Outsourced Finance Department for Care Providers. Run weekly, not once a year.
A complete finance function for domiciliary care agencies and homecare providers across London and the UK. Carer payroll including sleep-ins, travel time and National Minimum Wage compliance testing. Local authority and private client invoicing. Weekly credit control on your debtor ledger. Invoice financing liaison, monthly management accounts, cash flow reporting, contract-level margin analysis and CQC financial viability support. Three fixed monthly tiers from £995, run by a named chartered account manager. This is not an accounting service. It is a finance department you rent instead of hiring.
Thirty minutes, no cost, no obligation. You keep the analysis either way.
★★★★★ 4.8/5 from 100+ reviews · 500+ London businesses · Chartered · King's Cross N7
The finance work that quietly eats your week.
None of this is glamorous. All of it is the difference between a care agency that grows and one that simply survives. If you recognise three or more of these, you are the reason this service exists.
Carer payroll is genuinely difficult
Irregular hours, sleep-ins, travel time between calls, mileage, unsocial hour uplifts, starters and leavers every month. Get the averaging wrong and you have a National Minimum Wage exposure that builds quietly until somebody finally checks.
Councils pay slowly, and invoicing them is fiddly
Every local authority wants a different format, a different portal and a different reference on every line. One mismatch against delivered hours and the invoice sits in a query queue for weeks, while your carers have already been paid.
Cash flow is tight in a way other sectors never see
You pay carers weekly or fortnightly. Councils pay in thirty to sixty days, and only if the invoice is clean. That gap is structural. It does not close by working harder, only by managing the ledger properly.
Your accountant appears at year end
By the time the accounts are signed, the year they describe is long gone and nothing in them can be changed. The decisions that actually mattered were made months earlier, without any numbers to hand.
CQC expects financial viability
Being well-led includes showing that the service is financially sustainable. That is a difficult thing to evidence from a folder of receipts and a set of accounts describing a year that ended eleven months ago.
Nobody knows which contracts lose money
Most agencies hold several council contracts on different rates, with different travel patterns and different call lengths. Some are subsidising the others. Without margin per delivered hour by contract, you are bidding blind.
You do not need another accountant. You need a finance department.
Most care agencies are not badly served by their accountant. They are under-resourced in finance. Those are two different problems, and only one of them gets solved by changing firms.
- Year-end accounts, filed several months after your year end
- A corporation tax return
- A payroll bureau that processes whatever you send and asks no questions
- One conversation a year, usually about something that has already happened
- No view of which of your contracts actually make money
- Payroll run and checked every cycle, including sleep-ins and travel time
- Invoices out on time, to councils and private clients alike
- Someone working your debtor ledger every single week
- Management accounts early enough that the month can still be influenced
- A margin per delivered hour, broken down contract by contract
An agency of your size cannot usually justify hiring that team. So the work either lands on the registered manager, who has a service to run, or it quietly does not get done. Renting the department is the third option, and it is the one nobody offers you. See what it costs.
The whole finance function, run for you.
Carer payroll, checked before it goes out
You send us hours from your rota system. We handle everything else. Real Time Information submissions to HMRC on or before each payday, payslip generation and distribution, sleep-in and travel time treatment, unsocial hour uplifts, holiday pay on the 52-week reference basis for variable-hour carers, statutory pay administration, starters and leavers, and tax code changes the moment HMRC issue them. Every run is tested for National Minimum Wage compliance on an averaged basis across the pay reference period before approval, not at year end when it is too late to fix cheaply. Payslip queries come to us and are handled directly with your carers, which is usually the single biggest time saving your registered manager notices. This builds on our standard Payroll and PAYE service, extended for the specific complexity of domiciliary care.
Local authority and private client invoicing
We raise every invoice matched to delivered hours, in each council's own required format and through their own portal. Remittances are reconciled as they arrive so mismatches surface within days rather than at quarter end. Private client invoicing and statements run alongside. Where a council disputes a line, we work the query rather than passing it back to you, because the fastest route to payment is almost always someone who understands both the care record and the ledger.
Weekly credit control, worked rather than reviewed
Somebody works your aged debtor list every week. Chasing local authorities is a rhythm, not a task, and consistency is the thing that actually shortens debtor days. Most agencies review the ledger monthly and wonder why nothing moves. The difference between reviewing and working a ledger is usually worth more to a care agency than any tax planning we could do.
Management accounts, cash flow and margin by contract
A set of monthly management accounts you can read in ten minutes, plus a forward cash flow summary, delivered while the month you are looking at can still be influenced. From our top tier we add contract-level margin analysis showing which council contracts make money per delivered hour and which quietly lose it, which is the analysis that changes what you bid for next and what you decline to renew. Bookkeeping runs on Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage with bank feeds kept reconciled and current. See our standard Bookkeeping service for the underlying approach.
