To get payroll ready from shift and visit data, close the pay period, export the visits and shifts, match each worker to their employee record, apply overtime, travel and holiday pay, check the hours against the schedule, then enter time in QuickBooks and run payroll. Your scheduling software holds the visits and QuickBooks pays people, but neither one does the work in between: adding drive time between clients, counting overtime across the whole week, and splitting hours by pay rate. For many home care offices that is a full day each pay period. Arkeo's AI agents get payroll ready, and your team reviews it and runs it.
Why this job takes a day
In home care, pay comes from the schedule, not from a timesheet. Each visit has to be counted, each caregiver matched, and each rule applied: overtime, holiday pay, travel time between clients, split shifts.
None of the steps are hard. There are just a lot of them, and one missed visit or wrong rule means a caregiver is paid wrong.
The job, step by step
This is how most home care offices do it today. Where the vendor has a page for the step, it is linked.
- 1
Close the pay periodMake sure each visit in the period is clocked out and marked done. Open or missed visits get fixed first, or they get paid wrong.
- 2
Export the visits and shiftsPull each visit and shift in the period, with the caregiver, the times and the client, into a spreadsheet or your payroll export.
- 3
Match each caregiver to payroll
Line up each caregiver in the schedule with their employee record in QuickBooks. New hires and name changes are where this breaks.
- 4
Apply your pay rules
Add up each caregiver's hours for the week, including drive time between clients, then apply overtime, holiday pay and any split shift rules. In the US, the Labor Department says overtime is for hours over 40 in a workweek.
- 5
Check against the schedule
Look for hours that don't make sense: a visit with no clock out, two visits at once, a caregiver well over their usual hours.
- 6
Enter time and run payrollEnter each caregiver's hours in QuickBooks, at each pay rate they worked, review the totals, and run payroll.
Where home care payroll software stops
Scheduling software and payroll software each do their half. AlayaCare's payroll page says it captures punch data, shows where actual hours differ from the schedule, and sends hours to payroll systems through data exports or direct connections. QuickBooks pays people. The work between the two is still done by hand in many offices.
Drive time has to be added. The US Labor Department says travel from one client to the next during the workday is hours worked, and the agency has to make sure it is paid. If your visit list only holds visit times, someone adds the drive time for each caregiver.
Overtime is for the week, not the visit. The Labor Department counts overtime on hours over 40 in a workweek, across all the clients a caregiver saw that week. A spreadsheet that totals by client or by visit misses it.
More than one rate means more typing. Intuit says its weekly timesheets allow only one hourly rate. QuickBooks Online Payroll allows up to eight rates per employee, but you enter the hours at each rate on the paycheck, and it figures overtime from the highest rate in the pay period unless you change it by hand. Posts in Intuit's own community show the same gap: an employer who says they correct overtime by hand each pay period, and a home care agency asking how to pay one caregiver a different rate for each shift.
In a 20-person agency, that work lands on the office manager or the owner, the day before payroll.
The mistakes that cost the most
Most payroll mistakes from schedule data come from the same few places: a visit that was never clocked out, a caregiver who shows up twice under two names, overtime counted per visit instead of per week, drive time left out, and a holiday that nobody flagged.
Each one is easy to fix once you see it. The trouble is seeing it in time, before payroll runs and a caregiver is paid wrong.
The agents that take it over
Once they're set up around your pay rules, they close the period, count each caregiver's hours, apply your rules and enter the time. Arkeo gets payroll ready. Your team reviews the totals and runs it.
A day of counting hours becomes minutes of checking.
- Pulls every visit and shiftper pay period
- Adds overtime and stat payper employee
- Gets payroll ready to runsame day
A day of counting hours becomes minutes of checking.
- Pulls each visit for the period and brancheach pay period
- Applies overtime, weekend and stat pay ruleseach employee
- Writes the payroll sheet ready to checkin minutes
Your team hears about it before the patient does.
- Checks care schedules against staff schedulesevery day
- Finds missed visits and open shiftsright away
- Tells your team what needs fixingin Teams
What changes
Counting hoursEach visit and shift counted, with your pay rules applied.
Designed for home care and medical servicesTime enteredEach worker's time ready in QuickBooks before payroll day.
Designed for home care and medical servicesMissed visitsOpen and missed visits found before the period closes.
Designed for home care and medical servicesQuestions
Is my customers' information safe?
Yes. Agents work in your own scheduling and payroll accounts and see only what payroll needs. Client and worker details never go into public AI. Agents connect to AI through business-grade connections audited under SOC 2.
Does the agent run payroll?
No. It gets payroll ready to run. Your team reviews the totals and runs it, so a person signs off on pay.
Can it follow our pay rules?
Yes. Your version uses your overtime, holiday, travel time and split shift rules, and the rules for your state or province. We set those up with you after the call.
Is travel time between clients paid in home care?
In the US, yes. The Labor Department says travel from one client to the next during the workday is hours worked. The drive from home to the first client and back home at the end of the day is not.
What does it cost?
You get the price on the call, along with the hours it saves your team.