The Excluded from Claiming feature lets you permanently prevent specific invoice lines from being included in claims. Once something is excluded, it will never appear in a claim again, unless reverted. This gives you flexibility to control claiming at different stages, depending on what you’re working on.
You can apply this exclusion at several levels in Lookout, from claims themselves down to the original sources that generate invoice lines.
This is useful when:
- Specific invoice lines should never be claimed
- You’re creating ad hoc invoices
- Specific rates or purchase orders are not claimable
Excluding items at the claim level
The most visible place you’ll encounter this feature is on a claim. When viewing a claim, invoice lines are grouped into sections such as unclaimed invoices, included in claim, warnings, and Excluded from Claiming.
From here, you can select individual invoice lines using the bulk select tool. This will bring up the action bar, where we can click the Edit button.
A side screen will load where you can see the option to turn on and choose Never Show in Claims.
A green banner will appear confirming the action has been successful.
Once the background job runs, those invoice lines are permanently excluded. They will be removed from the current claim and will not appear in any future claims. They will now appear under the Excluded from claiming tab.
This approach is useful when invoices already exist, and you want to clean up a claim by removing specific lines that should not be claimed.
You should be able to revert the excluded claims by navigating into the Excluded from claiming tab, and just like before, select individual invoice lines and clicking the Edit button from the actions bar. The side screen will load again, where you can see the option to toggle on/off for Never Show in Claims.
Excluding an individual invoice line
You can also exclude an invoice line directly on the invoice itself. An invoice line is a single charge or item on an invoice. This option is commonly used when creating ad hoc invoices, where you already know that a particular line should never be claimed.
From the invoice, click the ellipsis icon on the right-hand side of the item and then press Edit.
A new screen will load with the full edit options, and amongst them, you will see a new option to exclude from claiming.
When an invoice line is marked as excluded from claiming, it will automatically appear in the excluded section when a claim is generated later, such as a Support at Home claim. No additional action is then needed at claim time.
Excluding purchase order lines
On an individual purchase order line, you can choose to exclude it from claiming in the same way you would exclude an invoice line. When you have loaded a purchase order, click the ellipsis icon on the right-hand side of the listed item and then press Edit.
A new screen will load with the full edit options, and amongst them, you will see a new option to exclude from claiming. You can select ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ here.
Once this is set, any invoice line created from that purchase order line will automatically be excluded from claiming.
Excluding a rate from claiming
To prevent claiming more broadly, you can exclude a rate from the claim. Rates are used to generate invoice lines from visits or services. When a rate is marked as excluded from claiming, every visit that uses that rate will automatically create invoice lines that are excluded.
Head to the main Settings section and click Visit rates.
You may need to scroll right to view, but click the ellipsis icon on the right-hand side of the rate and then press Edit.
A new screen will load with the edit options for the selected rate. Scroll to the External identifiers section on this screen, and you will see the option to click ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to exclude visits using this rate from claiming.
This means those invoice lines will never appear in claims. You also don’t need to provide an external ID for rates that are excluded from claiming. This option is ideal for services or visit types that should never be claimable.
Best practice tip: To support your team in selecting the correct rate, make it clear in the rate name that this rate will not be included in the Support at Home claim.
API and data tools support
The Excluded from Claiming setting is fully supported across the API, data importer, and data exporter. This allows exclusions to be applied or managed through integrations, bulk data processes, and the user interface.
In summary
Excluded from Claiming can be applied at multiple levels: directly to a claim, on individual invoice lines, to rates, or to purchase order lines. Excluding items earlier in the process helps ensure they never appear in claims later, while excluding at the claim level is helpful for one-off clean-ups.