Funder liaison, lender reporting and CQC evidence
Where you use invoice financing, we prepare the monthly reporting pack, keep the debtor ledger in the state your facility requires, and take the funder's queries directly. For CQC purposes we assemble current management accounts, forward cash flow, debtor ageing and contract margin into an evidence pack that demonstrates the service is solvent, monitored and understood by its leadership. Year-end statutory accounts and the corporation tax return are included in every tier, so nothing sits outside the engagement. If you are currently with another firm, our free switching service handles the entire handover.
2026 is the hardest year to run a care agency's finances
This is not written to alarm you. You already know it is tight. What follows is simply the arithmetic gathered in one place, so you can see the shape of it clearly and decide what to do about it.
The National Living Wage rose to £12.71 an hour from April 2026, alongside changes to Statutory Sick Pay. When your workforce sits at or near the floor, every uplift lands straight on the cost base with nothing in the middle to absorb it.
Take the wage floor increases together with employer National Insurance at 15% above a £5,000 threshold, and an agency running around 30 carers is carrying roughly £75,000 to £90,000 of additional annual cost. That is several finance hires worth of money, added to your payroll without a single new client.
The overseas care worker visa route closed in July 2025. Recruitment now costs more, takes longer, and leans harder on domestic candidates. That puts upward pressure on what you have to pay to keep a rota covered.
A Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care arrives from April 2028 and will be enforceable in law through the new Fair Work Agency. It is far enough away that nobody is panicking, and close enough that the agencies modelling the cost now will be the ones negotiating rates from a position of evidence.
What safe care costs, and what councils actually pay
The gap is £9.37 an hour. And in 2025/26, only 1% of the council contracts the Homecare Association reviewed met the Minimum Price at all. If you hold council work, some of it is almost certainly being delivered below the cost of delivering it safely. The useful question is not whether that is happening. It is which contracts, and by how much.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Most owners have never seen their own number. Not the sector average, not the published benchmark, but their own margin per delivered hour, contract by contract, after real carer costs and real travel time. Our free Care Finance Health Check shows it to them.
Your finance department, week by week.
This is the operation we already run each week for a London domiciliary care provider. None of it is theoretical, and none of it depends on you remembering to send anything.
Payroll prepared and checked
Hours come across from your rota system. We prepare the run, apply sleep-ins, travel time and unsocial hour uplifts, and test effective hourly rates against the National Minimum Wage before anything is approved. Payslip queries come to us, not to your registered manager.
Invoices raised and reconciled
Local authority and private client invoices go out matched to delivered hours, in each council's own required format. Remittances are reconciled as they arrive, so disputes surface within days instead of at quarter end.
Credit control worked, not just reviewed
Somebody works the aged debtor list every week. Chasing councils is a rhythm rather than a task, and consistency is what actually shortens debtor days. Reviewing the ledger monthly is not the same as working it weekly.
Management accounts and cash flow
A set of management accounts you can read in ten minutes, plus a forward cash flow summary. Delivered while the month you are looking at can still be influenced, which is the only thing that makes them worth producing.
Funder and lender liaison
Where you use invoice financing, we prepare the monthly reporting pack, keep the debtor ledger in the state your facility requires, and take the funder's queries directly so they never reach your desk.
Margin by contract, and what to do about it
Which council contracts make money per delivered hour, and which quietly lose it. This is the conversation that changes what you bid for next, and what you politely decline to renew.
We already run this, every week.
A London domiciliary care provider
We run the complete finance function for a domiciliary care provider in London. Their name stays private, exactly as yours would. This is not a pilot, a proposal or a case we are hoping to win. It has been running week in and week out, and it covers:
If you want the detail of how that engagement is structured, what it replaced, and what changed for them once the finance function ran properly, the full case study covers it.
Pick the tier that fits your agency.
All prices exclude VAT and are fixed for twelve months. No hourly billing, no invoice for picking up the phone. Tier movement is automatic as you grow, and we flag the change and quote the new tier in writing 60 days before any uplift.
