Hours and money, without the shoebox

Paid care runs on hours worked and money spent, and both are usually tracked in a notebook, a group chat and a shoebox of receipts. Binda keeps them where the care is — logged as it happens, approved by the person paying, and exportable when someone needs the numbers.

Three ways to track time, chosen per caregiver

Caregivers do not all work the same way, and the setting lives on the person, not the circle — so someone who clocks in at one family and submits timesheets at another is not forced into one habit.

Clock in & out

They start and stop a timer for each shift. The family can see who is with the care recipient right now.

Submit a timesheet

They enter shifts they have already worked. Right for the caregiver who is not going to touch a timer at 6am.

Both

They clock in and out, and can add time they forgot to clock — the realistic setting for most people.

A manager can enter hours on a caregiver's behalf, and a caregiver can correct their own entry up until it has been approved. Corrections are stamped with who made them, so the record stays honest rather than merely tidy.

How this caregiver logs time — set per person

They clock in and out, and can add time they forgot to clock. The realistic setting for most people.

Tue 12 Aug9:02 – 13:044h 02mClocked

Wed 13 Aug9:00 – 12:003h 00mAdded later

The setting lives on the person, not the circle — so someone who clocks in at one family and submits timesheets at another is not forced into one habit.

Rates and approval

Pay rates are set per caregiver and carry an effective date, so a raise applies from when it applied rather than retroactively rewriting history. Hours roll up into periods the care manager reviews and approves.

Money is permissioned like everything else. Caregivers see their own hours and their own rate. Family members see none of it unless the manager decides otherwise, and doctors never do.

Expenses

The groceries, the prescription co-pay, the incontinence supplies bought on the way over — small amounts that add up to real money, and that somebody is owed.

What a week of small costs looks like

Weekly shop — soft foods, fruit

Groceries · receipt attached

$42.18Pending

Pill organiser, BP cuff batteries

Medical supplies · receipt attached

$18.99Approved

Home → Riverside Pharmacy · 8.4 mi

Transportation · mileage at the circle’s rate

$6.38Pending

Owed to this caregiver$67.55

Paid care runs on hours worked and money spent — and both are usually tracked in a notebook, a group chat, and a shoebox of receipts.

The problem

Mileage

Driving to appointments, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store is a genuine cost of care. Mileage is logged per trip and valued at the circle's rate — defaulted to the current standard rate and editable when yours differs.

Getting the numbers out

When it is time to pay someone, reimburse someone, or hand a year of figures to an accountant, the data comes out of Binda rather than being reconstructed from memory. A full export of a circle's data is available to the care manager on request.

Try it with your own circle

Binda is on the App Store and Google Play, and runs in the browser. Start free — no card to look around.

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