Travel Time and Mileage

If your agency pays caregivers for the travel time and/or mileage for travel between clients, you can set this up in Caresmartz to calculate automatically.

These settings can be found under Office Settings>>Payroll

At the bottom of the page, you will see the toggle to enable the Travel Time & Mileage settings.

The first selection, after Yes, is how do you want to pay? The choices are Mileage, Time, and Travel Time and Mileage.

Mileage will calculate and pay for the distance between clients (as calculated by Google Maps, shortest route).

Time will calculate and pay for the time it takes to drive between clients (as calculated by Google Maps, shortest route).

Time & Mileage will calculate and pay for both the Time and Mileage between clients (as calculated by Google Maps, shortest route).

If your agency pays only for mileage (the distance between clients), make that selection. You will then be prompted to enter the rate at which you pay mileage. If it is $0.56 per mile, for example, enter that in the box.

You will also be asked for the maximum number of minutes between shifts for which you would pay mileage i.e. if there is a time gap between shifts after which you would not pay for the travel, set that maximum threshold here. For example, if the shifts are more than 1 hour apart and you don't pay for travel, then enter 60. Enter the maximum number of miles for which you would pay in the second box. Any trips over this limit will be highlighted for your review in the Time Tracking View.

If your agency only pays for the time, make that selection. You will then be prompted to enter the default hourly rate for which you will pay this time. It is often, but not always, the minimum wage for your state. You will enter this amount in the box.

Scenario: Caregiver Jane works with Client Albert until 10:00 am. She then drives to Client Bernard for her shift with him at 11:00 am. The distance between the two homes is 15 miles and in normal city traffic takes about 35 minutes.

If you pay Jane for the whole hour, including wait time, enter 60 (or whatever your maximum for which you would pay is) in the first box labelled "Max. minutes between consecutive shifts". If you pay Jane only for the reasonable amount of time it would take to get there, i.e. the 35 minutes, then you would enter the maximum time gap for which you would pay travel time in the "Pay for reasonable time travelling?" box. For example, if you wouldn't pay travel time at all for shifts that are more than 2 hours apart, enter 120 in this box.

Enter the maximum time for which you would reasonably pay travel in the next box, "Max. minutes of reasonable travel time". Any trips over this limit will be highlighted for your review in the Time Tracking View.

This setting allows you to pay for both the miles travelled and the time it takes to do so. In this case, you will have to fill out both the mileage and the hourly rate. You will also have to define the time and mileage thresholds as defined above. Outliers will be highlighted for your review in Time Tracking View.

All settings will require that you define whether you pay for travel between any consecutive shifts or only those on the same working day.

Scenario: A caregiver's shift ends at 11:45 pm and their next one begins at 12:15 am. It otherwise falls within all other parameters you have set for travel time and mileage. Do you pay for that travel? If yes, choose "Any consecutive shift", if no choose "Any consecutive shift in the same working day".

Important: The distance shown for caregiver-to-client compatibility and staffing decisions may differ from the mileage recorded for visits or the driving directions displayed on a route map.

Compatibility Distance is calculated using the geographic coordinates of the caregiver's address and the client's visit address. This measurement uses a straight-line ("as the crow flies") distance between the two locations and is intended to help identify nearby caregivers during scheduling and staffing activities.

Driving Distance and Mileage, on the other hand, are based on actual road networks, available routes, and navigation data. Because roads rarely follow a straight path, the driving distance will often be greater than the compatibility distance.

As a result, it is normal to see differences between:

These values serve different purposes and are calculated using different methods. The compatibility distance is designed to support scheduling decisions, while driving distance and mileage reflect the actual travel required to reach the visit location.