- Full carer payroll for up to 25 staff
- Sleep-ins, travel time and unsocial hour uplifts handled correctly
- National Minimum Wage compliance tested every pay run
- Pension assessment, enrolment and submissions
- RTI filing and HMRC correspondence handled for you
- Payslip queries dealt with directly with your carers
- Year-end accounts and corporation tax return
- Named account manager, Mon-Sat 10am-7pm
- All local authority invoicing, in each council's required format
- All private client invoicing and statements
- Weekly credit control across the full debtor ledger
- Remittance reconciliation and query resolution
- Monthly management accounts
- Monthly cash flow summary
- Xero bank feeds maintained and reconciled
- Invoice financing liaison and monthly lender reporting packs
- Contract-level margin analysis showing which council contracts lose money per delivered hour
- Fair Pay Agreement cost modelling ahead of April 2028
- Quarterly planning call with a chartered accountant
- CQC financial viability support and evidence pack
- Priority response across the whole team
Fees are set on carer headcount and contract complexity. If your agency sits outside these bands, the Health Check will tell us both, and we will quote you properly rather than squeeze you into a tier that does not fit. Full firm-wide pricing is on our transparent fee schedule.
Add-on services
Bolt these onto any tier. All prices exclude VAT and are quoted in your engagement letter, so they never appear as a surprise invoice.
| Add-on | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CQC financial viability pack | Management accounts, forward cash flow, debtor ageing and contract margin assembled as inspection-ready evidence | £495 one-off |
| Fair Pay Agreement cost model | Modelled cost impact across your rota and contracts ahead of April 2028, with rate negotiation evidence | £395 one-off |
| Historic NMW compliance review | Backward-looking review of sleep-ins, travel time and averaging across prior pay reference periods | £595 one-off |
| Local authority rate submission support | Cost evidence and submission drafting for council rate reviews and tender responses | £750 per contract |
| Additional carers above tier headcount | Payroll, payslips and NMW testing for carers beyond your tier ceiling | £6 per carer / month |
| Xero setup and migration | Chart of accounts built for domiciliary care, bank feeds, opening balances and historic data migration | £395 one-off |
| Invoice financing facility setup support | Lender introduction, debtor ledger preparation and first reporting pack | £495 one-off |
Scroll the table sideways to see prices
Standard scope across all three tiers.
These items are part of every LOYALS care finance engagement. They do not appear as separate line items on your invoice.
Named account manager
One person who knows your contracts, not a ticket queue or a rotating bureau
Mon-Sat 10am-7pm availability
Reachable on a Saturday, which is when rota and payroll problems actually surface
Chartered review
Every set of accounts reviewed and signed off by a chartered accountant
HMRC agent registration
Form 64-8 filed so we deal directly with HMRC on your behalf
NMW compliance testing
Averaged across the pay reference period on every run, not annually
Holiday pay on the 52-week basis
Correct treatment for variable-hour carers per Harpur Trust v Brazel
Statutory pay administration
SSP, SMP, SPP, ShPP and SAP calculated, paid and reclaimed where eligible
Free switching handover
Professional clearance, records transfer and agent reauthorisation at no charge
Business Mentor consultation
Free strategic session on any topic, included for every LOYALS client
Software and data security
Encrypted payroll software, GDPR-compliant retention, secure payslip portal
Fixed fee in writing
Quoted before you commit and held for twelve months, with 60 days notice of change
No long contract
Cancellable on 30 days written notice, like every LOYALS engagement
From signed engagement letter to first live payroll run.
Most care agencies are live within 14 to 21 days. Your carers see no change to payday, payslip format or net amounts. Here is the path.
Free Care Finance Health Check
Thirty minutes. We look at delivered hours, achieved rate per hour by contract, carer cost per delivered hour and debtor days, and tell you your real margin. Quote issued in writing within 24 hours.
Engagement and agent registration
Engagement letter signed via secure portal. Form 64-8 filed with HMRC making LOYALS your authorised agent for PAYE and corporation tax.
Data handover
Rota system exports, payroll year-to-date figures, employee records, tax codes, pension scheme details, statutory pay history, your debtor ledger and your council contract schedule. If you are switching, we request all of it from your previous provider ourselves.
Reconciliation and parallel run
We verify every year-to-date figure against HMRC records, test National Minimum Wage compliance across your recent pay reference periods, and run a parallel payroll to confirm net amounts match before going live.
First live payroll and first invoicing cycle
Live payroll runs on your normal payday with RTI submitted on or before. The first invoicing cycle goes out matched to delivered hours, and weekly credit control begins on the existing debtor ledger.
Three things most accountants do not offer care agencies.
Standard accountants file your return and disappear. Standard payroll bureaux process what you send without questioning it. We run the operation, in-house and integrated, six days a week.
Open Mon-Sat until 7pm
Care problems do not respect office hours. A carer calls in sick on a Saturday, a rota changes the night before a payroll cut-off, a council queries an invoice on a Friday afternoon. We are open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 7pm, with a real chartered account manager on the line.
