What Software Does a New Care Agency Need?

When you start an agency, software can feel like something to sort out later. In practice CQC will ask how you plan and record care at registration, and the first few clients bring rotas, medication and invoices straight away. Here is what you need and how to choose.

The six jobs your software has to do

1. Care plans and risk assessments, person-centred and reviewed on time.
2. Daily care notes written by carers at the visit, on their phones.
3. Medication records (eMAR): each dose recorded as given, refused or missed, with alerts for missed doses.
4. The rota and visit verification: who goes where and when, with GPS or QR clock-in so you know visits happened.
5. Timesheets and pay, including travel time between visits, which counts towards the minimum wage. See what counts.
6. Invoicing for councils and private clients, sometimes split between funders.

Alongside these: training records and DBS expiry dates, incident and safeguarding records, and reports you can show CQC.

One system or several?

Some products only do care records and link to a separate rota and billing system; others do everything. Several systems can work for a large organisation with an office team, but for a small agency they mean several bills, several logins and information typed twice. If you choose separate systems, check they genuinely connect.

How care software is priced

Suppliers use very different pricing, which makes comparing hard. From what suppliers publish (checked October 2026):

Basis	Example
Per staff user	Care App from £10 per user a month (care setting editions from £12)
Per carer	CareLineLive £19.70 per carer a month with the carer app, £120 monthly minimum
Per hour of care	Birdie from £200 a month, based on care hours scheduled
Per client	Log my Care: free for up to 10 service users, paid plans quoted per service user
Per bed (care homes)	Nourish from £3 per bed a week (G-Cloud list)

Work out what each would cost for your own numbers of clients, staff and hours, including add-ons. See our comparison of UK care software and honest guide to the main systems.

Questions to ask every supplier

• What will I pay a month for my size, including every add-on I need?
• Is there a setup or implementation fee?
• How long is the contract, and can I cancel during it?
• Can my carers use it on their own phones, and does it work with weak signal?
• Does it check pay against the minimum wage including travel time?
• How do I get my data out if I leave?
• Can I try it with my own team before I commit?

Where Care App fits

We built Care App for small and medium providers: care plans, eMAR, daily notes, the rota with GPS and QR visit verification, timesheets with minimum wage checks, pay preparation and invoicing in one system. Every price is published, there is no setup fee, it is monthly, and you can try it free for a month. It does not yet have NHS integrations such as GP Connect, so if those matter to you now, look at suppliers that do.