Home care software FAQs

Yes. We run the migration for you rather than handing you an importer. Your live data, meaning current carers, service users, care plans and the running rota, comes across free from a CSV export, with relationships preserved and every import reversible in one step, and you switch within 7 days of sending us your exports. Historic records are the one thing we charge for: they are optional, and priced on how many people and how many years of history they cover. Remote training for your team is included on Pro.

homecareOS is a true holistic operating system, not just scheduling software. We combine care plans, compliance tracking, staff management, a family portal, and business intelligence tools into one seamless platform. What truly sets us apart is that homecareOS was built by someone with 13+ years of hands-on experience in the home care industry who understands your real, day-to-day challenges. Every feature is designed to solve actual problems that agency owners and managers face.

Your data belongs to you, always. Under UK GDPR regulations, you have the legal right to request a full copy of all your data from any provider. We can help you through this process, and our team has already moved agencies across from other systems. If needed, we can assist you with formal data portability requests under Article 20 of GDPR.

Strictly speaking no software is, and you should be wary of any vendor who says otherwise. Regulators register and inspect the provider, not the system it runs on, so compliance is something your agency holds and homecareOS helps you evidence. What the platform does is model the right framework for your nation: CQC in England, CIW in Wales, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland and RQIA in Northern Ireland, each with the correct background check, workforce register and evidence templates, so the records an inspector asks for are already in the shape they expect.

Most agencies are fully operational within 1-2 weeks. Our dedicated onboarding team guides you through every step of the process, from initial account configuration and data import to staff training and go-live support. We work around your schedule to minimise disruption, and our team remains available throughout the transition period to answer any questions and resolve any issues quickly.

Yes. Free includes a 30 minute remote overview to get your carers, service users and first week of rota in, then support by email and chat. Pro adds remote training for your office team and your carers. Onsite training, delivered at your office, sits outside the licence and is quoted before anything is booked.

Yes. homecareOS is free for your first 5 carers, with no credit card and no time limit, so you can build real rotas, add your carers and run live visits before you pay anything. Your office team and service users are unmetered. Once you go past 5 carers, Pro is £10 per active carer per month. If you'd like a guided tour first, you can also book a personalised demo with our team.

Your care records and uploaded files are stored in Ireland, on Amazon Web Services through our database provider Supabase, and the homecareOS application's server functions run in Dublin. Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256), and the database is backed up automatically every day. Every application table has row-level security switched on, so staff only see records from the agency they work for, and each person's menu follows the permissions of their role. Some features rely on specialist providers for phone calls, text messages, email, maps, payments, notifications and AI, and some of them process data outside the UK and EU. PsycheMeta Ltd, the company behind homecareOS, is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number ZC101853).

There are three common pricing models and they produce very different bills for the same agency. Per user charges for everyone with a login, so coordinators, managers and office staff all add cost. Per service user charges by the number of people you support. Per carer charges only for the staff who deliver visits. homecareOS is free while you have up to 5 carers and then £10 per carer per month, with office staff and service users never counted. Ask any vendor to price your actual headcount rather than quoting a headline figure.

None of it, and that is the honest answer. CQC registers and inspects the provider, not the software. What differs between platforms is how well they help you evidence compliance: whether the care records, medication records, audit trail and staff files are in the shape an inspector asks for, and whether the platform models your nation's regulator rather than assuming CQC. If a vendor's website says its product is CQC compliant, treat that as marketing rather than a fact about your registration.

The job spreadsheets usually do in a care agency is turning delivered visits into invoices and pay, and that is the part care management software should own end to end. Visits carry planned, actual, paid and charged time separately, rates come from the payer and service, and invoices and pay runs are generated from the same visit records rather than being re-keyed. The reason to stop using a spreadsheet is not tidiness, it is that a spreadsheet cannot tell you a visit was 12 minutes short.

Mostly by shortening the gap between delivering care and billing for it. If invoices are built from the visits your carers actually clocked, you can bill weekly or fortnightly instead of waiting for someone to reconcile a month of timesheets, and split billing between a council and a private contributor stops being a manual job. It also removes the quiet leak of under-billing: visits that ran long, cancelled calls that are still chargeable, and bank holiday rates nobody applied.

Almost always per user, per service user or per carer, charged monthly, with an annual option at a discount. Watch for three things that change the real figure: whether office staff count as users, whether modules such as eMAR, scheduling or a family portal are extra, and whether there is a minimum contract or a setup fee. The question to ask is not the rate but the total for your exact headcount in twelve months' time.

Only if you operate in more than one, but it matters more than most agencies expect if you do. The regulator, the background check and the workforce register all differ: CQC with the DBS in England, CIW with the DBS and Social Care Wales in Wales, the Care Inspectorate with the PVG scheme and the SSSC in Scotland, and RQIA with AccessNI and NISCC in Northern Ireland. A platform built around CQC can usually be made to work elsewhere, but you end up maintaining the difference by hand.