One team, one ledger
Payroll, invoicing, credit control, bookkeeping and year-end accounts run inside a single engagement. No re-keying between a payroll bureau, a bookkeeper and an accountant, and no arguments at year end about which set of numbers is right.
We already run a care agency's finances
Sleep-ins, travel time, council portals, remittance mismatches, invoice financing covenants. We do this every week for a London domiciliary care provider, so you are not paying us to learn your sector on your time.
Care sector compliance dates that matter in 2026 and beyond.
We track these for every client and apply them automatically, at no separate fee. If you are running your own finance function, mark the calendar.
Six things every care agency owner should know.
Tap or hover any card to flip it. Useful as a refresher before your next rate review or payroll meeting.
NMW averaging
Averaged across the pay reference period
National Minimum Wage compliance is not tested call by call. Total pay is divided by total working time across the whole pay reference period. Travel between calls and much sleep-in time counts as working time, which is why agencies paying a good hourly rate can still fall below the floor once unpaid gaps are counted.
Sleep-in shifts
Treatment depends on the arrangement
Whether a sleep-in counts as working time throughout, or only when the carer is awake and working, turns on the specific arrangement and what the carer is required to do. Getting this wrong across a year of shifts creates a cumulative liability, so the treatment should be documented and applied consistently on every run.
Travel time
Time between calls is working time
Travel from a carer's home to their first call and back from their last is commuting. Travel between calls during a shift is working time and must be paid. Rotas that look profitable on contact hours alone often are not once inter-call travel is properly counted, which is exactly where margin quietly disappears.
Minimum Price for Homecare
£34.42 an hour for 2026/27
The Homecare Association calculates the hourly rate needed to cover carer pay at the National Living Wage, statutory employment costs, training, supervision, travel and a sustainable return. Councils pay an average of £25.05. It is the strongest external evidence you have when submitting a rate review.
Invoice financing
Advances against your debtor ledger
A funder advances a percentage of approved invoices so you can pay carers before councils pay you. The facility depends on the quality of your debtor ledger, so clean invoicing and disciplined credit control directly affect how much you can draw and what it costs you.
CQC financial viability
Evidence that leadership understands the numbers
Being well-led includes demonstrating the service is financially sustainable and that leadership monitors its position. Current management accounts, forward cash flow, debtor ageing and contract margin evidence that far better than statutory accounts describing a year that ended eleven months ago.
Against hiring someone in-house.
The honest comparison is not against your current accountant. It is against the finance and payroll administrator you have probably been thinking about hiring for a while now.
| In-house finance and payroll administrator | LOYALS Care Finance Department | |
|---|---|---|
| Salary or fee | £32,000 to £42,000 a year | £995 to £2,495 a month, fixed |
| Employer National Insurance | Payable on top, at 15% above £5,000 | None |
| Pension contributions | Payable on top | None |
| Holiday cover | Statutory leave to cover, and the work still accrues while they are away | Covered by the team, no gaps |
| Sickness and absence | Your risk, and your problem to cover at short notice | Covered by the team |
| Recruitment and management | Your time to spend, before they start and every week after | None required from you |
| Availability | Five days a week, office hours | Mon-Sat 10am-7pm |
| Professional review | None, unless you also pay an accountant on top | Chartered review included |
| Range of skills | One person's experience, whatever that happens to be | Payroll, bookkeeping, credit control and chartered review |
| If they leave | You start again, and the knowledge walks out with them | Continuity held by the firm, not one individual |
Scroll the table sideways to compare
Once employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and cover are added, the true cost of an in-house hire sits meaningfully above the headline salary. And it still does not include a chartered accountant.
Run by Kris Nick.
Senior Chartered Accountant · Dedicated Account Manager for every new LOYALS client
Your finance department will not be passed to a junior bureau or parked in a ticket queue. Kris personally coordinates your engagement, answering payroll queries before payday, walking you through HMRC notices, reviewing your contract margin position, and being the one name you contact when a council disputes an invoice or a funder asks for reporting at short notice.
That includes the awkward parts. Chasing your previous accountant for year-to-date payroll data. Explaining to a registered manager why a carer's payslip changed. Preparing the financial evidence pack before a CQC inspection. Making sure nothing slips during the handover of a live payroll with real people expecting real money on a real payday. One name, one chartered team that knows your agency inside out.
Care agency finance, answered.
If your question is not here, message us on WhatsApp or book a free Health Check. We will answer it before you commit to anything.
