that sit on top of a state rate are not modelled at all, and neither are EU reduced or zero-rated categories. Where a default is wrong for you, or where your country has no built-in default at all, you set your own rate in Settings → Tax & invoicing: up to four parts for one region, each with its own label and rate, named exactly as your invoices should say. Your agency’s tax registration number can sit on the invoice too. What you charge and remit stays your decision; CareKindle applies it consistently.

In Canada, where the rate follows the province, CareKindle blocks a taxable invoice when the client has no province on file rather than guess a rate or silently apply 0% — it tells you to add a province first, or to invoice as non-taxable. Elsewhere a blank region is allowed, because a country-level VAT or GST does not need one. And whether a service is taxable at all can depend on the type of care and your circumstances: home care is exempt more often than not, so taxability stays a per-invoice decision that defaults to off. The federal GST/HST is a choice too: it starts on, and an agency that is not a GST/HST registrant — a small supplier, for example — can switch it off in Settings → Tax & invoicing so its taxable invoices charge no federal tax at all. CareKindle gives you the controls to reflect your own decision and does not provide tax advice.

• Invoices priced straight from completed visits.
• The rate and the label come from the client’s location, not a flat guess.
• Built-in defaults for Canada, the US, the UK and EU, Australia and New Zealand.
• A region that charges two taxes prints two lines, each with its own label, rate, and amount.
• Provincial PST, QST and RST stay off until you turn them on — CareKindle never adds them for you.
• Set your own rate and your own label anywhere the default does not fit.
• In Canada, a taxable invoice with no province on file is blocked, not estimated.
• Rates and the generation date are stamped on each invoice, so a reprint years later matches what was charged.

Your agency chooses the currency it invoices in: Settings → Tax & invoicing offers Canadian and US dollars, euros, pounds sterling, Australian and New Zealand dollars, and Swiss francs. Every new invoice is issued in that currency, and the grand total prints its ISO code — “Total (CAD)”, “Total (USD)” — so a client reading a dollar figure can tell which dollar it is.

The currency is stamped on each invoice as it is created, the same way its tax lines are. Change the setting and only invoices created afterwards follow the new choice; everything already issued keeps the currency it went out in and reprints unchanged. The change itself is recorded in the audit trail, so “what were we billing in that month” has an answer.

CareKindle does not convert between currencies or apply an exchange rate — it invoices in the currency you chose, and your own books stay the source of truth. Your invoicing currency is also separate from what CareKindle charges your agency for its own subscription; the two never mix.

• Seven currencies: Canadian and US dollars, euros, pounds, Australian and New Zealand dollars, Swiss francs.
• Stamped at issue — already-issued invoices are never redenominated.
• The total carries its ISO code, so the amount is never ambiguous.
• No conversion and no exchange rates; separate from your CareKindle subscription.

When a client cancels at short notice, the office can record a late-cancellation fee at the moment it cancels the visit, with a reason for the record. The fee bills the client without paying the caregiver — a cancelled visit was never worked, so payroll, which only pays completed visits, leaves it out.

The fee surfaces on the client’s next invoice as a clearly labelled “Late cancellation” line alongside any delivered care, so the charge is transparent and tied to a documented reason rather than a mystery amount.

A visit that is already in progress can’t be cancelled out from under the caregiver: if someone has clocked in, you clock the visit out to record the time worked instead. That keeps a billable cancellation strictly a not-yet-started event and prevents a charge from colliding with real worked time.

• Late-cancellation fee entered at cancel time, with a reason.
• Client is billed; the caregiver is not paid for a cancelled visit.
• Shows as a labelled “Late cancellation” line on the next invoice.
• An in-progress visit can’t be cancelled — clock it out instead.

Families pay how they pay — bank transfer, cheque, card, Interac e-Transfer in Canada. The payment method is a free-text field, so you record what actually happened against the invoice it settles, and your receivables reflect what has really arrived in your account.

Marking a payment updates the balance on that invoice, which keeps your outstanding list honest and tells you at a glance who still owes. Once an invoice has payments recorded against it, CareKindle won’t let you void it — voiding would strand that money against a dead invoice — so you reverse the payment first if a correction is needed.

CareKindle records the payments you enter; it does not move money or connect to your bank. You reconcile against your own deposits, and your books stay the source of truth.

Each client’s Billing tab carries a small ledger for two kinds of money: credits — goodwill adjustments you grant, like making up for a rough visit — and deposits — money a family has actually paid in advance, recorded with the method, reference, and date received. The balance is always computed from that ledger, and the history shows what each entry was for, how much has been applied, and what remains.

The two behave differently on purpose, because they sit on opposite sides of tax. A credit is a price adjustment, so it comes off before tax: when you generate a private-pay invoice, available credit is applied as a negative “Account credit applied” line that reduces the taxable base. On a taxable invoice at 13% — Ontario HST, as a worked example — a $100 credit takes $113 off what the family owes: the credit and the tax it would have carried. Put your own rate in and the arithmetic is the same.

A deposit is money on account, not a discount, so tax is still charged on the full service value. When you send the invoice, the deposit is applied as a payment — the send dialog previews exactly what will be drawn, with the option to skip it. Record $100 from a family today and it sits on their balance; when their next private-pay invoice totalling $100 goes out, the deposit covers it and the invoice lands as Paid the moment it’s sent.

Invoices routed to an insurer or another payer never draw a family’s money automatically — explicit “Apply available credit” and “Apply deposit” buttons keep that decision in your hands. And if an invoice is voided, whatever credit or deposit it drew goes straight back to the client’s balance, so nothing is lost against a dead invoice.

• Credits come off before tax; deposits pay the after-tax total.
• At a 13% rate, a $100 credit reduces the invoice by $113.
• Deposits apply at send — a fully covered invoice goes straight to Paid.
• Payer invoices apply credits or deposits only on your explicit action.

The strongest protection against a billing dispute is being able to show the visit behind the charge. CareKindle builds invoices from scheduled and completed visits, with visit verification on the front line, so the bill and the service it represents stay connected.

Several guardrails run before an invoice is created. An invoice that would total zero — because no rate card matched and no default rate was set — is blocked so a misconfigured rate never ships an empty bill. And if an invoice already covers the exact same period for that client, CareKindle blocks the duplicate, so re-running a date range can’t double-bill a family.

Sensitive actions are recorded in the audit trail, and client information is handled on a platform built to stay aligned with the health-privacy laws that apply to your agency (PHIPA and PIPEDA in Canada). When a visit is cancelled or changed, the billing reflects it — you invoice for care that was delivered, which keeps families, funders, and your own ledger in agreement.

• An invoice that would total zero (no rate configured) is blocked, not sent.
• The same period can’t be invoiced twice for one client.
• An invoice with recorded payments can’t be voided.
• Charges drawn from real, verified visits and captured in the audit trail.