Budgeting: HCP release FAQs

Release date: 19th March, 2025.

What components make up the Budgeting tool?

Our budgeting suite will have two distinct parts:

1. The service planning tool – This is used for creating quotes and serves as a snapshot of the agreed-upon budget and service plan at a point in time. Users can manually add budget items or generate them from the roster, which means recurring visits and POs with services and estimated dates. This helps set expectations for funding allocation but does not track real-time financial movements. You can also use this tool to riff on various scenarios to help calculate an outcome.

2. Real-time expenditure tracking tools (work in progress, not yet released) – This focuses on actual income and expense tracking to ensure client funds are maximised and not under or overspent. This will provide contextual insights and alerts when users add services to tell them if what they’re adding is within budget and conformant to what’s been agreed upon to exercise finer control over client expenditure and intended care delivery in accordance with the service plan.

Will Analytics be required to use the Budgeting tool?

No, Analytics is not required to use the Budgeting features. However, without Analytics, you won’t have access to aggregate insights that provide a business-wide view of how you’re tracking against and managing budgets overall. This means you won’t be able to easily see at a glance whether budgets are being under or over-utilised across the organisation to surface clients and/or revenue that are at risk.

If you do not have Analytics and wish to enquire, please get in touch with your account manager to discuss access.

I can't see the Analytics dashboard for Budgets, how do I turn this on?

If the Budgets dashboard appears locked in Analytics, follow these steps to enable it:

1. Go to Settings > Access Roles.

2. To enable the Analytics dashboard for your profile, find the role that applies to you that you’d like to modify and click Edit.

3. Scroll down to the Dashboards section.

4. Click Add Dashboard and select the dashboards you want to enable, including Budgets at the top.

5. Click Save in the top-right corner to save your changes.

Once saved, the Budget analytics dashboard should now be accessible for users with the access role you applied it to.

Note: You need Staff Management access to modify access roles. If you don’t have this access, ask your administrator to enable analytics by following these steps for you.

What funding schemes are supported in the HCP release?

For this first release, we are mainly focused on HCP to transition into Support at Home, but the tool also allows for basic budgeting functionality for NDIS and privately funded Members.

While our primary focus is on the upcoming Support at Home release, we’re keen to hear your feedback on how this functionality works for you for NDIS and privately funded Members. Your input will help us iterate and enhance these features in future updates post July.

What’s included in a system-generated budget in the HCP release?

The draft budgets provided in Lookout are system-generated from the following data on the Member’s profile:

Their income is calculated from:

• Their current HCP level and daily subsidy

• Their active supplements (at the current rate)

• Income tested fees

• Commonwealth HCP unspent funds (if any)

Their expenses are calculated from:

• Fees (care management, package management and basic daily fee)

Their service plans are calculated from:

• Recurring schedule rules for the member

• Purchase orders with assigned services and estimated dates

You can generate a service plan anytime by going to the ‘service planning’ tab and selecting Options > Build from roster.

How does client transport and provider travel work under the HCP release?

For our HCP release, we’ve taken a simplified approach to client transport and provider travel, as these requirements are expected to change under Support at Home in the coming months. However, we’re keen to gather feedback on our current solution to assess whether a more feature-rich approach is needed for other funding schemes.

Right now, you can enter a provisional amount for client transport or provider travel under the ‘Expenses’ tab. These amounts will need to be calculated manually for now. Let us know if additional functionality in this area would be valuable to you.

How to share budgets with your customers

Budgets can be exported as a PDF once saved. These can then be attached or sent to customers via any communications channel your organisation prefers.

Who can create, edit, or approve budget changes?

The building blocks have been laid to lock down budget actions to particular access roles. They are presently open to all staff for early adopter intake and we are keen for your feedback as we continue to iterate user permissions and access.

Exclusions:

The features below are not currently included in this initial HCP budget release:

When will real-time expenditure tracking be available?

Real-time expenditure tracking will be available prior to July 1st. The exact timing is yet to be determined, and updates will be shared soon.

When will budgeting for S@H be included?

This is to be determined, but we are working on it until July 1st. Functionality will appear iteratively for testing purposes prior to the launch of S@H, and we will keep you informed along the way.

What about collecting a signature from the Member for approval?

We recognise the importance of collecting Member signatures for approval, and this will be addressed as we approach the Support at Home release prior to July. We’re actively working on how this process will be integrated into Lookout to ensure compliance and ease of use.

Will the budget be made available to Members and Auth-reps via the Care app?

We plan to get to this over the coming months. In the meantime, budgets can be shared as PDFs, which you can email to the client. The flow will change and evolve as we allow for signature approval and so on.