Careswitch Glossary of Terms

Terms are grouped by area of Careswitch and listed alphabetically within each group. On-screen labels are shown in bold, the way they appear in the app.

Careswitch Account Your personal sign-in details: your name, sign-in email and mobile number. Your account goes with you to every agency you work with, so a change here applies everywhere. Open it from your name and picture at the bottom of the sidebar.

Employee Profile Your staff record at one agency. It's separate from your Careswitch Account, and it can hold a different email or phone number.

Enterprise A group of agencies linked together, such as several branches of one business. Admins use it to switch between agencies and to see results across the group.

Minimal A built-in role that Careswitch gives automatically to people who aren't part of your active workforce, such as recruiting candidates and inactive employees. It only lets them manage their own profile and see their own documents and connections. You can't assign the Minimal role by hand. Careswitch moves people into and out of it as their stage changes.

Permission levels- Each part of Careswitch is set to one level for each role:

Role The set of permissions a person has, such as Admin, Supervisor, Staff or Caregiver. Everyone with the same role has the same access. Admins manage roles in Settings → Roles.

Search Finds tasks, documents, people, shifts, invoices and more from one place. Open it from the top of the sidebar, or press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac). Type at least two letters to see results.

Sidebar The menu on the left. It's grouped into Work, People, Operations and Management, and it only shows the pages your role can open. That's why a scheduler and a biller may see different menus.

Workspace The word Careswitch uses for your agency's account. You'll see it in labels like Workspace Profile, Workspace Role and Workspace Services. If you work with more than one agency, select the agency name at the top of the sidebar to switch.

Assessment A form completed for a client's service, usually to record their needs before care starts. It shows Needs Signature until someone signs it, then Signed.

Authorization The approval from a third-party payer, such as the VA or Medicaid, that says how much care they'll cover. You upload it to the client's policy.

Care Needs Questions in the intake that help match caregivers to a client. The answers are saved to the client's profile.

Care Plan The form that lists what caregivers do at each visit for a service. A service needs a signed care plan before you can schedule or bill it. Select Sign & Activate to sign it and make it the active version. To change it later, create a New Version.

Care Tasks The tasks on a care plan that caregivers work through during each visit. At the visit, caregivers mark each one as completed, declined or not needed. Each care task has a Task Type, which describes the caregiver's part in it:

Client statuses Every client record has one status:

Archiving a client deletes their future shifts, and restoring them doesn't bring those shifts back. You can't archive a client while any of their services is in the Active stage.

Connections The people linked to a client, such as family members, a power of attorney, a doctor or their caregivers. You'll find them on the client's Connections tab. Common contact roles include Emergency Contact, Primary Contact, Medical Power of Attorney and Financial Power of Attorney.

Guest Access Lets a client or family contact sign in to their own portal, where they may see the schedule, invoices and chat, depending on your agency's settings. Turn it on from the profile under Access Management. The person needs both an email address and a phone number.

Intake The client's starting care form, shared by all of their services. Select Mark as Complete to lock it. To update it later, create a New Version.

Lead A possible client. Careswitch turns a lead into a client automatically when one of their services moves into a client stage, such as Enrollment or Active. To convert, the lead needs a first and last name, a full address, and a referral source if your agency requires one.

Lifecycles Where your agency sets up its own statuses for clients' services and for caregivers. Find it in Settings → Lifecycles. See Stage and Status below.

Mark Lost Closes a lead who didn't move forward. You'll be asked for a reason. All of the lead's open services are archived, and their future shifts are permanently deleted, even if you restore the lead later.

Policy Records who pays for a client's care: which services are covered, the dates, and any limits. Careswitch uses the policy to rate shifts and build invoices, so every billable service needs one. Policies are grouped as VA, Medicaid and Private Pay.

Policy statuses

Primary Manager The team member responsible for a lead or a client's service. A Secondary Manager can help. You'll set both on the Connections tab.

Profile Health A badge next to a client's name. It combines two checks: whether Sandata has accepted the client's EVV record, and the result of their latest Medicaid eligibility check. When the two disagree, the badge shows the more serious one.

If neither check applies to a client, no badge appears. If your role can't see policies, the badge reflects the EVV record only. Hover over the badge to see the details.

Provisional policy A policy created before the authorization is on file. Careswitch treats it as an estimate. You can schedule against it, but claims can't be submitted until the authorization is uploaded and approved.

Referral source Where a lead came from, such as a hospital, a person or your website. Choosing an organization or a person adds them to the client's connections as a Referral Partner.

