Product Announcement

Lookout accounts provide unrivaled financial transparency to customers and their network.

David Herse

Head Of Product @ Lookout

We have rolled out Accounts, a brand new way to manage Home Care Package funds and balances in Lookout. Accounts is a fully integrated fund management tool. It provides family and care staff with an up-to-date view of transactions and available funds as well as printable monthly Home Care Package Statements.

Staying informed and in control.

Research tells us that people receiving support and their families want transparency and to stay informed and control. This importantly includes controlling and understanding their finances. That's why we built the Accounts feature to give families access to the information they need so they can know exactly what's happening at all times with their funds.

And this tool is not just for families. Being able to deliver world-class care also means care staff knowing what funds are available so support can be planned and managed.

Streamlining accounting and reconciliation.

Managing Government Home Care Packages can be a daunting task of reconciling income and expense and providing monthly statements to customers. With Accounts, expenses are automatically tracked, deposits can be bulk uploaded, and monthly statements are automatically generated. We designed the statement to be easy to understand, printable and snail-mail ready – with the Billing Recipients address positioned for standard window envelopes.

We wanted Accounts to work alongside existing accounting tools. When it comes time for an organisation to reconcile transactions and balances with their accounting software, a powerful spreadsheet report gives details on all transactions within a definable time period. This joins our existing invoice reports that providing the finance team with everything they need to reconcile transactions.

Viewing available funds and transactions in Lookout Admin.

Accounts are automatically opened when a customer has a home care package funding scheme selected. The finance team can also open and close accounts manually.

On a customer profile, care staff can navigate to the Transactions & statements tab to view the customers transactions and a customers up-to-date balance.

Viewing available funds and transactions in the App

Customers, Authorised Representatives and Billing Recipients can view their transactions and statements in the app by going to the People tab, selecting the Member they want to view and then selecting Account.

Viewing and downloading statements in the App.

User can navigate to the customer Account and select Statements and then the period they want to download to save.

Customer, Authorised Representatives and Billing Recipients can also view the Billing history which provides access to weekly invoice summaries. Invoice summaries were previously called weekly statements, but to avoid confusion we renamed them.

Structure of new and improved statements

With this update brings a completely redesigned easy to read monthly statement including.

Address of Billing Recipient – for easy mailing with windowed envelopes.
Large easy to read font.
Overview with:
- Opening balance – carried over from the previous statement.
- Total debits – made up of invoices from care workers and third-party providers as well as reimbursements to customer for expenses.
- Total credits – the amount deposited from Home Care Package funds and customer contributions.
- Closing balance – the currently available funds (debit or credit) at the end of the statement period.
Chronological transactions – with descriptions of the invoice, credit, or debit.

Marking preference for receiving paper statements

If a Billing recipient wants to receive statements by mail, staffers can Turn on mail statements in the customer profile.