Please note: The following feature is available as part of Birdie’s Starter, Core, Advanced and Plus packages (Also known as Care Management, Rostering & Finance, Premium, Entry and Essentials) Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!

Before you create the rate it is important to ensure you have used the search for address function when inputting a care recipient address on their About me page. If you enter the address manually then Birdie will not have geo-coordinates for the system to work out mileage and travel time.

First, give your travel rate card a name.

You can then enter the hourly rate for travel time here. The time spent travelling between visits will be automatically calculated for you when you come to run payroll.

You can now select if you include commuting and waiting time in travel payments. If you don't, simply leave the toggle on 'No.'

You will also notice you can opt to pay both commuting time and commuting mileage. This aims to provide the flexibility required to cover all eventualities regardless of how a specific branch or set of branches chooses to handle commuting journeys.

You can also enter the mileage rate if necessary, to tell Birdie how much to pay care professionals for every mile travelled, e.g. for care professionals who drive between visits.

Again, this will be calculated for you automatically and added on to a Care Professionals' paysheet.

A break is a way of defining whether or not travel time & mileage should be paid after a certain time. For example, if visit A ends at 9.00 am and visit B starts at 10.00 am, the break is an hour, regardless of how much of that is waiting time vs. travel time.

If your policy is that you don't pay travel & mileage on either side of a 60 min break, as an example, your care professional won't be paid travel & mileage for travel from visit A or to visit B as you've set this break to be 60 mins. Therefore the care professional's travel from visit A and to visit B is 'commuting to and from their place of work' rather than travel between visits.

If the care professionals would not usually be paid for travel during a break of 1 hour or more, then you should input '60 minutes' in the Break field.

You will need to assign your travel rates to Care Professionals before they start checking into scheduled visits on Birdie.

To do this, you'll need to go to the 'Travel rates' tab. Then click on the '...' menu next to any travel rate card. Click on 'Assign caregivers.'

What is a break?

A 'break' is a way of defining whether or not travel time and/or mileage should be paid because the Care Professional is travelling between visits, or whether the journey that the Care Professional is doing is actually considered 'commuting to and from their workplace after that defined break (1-hour break, for instance).

What is commuting time?

Commuting time is considered to be any journey from home to the first visit and any journey from home to the last visit. Commuting time is also considered to be any commuting done between visits (any amount of time above a defined break, for example).

What is waiting time?

Waiting time is the time between arriving at a visit and the visit officially starting. For instance, if a care professional arrives to a visit 10 minutes early, that 10 minutes is considered waiting time.