Service One kind of care a client receives, such as personal care. Each service has its own stage, dates, care forms, rates and payer. Every shift is scheduled against a service. A service is ready to schedule once it's active, has a start date and has a signed care plan.

Stage A fixed step in Careswitch that's the same for every agency. Each client service moves through these stages:

Moving a lead's service into Enrollment, Active, Transition or Paused turns the lead into a client. Caregivers have their own stages. See Caregivers below.

Status A label your agency creates inside a stage, such as "Paperwork sent" inside Enrollment. Statuses help your team see exactly where things stand. Careswitch starts you with a few, such as Stable and Needs Attention in Active, or Client Hold in Paused, and you can rename or replace them.

Tags Labels you create to group and filter clients, caregivers and contacts. Admins manage them in Settings → Tags.

Territory A group of ZIP codes. Careswitch places each client in a territory automatically, based on their address. Caregivers can have a different pay rate for each territory.

Absence Time off recorded for a caregiver, such as vacation or a sick day. The office records absences; caregivers can't. Absences that are Requested or Approved mark the caregiver as Unavailable for that time. When you approve one, Careswitch offers to take the caregiver off any shifts during that time.

Agency Schedule Override Availability set by the office instead of the caregiver. When an override exists, Careswitch uses it for matching. The caregiver doesn't see it.

Availability The days and times a caregiver can work each week. Careswitch uses it when suggesting caregivers for a shift. You can still assign someone outside their availability, but you'll see an Unavailable badge.

Caregiver connections How a caregiver is linked to a client: Primary, Preferred, Backup or Excluded. An excluded caregiver isn't offered as a choice when you assign that client's shifts.

Job Board The tab in the caregiver app that lists the open shifts your office has offered. Caregivers can claim a shift or say they're interested there, depending on how you offered it. When someone claims an open shift, the office receives an Open Shift Post Claims notification.

Matching Criteria A caregiver's answers about their education and experience, skills and traits, and interests and preferences. Careswitch uses these answers to match caregivers with clients.

Qualifications A caregiver's licenses, certifications and screenings, with their dates and documents. A red Expired badge appears after the expiration date. Select Set Renewal Reminder to email someone before it's due.

Recruiting stages The steps before hiring: Prospect, Application, Evaluation and Offer. Candidates can't be assigned shifts until you move them into a workforce stage.

Workforce stages The steps after hiring:

Affected Shifts When you change, assign or remove a shift that's part of a repeating schedule, Careswitch asks which shifts to change:

Billable Time and Payable Time Each completed visit has two sets of hours: the hours you bill and the hours you pay. They can differ, for example when your agency rounds time differently for billing and for pay. You can edit billable time until the visit is billed, and payable time until the pay is processing or paid.

Call-out When a caregiver drops a visit they were scheduled for. The caregiver comes off the visit, it goes back to Unassigned, and schedulers get a call-out alert. A call-out isn't recorded as time off.

Cancel, Delete and Archive These three actions do different things, so it's worth choosing carefully:

Care note The record of a visit: the caregiver's summary, the care tasks they completed or declined, and any signatures. Read it on the shift's Care tab.

Clock-in area A circle around the client's address on the map. A caregiver can still clock in from outside the area, but they'll need to give a reason, and the visit is flagged for the office.

EVV (electronic visit verification) How Medicaid and some other programs confirm that a visit happened. When your agency is connected, Careswitch sends visits to Sandata, the state's EVV system, for you. Each visit shows an EVV status:

Claims for EVV payers can't be submitted until every visit on them is accepted.

Exceptions Issues Careswitch flags on a completed shift, based on your agency's shift review rules, which admins set up in Settings → Rules.

Select Refresh Exceptions to check a shift again after you've fixed something.

Live-In Care where the caregiver stays with the client around the clock. Live-in services follow a Live-In Policy, which sets paid work hours and clock-in rules. Your agency needs one in Settings → Policies before it can create a live-in service.

Mark In Progress and Mark Completed Let the office clock a caregiver in, or complete a visit for them, when the caregiver couldn't. These are recorded as manual entries, without a location or signatures.

Offer Shift Sends a shift to caregivers so they can respond. You can offer to a group that fits your filters, or to specific people. You'll choose whether the first caregiver to claim it gets it, or whether caregivers say they're interested and you choose.

Overage When a shift or schedule goes over the hours a client's policy allows. You'll see the overage amount in red.

Overnight A shift that ends after midnight. For overtime and pay periods, Careswitch splits the hours at midnight.

Policy Utilization The panel that shows how much of a client's authorized hours are used in each period, and how much a new shift would add. Find it on the right side of the shift form, and on the shift's Utilization tab.

