How payroll works in Careswitch
Careswitch calculates caregiver earnings from completed shifts, including regular time, overtime, double time, travel time, mileage, and expenses. You review and approve the pay in Careswitch, then export a file to your payroll provider. Your provider pays the caregivers.
Careswitch provides the reviewed, approved file for import. Your payroll provider handles payments, paystubs, and bank and tax information; Careswitch doesn't pay caregivers directly, issue paystubs, or store those details.
Each payroll run moves through three stages:
Draft: Careswitch creates the run automatically for the pay period. You review and approve pay.
Processing: the run is locked, and you export it to your payroll provider.
Paid: your provider has paid caregivers, and the run is closed.
Once your pay schedule is set up, Careswitch creates a run for every pay period. You don't need to create runs yourself.
Before you start: one-time setup
Complete these steps when setting up payroll. After that, update them only when something changes.
Step 1: Check your permissions
Your role determines what you can do in payroll:
View payroll lets you view payroll runs and timesheets.
Manage payroll lets you change run status, export payroll, and edit payroll settings and the pay schedule.
Approving individual pay items requires Manage payroll or Manage shifts.
Editing overtime rules requires permission to manage Policies in Settings.
The default Admin, Supervisor, and Staff roles include Manage payroll. If Payroll isn't visible in the sidebar, ask your workspace admin to check your role.
Related: “Roles and permissions.”
Step 2: Choose your payroll provider
Go to Settings → Policies → Payroll.
Under Payroll system, select your Payroll provider: Standard, Viventium, Paylocity, OnPay, Paychex, or iSolved.
Choose Standard if your provider isn't listed. This creates a general-purpose CSV file.
For Paychex, enter your agency's Paychex Client ID in External ID. This is required.
For iSolved, you can optionally enter Payroll codes for regular, overtime, holiday, mileage, travel time, travel time overtime, and canceled-but-paid shifts, along with Client location codes.
Click Save payroll system.
Step 3: Set up your pay schedule
On the same page:
Scroll down to Pay schedule.
Choose your Pay frequency: Weekly, Biweekly, Semimonthly, or Monthly.
Confirm your Timezone. Careswitch uses this timezone to calculate pay periods and overtime.
Choose your Payroll start day. This is the first day of your payroll week and is used to calculate weekly overtime. It is separate from your scheduling start day.
Choose an Effective date.
Click Save schedule.
Choose the effective date carefully. A past date creates payroll runs for every pay period from that date through today. It also recalculates all completed shifts in those periods, including shifts already approved or paid elsewhere. To start without recalculating past periods, choose today or a future date.
When changing an existing pay schedule:
The new effective date must be in the future and begin a new pay period. Careswitch shows the earliest available date.
It can't be earlier than a run that is already Processing or Paid.
Draft runs on or after the effective date are deleted and rebuilt.
If the change creates a gap between pay periods, Careswitch creates an Off Cycle run to cover it.
Timezone changes apply as soon as you save, regardless of the effective date.
Step 4: Set your overtime rules
On the same page, review these rules:
Rule | Available thresholds |
Overtime (1.5x) after: | Hours worked in a given day; hours worked in a given week; consecutive hours worked, including overnight shifts; consecutive days worked in a given week |
Double Overtime (2.0x) after: | Hours worked in a given day; hours worked on the 7th consecutive day |
Select the rules that apply to your agency and enter the thresholds. Clear a rule to turn it off. If needed, select Exclude canceled shift pay from overtime, then click Save overtime.
The pre-filled values are suggestions. Wage-and-hour laws vary by state, and your agency is responsible for compliance.
Keep these details in mind:
Caregivers with an Employment Type of 1099 never accrue overtime.
Overtime changes apply only to upcoming shifts. Completed shifts aren't recalculated.
You can set an overtime override for a specific client in their Payroll Info. See “Managing a Client Profile.”
Step 5: Choose which hours are paid
Go to Settings → Policies → Time Tracking and choose Payable Time:
Submitted: the caregiver's original clock-in and clock-out times.
Reported (default): recorded clock times, including corrections and rounding.
Scheduled: planned shift times.
Use Scheduled carefully. This option doesn't pay caregivers for time worked beyond the schedule.
Step 6: Set pay rates, mileage, and travel time
Default rates: go to Settings → Policies → Default Pay Rates.
Individual caregiver rates: open the caregiver's profile, go to Employment → Pay Rates, and click Manage.
Rates for a ZIP-code area: use Territories.
Mileage and travel pay: go to Settings → Policies → Travel Mileage and Travel Time.
Step 7: Add caregiver External IDs
On each caregiver's profile, go to Employment and enter their External ID. This is the employee number your payroll provider uses to identify them.
Paychex: caregivers without an External ID are excluded from the export.
iSolved: their hours are exported with a blank Employee ID, so the import can't match them to an employee.