About the home
Shipston Lodge is a 90-resident care home in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, providing residential and nursing care. Known for its environment and hospitality-led care, the home needed a system that would bring structure, speed and control to rota management and payroll.
The challenge
Like many care homes, the management team was spending too much time on administrative tasks that should have been straightforward. Daily challenges included:
- Building rotas by hand and checking them for conflicts
- Cross-referencing who was actually on shift with who was meant to be
- Chasing late arrivals and missed clock-ins
- Adjusting payroll by hand from paper timesheets
- Keeping shifts within budget while maintaining the right skill mix
“We wanted complete visibility of who's in, who's late, and what that's costing us — without needing five systems or spreadsheets.”
What changed
Shipston Lodge now runs its rota, time and attendance and payroll in CareRota, with Time & Attendance included. Each step feeds the next: the planned week, the clocks, the timesheet and the payroll report.
- Drag-and-drop rota planning by role, with contracted hours counted beside each name and any shift that would breach the Working Time Directive blocked
- Clock-in at a wall tablet with a PIN, or from the phone within the home's clock-in range, with managers notified when a shift starts and nobody has clocked in
- The rota and timesheet colour-coded by what happened: green for on time, red for late, blue where a manager stepped in and amber for items awaiting approval
- An hours budget per role for each day, shown live on the rota; with Restrict By Budget enabled, the rota cannot be planned beyond it
- Extra time held for approval before it reaches payroll, then the period locked and the payroll report exported as CSV or XLSX, including a Moneysoft-format report
- Bank staff on the same rota as everyone else, and open shifts sent to eligible staff, who claim them in the app for the manager's approval
“Carecentre lets us run our rota, payroll, and time tracking the way we always wished we could — fast, clear, and accurate.”
In their own words
“The traffic-light system has been a game-changer. We know in real time who's in, late, or missing. No more guesswork.”
“Rota planning used to be hours of back-and-forth. Now it's a 15-minute task, with zero surprises at payroll.”
What's next
Shipston Lodge plans to add training compliance next, with CareHR™ tracking each training certificate against its expiry date and reminding managers at the lead time the home sets.
The home continues to extend its use of Care Centre while maintaining the standards on which its reputation is built.
Products used