Recurring schedule A pattern that creates repeating shifts for you, such as every Monday and Wednesday. Careswitch creates future shifts a little at a time, so "Shift 3 of 12+" means more are still to come. Find all repeating schedules on the Schedules tab of the Shifts page.

Removed visits Visits deleted from a client's schedule in the last 90 days. You'll find them on the client's Schedule tab, along with who removed each one and why. Upcoming visits can be restored as new shifts.

Shared visit For private pay couples. One caregiver cares for two people at the same time, recorded as two shifts. The billed shift carries the bill, pay and clock-in. The other shift documents the second person's care and isn't billed or paid.

Shift One visit: a client, a service, a date and a time. You create the shift first, then assign a caregiver.

Shift Method How a shift is billed and paid, based on its service's rate type:

You'll see it as a column and a filter on the Shifts page.

Shift statuses

Clients and family members with guest access see simpler statuses: Scheduled, In Progress, Completed and Canceled.

Stacked shifts Back-to-back shifts for the same client that the caregiver works as one visit, with one clock-in and one clock-out. Careswitch splits the hours at the scheduled times. Shifts that need EVV can't be stacked.

Telephony Clocking in and out by phone, where your agency has it set up. For visits that need EVV, the call must come from the client's home phone number on file.

Tentative An assignment that hasn't been sent to the caregiver yet. It's useful while you're still planning. Select Schedule Tentative Shifts to confirm and notify caregivers. This confirms the whole series behind each shift, including tentative shifts outside the dates you're viewing.

Accounting sync Sends your Careswitch billing to your accounting software. Agencies can connect QuickBooks Online in Settings → Billing. Groups of agencies can connect NetSuite once for the whole enterprise, with each agency posting to its own subsidiary. If a connection shows Needs attention, select Reconnect.

Adjustment Lowers what's owed on an invoice, for example to write off a small balance. You'll need a reason. Adjustments are taken out of the outstanding total.

Bill rate What you charge for a service. Default bill rates for private pay are set in Settings → Workspace Services, and each client's service can have its own. Rates for the VA and Medicaid come from the payer's plan.

Billing items The pieces of a bill. Each completed shift becomes one or more items: the hours worked (shown as Regular), plus Travel Time, Travel Mileage and Expense items when the payer pays for them. You'll find them on the Items tab in Billing.

Billing period The span of time an invoice covers, such as one week or one month. It follows the payer's invoice frequency. Send invoices after the period ends, so every shift is included.

Claim The electronic bill Careswitch creates for an insurance payer, such as Medicaid or the VA. Each claim sits on an invoice.

Default for Invoicing When a service has more than one private pay policy, this is the one Careswitch uses for new invoices. An active VA or Medicaid policy is always billed first.

Embedded Billing An invoicing method where Careswitch emails the invoice and the payer pays online by card or bank account, through Stripe. The payment is recorded for you. With every other method, your office delivers the invoice and records the payment.

To use it, your agency connects Stripe in Settings → Billing → Payments. Stripe charges a processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per card payment, or $5 per bank (ACH) payment. Your agency can choose to pass the fee to the payer with Include Convenience Fee.

ERA (electronic remittance) The payment report a payer sends after processing a claim. It updates the claim's status in Careswitch. Some corrections aren't available until the ERA arrives.

Invoice A bill for one client, payer, policy and billing period. Invoice numbers start with CS-. For insurance payers, the invoice holds a claim.

Invoice statuses

Invoicing Method How an invoice reaches the payer: Embedded Billing, Email Invoice, Fax Invoice, Payer Portal, Print Mail Invoice or Claim Submission. The method decides which send buttons you'll see on the invoice.

Make Payer Turns a client or a contact into a payer, so you can choose them on a private pay policy. You'll find it in the Self Pay Information section on a client, or the Private Payer Information section on a contact.

Missing shifts A banner on an unsent invoice that lists shifts from the billing period that aren't on it yet. Each shift shows whether it's ready to add or needs attention first.

Payer Whoever pays for care. Find all payers on the Payers page.

Plan The rules for a third-party payer: rates, rounding, shift rules and the timely filing limit. The Careswitch team sets up plans. Contact support if one is missing or looks wrong.

Rate modifiers Raise pay, billing or both for certain shifts without changing your usual rates. Holiday modifiers apply automatically during the holiday. Others apply only when you choose them on a shift. Admins set them up in Settings → Rate Modifiers.

Rate Type How a service is billed: Hourly, Live-In (a daily rate) or Visit (a flat rate per visit). A shift's Shift Method follows its service's rate type.

