Services
This article provides detailed information outlining what a 'Service' is and how it is structured in SupportAbility.
Audience: Authorised Representatives, Executive Management, Finance Team, Operations Management
Summary
The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
- What is a Service?
- Terminology
- Service, Program and Activity Structure
- What are Service Types?
- What is the Default Administration Service in SupportAbility used for?
- How should Services be structured within SupportAbility?
- How do Services and Sites work together
- Are Programs required?
- Adding a new Service
The Services Concept video covers most of the information outlined in this article. You may wish to view it alongside the information contained here.
What is a Service?
Generally speaking, Services in SupportAbility are used to represent the core nature of the Services your organisation delivers to Clients.
We recommend that the names of Services your organisation sets up in SupportAbility reflect the actual nature of the Service delivered, rather than the funding used to provide the Service.
In SupportAbility, Services are different from Funding Types. Clients may use from a variety of Funding Sources to pay for the Services they participate in, however, the Funding Types most providers utilise & manage in SupportAbility is predominantly NDIS.
Some examples of Services may include:
- Day Service
- Community Access
- In Home Care
- Therapeutic Support
- Accommodation
- Supported Employment or an Australian Disability Enterprise (ADE) business e.g. Smith Gardening
- Support Coordination
- Plan Management - for registered providers of this Service
It is important to note that Clients can participate in multiple Services, and Staff can also work in multiple Services. This is what determines the privacy barriers in SupportAbility and who has access to what records.
Terminology
SupportAbility uses the following structure to describe and manage the Services that an organisation delivers:
Service, Program and Activity Structure
Example:
What are Service Types?
When a new Service is created, the team at SupportAbility need to select the type of Service that this is. The available Service Types are:
- Standard - SupportAbility works on a collaborative access model for all Standard Services
- NDIS Support Coordination - This Service Type enforces additional privacy barriers
- Staff working in Standard Services cannot see the Client Journals and Activities for Support Coordination
- Staff working in Support Coordination cannot see the Client Journals for Standard Services
- NDIS Plan Management - This Service Type triggers the Plan Management functionality to become available in SupportAbility, as well as additional privacy barriers regarding Client Journals
What is the Default Administration Service used for?
Every SupportAbility installation has a default 'Administration' Service included. This Service is locked and is mandatory by default. The 'Administration' Service serves multiple purposes:
- Staff Account privileges across 'ALL SERVICES' at specific Sites
- Client Journals recorded at the Administration Site are accessible by everyone
- It can be used as the Service for Staff only Activities
- It can be used as the Service for Client only Activities
Please review the Default Administration Service article linked below for more information.
How should Services be structured within SupportAbility?
The way you decide to structure your Services within SupportAbility affects the way that SupportAbility manages:
- Reporting
- Consider how your organisation wishes to be able to generate reports. Are there distinct departments or teams that should be differentiated as Services for this purpose?
- General Ledger Codes
- For all invoicing, the corresponding account codes used to categorise this income must be configured in SupportAbility based on the structure of your organisation's Chart of Accounts. For example, if your organisation wishes revenue for Day Services, to be categorised separately to the income generated for the Community Access Service, having separate Services to reflect this would be appropriate.
- Privacy barriers
- Separate Services enable privacy barriers between Clients and Staff.
- SupportAbility works on a collaborative access model for Standard Services.
- For example, if Staff Member 1 works in the Day Service, and Staff Member 2 work in the In Home Service, and our Client Tim participates in both Services, both Staff Members can see Tim's Client record and the Journals entered for either of these Services.
- Specific privacy barriers are enforced however, for Specialist Services i.e. Plan Management and/or Support Coordination.
- For example, if Staff Member 1 works in the Day Service, and Staff Member 2 work in the Support Coordination Service, and our Client Tim participates in both Services, both Staff Members can see Tim's Client record, but only Staff Member 1 can see the Journals associated with any of the Standard Services Tim participates in and Staff Member 2 can only the Journals entered for the Support Coordination Service.
- SupportAbility works on a collaborative access model for Standard Services.
- Separate Services enable privacy barriers between Clients and Staff.
How do Services and Sites work together?
In the simplest terms, Services are what your organisation does, and Sites are where your organisation does this from, OR, where what your organisation does is managed from.
For example, we deliver our Accommodation Service from the Smith House Site, and run our Day Service at both the Melbourne (HQ) and Sydney Sites.
Are Programs required?
As you will see in the diagram above (under Terminology), adding a list of Programs that Staff may select when creating or updating Activities (instances of Service deliver) is entirely optional.
It can add value to group sets of Activities by Program, as Program is a search criterion in various searches and reports which allows Staff to search for a number of Activities by Program. It can also be beneficial if your organisation wishes to utilise SupportAbility to generate Job Codes to provide a much more detailed level of categorisation to enhance the analytical value of your financial data.
Programs are a list in SupportAbility, which can be configured in the Lists tab in System Preferences by selecting 'Activity:Programs' e.g:
For more information regarding Programs and Configuring Lists please review the Activity Programs List article and the Configuring Lists article linked below.
Adding a new Service
To add a new Service to your SupportAbility installation please contact our Customer Success team who will assist by creating the Service as required. Please send your request via your organisation's Authorised Representatives to support@supportability.com.au.
Once SupportAbility has added a new Service to your installation, there is some required configuration to be completed by your organisation, to ensure this new Service is available and configured correctly for use in other areas of SupportAbility.
For information regarding how to complete this configuration once a new Service has been added, please refer to the Configuring Services article, linked below.