Billing runs are the important first step required to finalise invoices in order to make Home Care Package and CHSP claims. Billing runs also ensure up-to-date invoices for Home Care Package, CHSP, private and brokerage clients.

Creating a billing run pulls together financial elements that fall between your chosen billing run period and creates draft invoices for each.

The elements pulled together by a billing run include:

If errors are found when the draft billing run is created, you’ll be able to see a list to fix them. For example, a visit may have occurred during the specified period but is not recorded as being completed. You’ll see this visit in the error list and will be able to click through and edit to complete and finalise the visit for invoicing. More detail about errors and how to manage them is explained further in this article.

Once everything looks correct, the draft billing run can be published. Publishing finalises the invoices, applies transactions to client accounts and makes invoice summaries available.

Once billing runs are complete, client transactions are updated for Home Care Package claims. Learn more about making Home Care Package claims with Lookout.

Package management fees are calculated at a daily rate multiplied by the billing run days and dated on the last day of the billing run. This is important if a billing run period crosses over a month for Home Care Package claims.

Navigate to the settings menu by clicking the three dots next to your name in Lookout, at the bottom-left corner. Find the 'Finance settings' under 'Finance' and click the 'Edit' button at the top-right. Here you'll find the billing run options:

Select the cycle that suits your business. You also have the option of automatically generating draft billing runs, if you wish. This means that draft billing runs will be automatically updated every morning, saving you time.

Click the 'Save' button to confirm your changes.

Once your billing run cycle has been chosen, Lookout will automatically show a list of drafts you can create in the panel on the right-hand side.

In the above example the billing run cycle is set up to be monthly, and Lookout shows the next billing run month in the panel, ready to create a draft. Click the 'Create draft' button. As Lookout needs to find all of the transactions for this period it may take a little time to finish. You'll receive a notification when the draft billing run has been created.

You can create a custom draft outside of your specified billing run cycle as needed. Click the 'Create a custom draft' link at the bottom of the 'Upcoming billing runs' panel to select a date range for the custom draft.

Lookout will find any transaction that looks incorrect and will display in a list for review.

You can see if your billing run has errors in two spots.

On the home panel, an error badge will show:

And when viewing the billing run a banner will appear at the top to show that there are errors to be investigated:

Click the 'View errors' button to see the error list and resolve. Take a look at the following section 'Errors: what they mean and how to resolve' to go into more depth.

You can perform bulk actions in the error list, allowing you to select several errors at a time and make changes to all with a click. For example, you may have several errors relating to visits that were scheduled during the billing run period, but were not marked as complete. Selecting the affected errors and clicking 'Visit actions' and then 'Checkout visits' will bulk checkout all at once, instead of individually checking out each one.

You can also mark any errors as 'Resolved' by click the box next to the error and selecting 'Change status' and then 'Mark as resolved', either individually or in bulk, so you can keep track of what's been fixed.

Make sure to update the draft after fixing any errors, to bring the billing run up-to-date with any error fixes.

Updating can be done at any time and will simply recreate another draft of all of the invoices that can be found for the billing run cycle.

Updating is important to do after fixing errors and right before you publish a billing run, to make sure everything's up-to-date.

There are two places you can update a billing run draft.

On the home page panel:

Or in the billing run itself:

As with creating a billing run, it will likely take some time to generate and a notification will be sent to you when it's done.

Pushing the 'Confirm and publish' button might feel a bit daunting, but you will have the opportunity to review and make sure everything looks right before finalising.

Firstly, make sure you've resolved any errors and have updated the draft. Click the 'Confirm and publish' button. You'll see the first of two screens that step you through the publishing process.

The first screen will ask if you've made sure to update the draft. If you have done so, click 'Yes, continue'. If not, just click 'Cancel', make your changes and try again when you're ready.

Once you've hit 'Yes, continue' a second screen will show with a summary of the billing run. This gives you a last opportunity to ensure everything looks right.

Click the 'Publish' button when you're ready to finalise the billing run.

Publishing may take some time: a notification will be sent to you when the process is complete.

Once published you will have the ability to send out invoice summaries, and all transactions will have been updated, ready to make a Home Care Package claim if required.

Lookout will find any transaction that looks incorrect in a billing run and will display in a list for review:

The error screen allows you to make bulk changes, if needed. For example, you may want to select a set of visits and check them out. You can do so by clicking the box next to each visit, clicking the ‘Checkout’ button in the bar that appears at the bottom and clicking confirm. You can also select visits and mark them as ‘Resolved’, to keep track of errors that have been addressed.

Bulk changes can take a few minutes to update - you’ll receive a notification when the changes have been completed.

The state of your Home Care Package claim can affect your billing run, and vice versa. Read more about Home Care Package claims here. When running a Home Care Package claim, ensure that the billing run/s for that period have been completed in order to include all the relevant invoices.

Once the first step of an Home Care Package claim has been completed, that is, once the file has been exported, the claim period is locked. For this reason you may have this error pop up in your billing run if the Home Care Package claim is in it's locked state:

"Your [claim period] claim is blocking this billing run. [Number] invoices have services delivered within your locked claim period."

"Services delivered in the locked claim period will not be able to be backdated and included in the [locked period] claim submission to Services Australia if you proceed."

You can unlock your Home Care Package claim period by clicking the 'Allow transactions' button on the panel per below, up until the second step of the claim is complete.

After the second step of the claim is finalised you are no longer able to include additional invoices, and they will need to be included in the next claim period.