Receivables The Billing tab that shows what each payer owes and how long it's been outstanding, grouped into aging columns. It includes every billed invoice, so there's no date range to set.

Record Payment Records a payment you received outside Careswitch, such as a check. It's available on invoices your office delivers. VA, Medicaid and Embedded Billing invoices are updated for you instead.

Reimbursement invoice For coverage that pays a family back after they pay for care. The family is billed as usual, and Careswitch drafts a separate reimbursement invoice for the same shifts that the family can submit for repayment.

Submission Ready The card on the Invoices tab that totals the invoices and claims ready to go out: not sent yet, with a billing period that has ended. A red dot means something is waiting. Select the card to see those invoices.

Submit Invoices Checks and sends many invoices and claims in one batch. Careswitch sorts them into Ready to Send, Needs Review and Blocked before anything goes out.

Timely filing limit How long you have after the date of service to get a claim to the payer.

Unlock for Correction Reopens a sent claim so you can fix it. When you select Resubmit, Careswitch sends a corrected claim that replaces the original, instead of a duplicate.

Void Cancels an invoice or claim. For claims, Void & release shifts is for a claim the payer hasn't paid. The shifts become billable again and nothing is sent to the payer.

Send void to payer is for a claim the payer has paid some or all of.

Line item One piece of pay on a payroll run, such as regular hours, overtime, travel time, mileage or an expense. Each line item has a status:

Overtime Extra pay for hours past your agency's daily, weekly or consecutive-day limits, usually at 1.5 times the rate. The workweek starts on your Payroll start day. When a caregiver works at more than one rate in a week, Careswitch blends the rates by hours.

Pay Modifier An increase to a caregiver's pay for a specific shift, such as a weekend premium. It can multiply the rate, add to the hourly rate, or add a flat amount.

Pay rate order When you assign a caregiver, Careswitch picks the first pay rate that applies and saves it on the visit. It checks in this order: a custom rate on the shift, the service rate, the payer rate, the territory rate, the caregiver's own rate, then your agency's default rate.

Payroll run All the pay for one pay period. Careswitch opens a new run about two days before the current period ends. Runs move through these statuses:

Travel Time and Travel Mileage Pay for driving between clients. Errand Mileage is for miles driven during a shift, such as a trip to the pharmacy. Your agency decides in Settings → Policies whether these are entered by caregivers, entered by the office or calculated automatically.

Activity The history of a record, such as a client, a shift or an invoice, along with notes from your team. Type @ and a name to mention someone. Mentioning someone notifies them, but it doesn't assign them any work. Use a task for that.

Area The category a task is filed under, such as Scheduling or Billing & Claims. Areas help with sorting only. They don't change who can see a task.

Channel A conversation in Chat:

Clients and family with guest access can join direct messages and private channels, but not public channels or broadcasts.

Documents Your agency's shared files. Choose Employee profiles under sharing to show a file on every employee's Documents tab.

Linked records The clients, caregivers, shifts or invoices attached to a task. Linking a client, caregiver or contact lets anyone who can open that profile see the task.

Task statuses

Templates and Submissions Templates are reusable forms with questions and signature lines. Submissions track a template you've sent to people, from Sent through In progress and Submitted to Complete. These are available to some agencies.

Command Center The full-size place to work with Looper, including tables and charts. Find it under Work in the sidebar. Each conversation is a private session.

Cover call-outs A loop where Looper offers a called-out visit to caregivers who are available, are a good fit for the client, and won't go into overtime. It works through them best match first. The first caregiver to accept gets the visit. If Looper runs out of people or time, the task shows Needs a person so your office can take over.

Daily briefing A one-page summary of your agency, delivered on a schedule at the top of Command Center. You may also see it called a snapshot. It only reads information and never changes anything.

Live report A report Looper builds that shows current numbers each time you open it, so there's nothing to re-run.

Looper Careswitch's AI teammate. You can ask it questions about your agency's information or hand it tasks. Looper works as the person who asked, so it can only see and change what that person can. A person reviews and approves its work. Open it with Ask Looper at the edge of any page, or assign it a task.

Loops Routine work that runs on its own, on a schedule or when something happens, such as a new client or a late clock-in. Each run creates a task or sends a form.

Memory Notes Looper keeps about how your agency works, such as the terms you use and your preferences. Admins can review and delete them in Settings → Looper Setup.

Read-only A setting you choose before starting a Command Center session. When it's on, Looper only looks things up. When it's off, Looper can add, edit and delete within your permissions. You can't change it once the session starts.