UK care providers are already saving time, cutting cost and streamlining their operations with Care Hires.
Let's work out the true cost of your next agency shift.
Beyond the hourly rate, factors like premium loading, spillover, admin time, and continuity gaps all accumulate. Adjust the sliders below to reveal the real financial impact of every agency shift you book.
Care Hires is the Agency Management Platform for UK care providers — one place to source, book, approve and pay for every agency shift, with compliance and spend visible across the whole service.
The invoice only shows the first one. The other four are real spend that rarely gets counted, so it rarely gets managed.
The agency hourly rate across the shift, plus VAT most care providers cannot reclaim.
Nights, weekends and short-notice uplifts that push the effective rate well above the headline.
Handover overruns, late arrivals and the perm-staff overtime that quietly covers the gaps.
Manager and coordinator time spent sourcing, booking, checking and reconciling a single shift.
Re-induction, unfamiliarity and the compliance risk carried when faces keep changing.
Care Hires collapses the layers that don't add care value, so more of every pound reaches the bedside.
Model your Total Shift Cost across all five layers, not just the invoice line. Nothing to install.
1,300+ agencies compete for your shifts in one place, with rates, compliance and booking handled together.
Less admin, less spillover, better continuity, so the managed cost lands far below the manual one.
The model reflects the Care Hires Total Shift Cost framework, built from real agency invoices and the operational time care teams spend around every booking. The defaults describe a typical 12-hour HCA shift booked last minute, and every input is yours to change.
Most care providers cannot reclaim VAT, so the 20% is a genuine cost they carry. At the default settings that is roughly £46 a shift, and it compounds quickly across a year.
No. It is an indicative comparison based on the reductions services typically see in admin, spillover and continuity once shifts are filled and managed in one place. A short review gives you a figure grounded in your own data.
Any shift filled through an agency rather than from your permanent roster, particularly at short notice. Those carry the highest premium and the most hidden cost, which is why they matter most.
We’ll email your full breakdown — bring your own rates and volumes, and we’ll walk through where the hidden layers are hiding in a 15-minute review.