How to choose home care software in the UK

1. What home care software has to do

Domiciliary care software (home care software, care management software) runs a care agency that delivers visits in people's own homes. At minimum it must plan the rota, tell each carer where to be and what to do, prove each call happened (electronic call monitoring), record medication and care notes at the door, keep the records an inspector will ask for, and turn the month into timesheets and invoices. Most agencies also want a family view, incident and body-map reporting, and a compliance register for supervision, training and spot checks.

The system is used by three groups with different needs: the office (planning, monitoring, evidence), the carer (a phone, at a door, often with poor signal) and increasingly the family (reassurance without phoning the office). Any software you shortlist should be judged on all three, not on the office screens alone.

2. Twelve questions for every vendor

Ask these on the demo and write the answers down. Vague answers are answers.

1. What happens when I move a call onto a carer who is already busy? Good software either refuses clearly or moves the displaced call somewhere visible. Bad software lets two calls sit on top of each other and a carer finds out at the door.
2. Can a delivered call be edited or deleted afterwards? Care that happened should lock. If a delivered visit can be quietly moved, your call-monitoring evidence is worth less than you think.
3. How is a double-handed call modelled? One visit with two seats is right. Two separate visits drift apart. Ask how the client's hours are counted — a one-hour double-up is two hours of care.
4. How does the carer check in, and what if there is no signal? GPS at the doorstep, with the app working offline and syncing later. Ask to see the missed-call alert fire in the demo.
5. What does the eMAR look like on the phone? Only what is due this call should be at the top, and every outcome — given, refused, missed — should carry a time and a name.
6. Is there a family app, and what does it cost? Some vendors charge per family or per client. Ask for the number.
7. What exactly am I charged for? Per carer, per client, per office login, per module, per SMS, per export? Get the full list in writing, then model it at twice your current size.
8. Where is my data held, and how are companies separated? The answer should name a UK region and a database-level mechanism, not "we take security seriously".
9. What do the exports look like? Ask for a rota, a timesheet and an incident report as PDF. This is what a commissioner or inspector will hold.
10. How do I leave? If your records can only leave in a format nobody can open, you are not a customer, you are a hostage.
11. Who migrates my data, and what does it cost? Re-keying two hundred service users by hand is a fortnight nobody has.
12. Who answers the phone at 7am on a Monday? The rota breaks at 6:45. Support that opens at 9 has already lost you a call.

3. The four pricing models

Prices in the UK home care software market are often not published, which itself tells you something. The models you will meet:

Whatever the model, ask for the total monthly cost at your current size and at double it, including VAT, apps, family access, SMS, exports and support. Compare that number, not the headline.

4. Red flags

• No public pricing. You will be quoted what the salesperson thinks you will pay.
• A demo on a mock dataset with three carers. Ask to see a real-sized rota move.
• "We can build that." Buy what exists today.
• Long fixed contracts with exit fees. Confidence in a product looks like month-to-month terms.
• The carer app is an afterthought. If the demo is all office screens, ask for the phone.
• Migration is "easy" but nobody will say who does it.
• Data location is "the cloud". Ask which country and which provider.

5. A scoring checklist

Score each vendor 0–2 on every line (0 = no, 1 = partly or at extra cost, 2 = yes, included). A serious contender scores 24 or more out of 32.

6. Switching without losing a week

The cost of switching is rarely the software; it is the fortnight of re-keying and the first Monday on a rota nobody trusts yet. Reduce it by insisting the vendor migrates from your current system's exports, runs the new rota beside the old one for a week, and only then switches the carers over. Carers need one short session on the app and a printed fallback for the first days. Families are invited last, once the notes are flowing.

7. Where Carelo sits

Scored against the checklist above, Carelo is built to answer every line with a 2: a rota where the newest decision wins and displaced calls are shown, double-ups as one visit with two seats, GPS call monitoring with live late and missed alerts, eMAR, notes, incidents and body maps from the door, the compliance Matrix, decimal-hour timesheets, branded Word, Excel and PDF exports, AWS London hosting with database-level separation and a published DPA, public pricing from £59 a month plus VAT by active carers with unlimited service users and office logins, free migration verified before go-live, monthly terms, and a free carer and family app. It is the right fit for UK domiciliary care agencies from a first branch to a multi-branch group. It is not built for residential care homes. The facts page lists everything in one place; pricing is public; and a demo takes twenty minutes on a real-sized rota.