A home care rota is not a shift rota. It is hundreds of short visits a week, each tied to one person's home, a time they expect, a carer they know and the journey between. Generic rota tools break on the first double-handed call. This page explains what domiciliary care rota software must handle, how the Carelo rota works, and what "free rota software" really costs.
A shop or a ward rosters people to a place for a block of hours. Domiciliary care rosters people to other people, at their homes, for thirty or forty-five minutes at a time, and then moves them across town to the next one. Four things follow:
Two views of one week. The carer weekly roster shows each carer's day as a row of visits with the travel and waiting time between them. The service user weekly roster shows each client's visits and who is coming. A change in one is the change in the other, because it is one record.
Move, swap, assign. Drag a visit to another carer or time and confirm. Swap the carer on a row. Select an area and assign a carer to every visit in it. Mark a visit to repeat weekly and the pattern writes forward.
The newest decision wins. When an assignment overlaps a visit the carer already holds, the new one takes the seat and the displaced visit goes to an Unassigned lane for cover. Nobody is ever double-booked, and nothing is ever lost: the office sees exactly which calls now need a carer.
Availability, holidays and sickness feed the rota. Each carer's working pattern is held as clear green and red lines. Approved holiday and reported sickness remove the carer from the days concerned and list their calls for cover, with a cover carer chosen at approval if you want.
Travel on the grid. Road travel between consecutive visits is computed once and shown as quiet numbers between the cards, so a tight run is visible before it becomes a late call.
Delivered calls are locked. Once a carer has checked in, the visit is a record: it cannot be cancelled, deleted or quietly moved to someone else. Bulk changes skip delivered calls and tell you so.
Carelo AI, if you want it. The optional AI coworker builds and checks a week from your own data: continuity, travel, availability and double-ups. It is an add-on, not a requirement; the rota is complete without it.
The carer app shows today and the week ahead, with the client's address, the tasks and the medication due inside each visit. Check-in and check-out happen inside a geofence at the home, and the app keeps working with no signal: the PIN, the paperwork, notes and medication queue until the phone is back online. Carers never see a company-wide list of clients, only their own visits. There is no extra charge for the app on any plan.
People search for free domiciliary care rota software, and there are two honest answers.
The first is a spreadsheet, which is free and which most new agencies start on. It costs you the moment a change on Tuesday is not copied to the carer's printed sheet, the moment two carers turn up to one call, and the first time a council asks for evidence of actual visit times. It also gives the carer nothing on their phone and the family nothing at all.
The second is a trial. Carelo's first month is free on every band, with no setup fee. After that the up-to-15 band is £59 a month, which is less than one missed call's worth of a coordinator's time. If a free spreadsheet is still the right tool for your size, we will say so on the demo.
The rota is part of the platform, not a module. Every band includes the rota, both weekly rosters, the carer and family apps, live call monitoring, eMAR, timesheets and compliance, with unlimited service users and office logins. Bands are by active carers: up to 15 for £59, up to 30 for £89, up to 50 for £119, up to 100 for £169, unlimited for £249 a month, all excluding VAT. See the pricing page for yearly rates.
Spreadsheets are free and work until the first mid-week change goes wrong. Carelo's first month is free on every band with no setup fee, so you can run a real week of rota, call monitoring and eMAR before paying anything. After that it starts at £59 a month for up to 15 carers.
Yes. The carer app shows today and the week ahead with addresses, tasks and medication inside each visit, updates the moment the office saves a change, and works with no signal. It is included on every plan.
Report the sickness and the carer's calls for those days are listed for cover in one place. Assign a cover carer at the point of approval or drag the calls one by one. Nothing is deleted and nobody is double-booked.
Yes. A double-handed call is one visit with two seats. Both carers see it, both check in, both are paid, and the office can see when only one seat is filled or only one carer arrived.
Yes. Road travel between consecutive visits is computed and shown on the carer's row, so a run that cannot be driven is visible before the day starts. Travel is recorded alongside the visits for timesheets.