Three fixed monthly tiers. Care Payroll and Compliance is £995 a month and covers full carer payroll for up to 25 staff, pensions, RTI, payslip queries, year-end accounts and corporation tax. Care Finance Department is £1,495 a month, covers up to 50 staff, and adds all local authority and private client invoicing, weekly credit control, monthly management accounts and a cash flow summary. Care Finance Department Plus is £2,495 a month for larger or multi-contract agencies and adds invoice financing liaison, lender reporting packs, contract-level margin analysis, Fair Pay Agreement cost modelling, a quarterly planning call and CQC financial viability support.
All prices exclude VAT and are fixed for twelve months. For comparison, an in-house finance and payroll administrator costs £32,000 to £42,000 a year before employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and cover.
Not necessarily, though most agencies find they no longer need two firms. Some clients keep their existing accountant for year-end only and use us for the weekly and monthly finance operation. Others move everything across once they see the overlap.
We handle the professional clearance and the handover of records ourselves, so it costs you almost no time either way. There is no charge for the switch itself and no obligation to decide anything at the Care Finance Health Check. More detail on our switching accountants service.
We treat National Minimum Wage compliance as a payroll control rather than a year-end check. Every pay run is tested on an averaged basis across the pay reference period, so working time, sleep-in arrangements and travel between calls are counted before the payslips go out rather than afterwards.
Where a carer's effective hourly rate is drifting towards the legal floor, you hear about it that week while it is still a small and fixable problem. This is the single most common area where care agencies carry risk they do not know about, mostly because rota software and payroll software rarely talk to each other properly.
Yes, and this is included from the Care Finance Department tier upwards. We raise local authority and private client invoices matched to delivered hours in each council's required format, reconcile them against remittances as they arrive, and run a weekly credit control rhythm so nothing sits unchased.
Councils often pay slowly because of query loops and portal mismatches rather than genuine disputes, so the value comes from somebody working the ledger every week instead of reviewing it once a quarter.
No, and we already do exactly this for a London domiciliary care provider. Invoice financing liaison and monthly lender reporting packs are included in Care Finance Department Plus.
We prepare the reporting your funder expects, keep the debtor ledger in a state that properly supports your facility, and act as the point of contact for their queries so those requests stop landing on your desk.
It is a free thirty minute conversation with no cost and no obligation. We look at your delivered hours, your average achieved rate per hour across your contracts, your carer cost per delivered hour and your debtor days, and we tell you what your real margin per hour is.
Most care agency owners have never seen that number for their own business. You keep the analysis whether or not you go on to become a client.
Most care agencies are live within 14 to 21 days. Day 1 is the free Care Finance Health Check. Days 2 to 3 cover the engagement letter and HMRC agent registration via Form 64-8. Days 3 to 7 are the data handover, including rota system exports, payroll year-to-date figures, employee records, tax codes, pension scheme details, your debtor ledger and your council contract schedule.
Days 7 to 14 are reconciliation and a parallel payroll run, where we verify every year-to-date figure against HMRC records and confirm net pay matches before going live. Days 14 to 21 cover the first live payroll and the first invoicing and credit control cycle. Your carers see no change to payday, payslip format or net amounts.
Yes. Our office is in King's Cross, London, and we hold a secondary presence in Essex, but the finance department runs remotely for care providers anywhere in the United Kingdom. Payroll, invoicing, credit control and management accounts are all delivered through cloud software, video calls and WhatsApp.
Local authority invoicing works the same way whichever council you contract with, because the differences are in format and portal rather than geography.
The Homecare Association publishes an annual Minimum Price for Homecare, which is the hourly rate calculated to cover care workers' pay at the National Living Wage, statutory employment costs, training, supervision, travel and a sustainable return. For 2026/27 that price is £34.42 per hour in England. According to the ADASS Spring Survey 2026, the average price councils pay for homecare is £25.05 per hour, a gap of £9.37. In 2025/26 only 1% of the council contracts the Homecare Association reviewed met the Minimum Price.
It matters because it gives you an evidenced external benchmark when negotiating council rates, and because it tells you whether a given contract is being delivered below the cost of delivering it safely.
Yes, and this is included in Care Finance Department Plus. Being well-led under the CQC framework includes demonstrating that the service is financially sustainable and that the provider understands its own financial position.
We prepare current management accounts, a forward cash flow, a debtor ageing summary and a contract-level margin position, which together evidence that the business is solvent, monitored and understood by its leadership. That is a substantially stronger position than presenting a set of statutory accounts describing a year that ended eleven months ago.
The care finance department sits inside a wider engagement.
Book your free Care Finance Health Check
Thirty minutes. We look at your delivered hours, your achieved rate per hour, your carer cost per delivered hour and your debtor days, and we tell you what your agency actually earns. Most owners have never seen that number.
No cost, no obligation, and you keep the analysis whether or not you become a client.