This article explains how to claim costs associated with travelling to or from appointments by completing a Sessions Calendar appointment from a session record.
To claim travel costs for an appointment from the Sessions Calendar, you'll need either an individual or group session.
Required packages
Last updated in version: Lumary 21 minor release 4
Before you begin...
To claim worker travel costs, you'll need:
- a current service agreement that allows travel claiming
- a category and service that allows travel claiming, and
- a planned service where the Travel Chargeable checkbox was ticked when adding the planned service to the session.
When including travel time as part of service claiming or billing, the system will use the rate of the primary service that was delivered to calculate the travel cost.
If a primary service you're claiming does not allow for travel claiming, the fields for travel will still appear. Providers can use these fields to capture data, which they may use to compensate workers for travel that isn't billable. No service delivered (SD) records will be created for the parts of the travel where the primary service doesn't allow claiming.
To claim for travel using sessions:
- Click on the Sessions Calendar tab or navigate to the client's Calendar. Sessions can also be opened by clicking on their text link in the Sessions list view.
- Go to your session and click on it. This will open an information panel on the right.
- Click on the session name text link to open the session record.
- Click on the Complete button. This will bring up the Complete Session form.
- Check that the Travel Area field at the top of the form shows the correct area. This should have been set during the creation of the session, but can be altered here if needed.
The examples in this article show how the system handles sessions where there were multiple workers and a group of attendees. The same approach applies for individual workers and/or individual attendees, but there are fewer steps.
If multiple workers were assigned to a session, their travel details need to be added in separate steps in the Complete Session form. This is because each worker may travel different distances, or have incurred different costs when travelling and individual SD records will need to be made. The name of the worker relating to the travel details you're currently filling out will be shown at the top of the Complete Session form. Each step will represent a different worker, with the final step being a confirmation of all details.
- The Worker travelled to this session checkbox may already be ticked. If it isn't, but applies to your worker, put a tick in this checkbox.
- In the Total Travel Time To Appt (mins) field, add the amount of time in minutes that the worker travelled to the appointment.
The time spent travelling is used to calculate the labour costs associated with travelling to or from an appointment. This time will be charged per minute at a rate calculated from the rate charged for the primary service that the travel is related to, or the agreed travel labour rate set in the agreement for the client.
- In the Total Distance Travelled to Appt (KM) field, enter the distance in kilometres travelled to the appointment.
The distance travelled is used to calculate part of the non-labour costs associated with travelling to or from an appointment. This may involve the costs associated with running a vehicle and is charged per km travelled. The rate charged per km will be taken from the default rate set by your organisation, or the agreed travel non-labour rate set in the agreement for the client.
- In the Apportionment section, enter the percentage of the travel that will be charged to each client in the Client Portion field. This will default to apportion the cost evenly between clients, but can be changed.
Cost claiming restrictions
All fields on the Complete Session form will be available to be filled in, but not all costs may be claimed by every client. In the Apportionment section, under the Cost Claiming column, each client will have an indicator of whether they are allowed to claim the costs for that section. This status can be different for each client in each section of the form and may be Allow, Labour Only, Non-Labour Only or Prevent. SD records will only be created for travel services that the client is allowed to claim, but all data entered into the form will be recorded for data collection purposes within your organisation.
Non-labour expenses are expenses that are incurred beyond the time taken for the service to be delivered. These fields can be used to capture expenses like road tolls and parking fees.
- If any non-labour travel expenses were incurred, click on the Add Expense text link to reveal fields for capturing expenses. You must enter zero or a greater value in the related Total Travel Time or Total Distance Travelled fields to generate SD records for expenses.
- In the Expense Description field, enter the description for the expense.
- In the Amount field, enter the cost of the expense.
- To add multiple expenses, click on the Add Expense text link again to add another row and then fill in the details.
- In the Apportionment section, apportion the non-labour costs between clients. This apportionment applies to all non-labour travel expenses, but can differ from labour travel expenses apportioned above.
- To add travel from costs, put a tick in the Travelling from an Appointment checkbox.
- The Travelling From An Appointment section will open and can be filled out in the same way as the fields used to enter travel to the appointment.
- If you're also claiming activity based transport, put a tick in the Client transported during this session checkbox. Follow the steps for claiming activity based transport.
- Once all details are filled out, click on the Confirm or Next button. The Next button appears if your session included multiple workers. Once you've added information for all of the workers, the Confirm button will appear.
It's important to check that all information is filled out correctly in the Complete Session form. Individual SD records will be generated for each client and worker, for travel labour time, and each non-labour expense for both travel and transport services. This can result in a significant number of SD records being created.