Birdie launches Upgraded Rostering: build the rota once, and it lives on the care record

London, 22nd September 2026 - Birdie, the smart technology platform for homecare, has launched Upgraded Rostering: a brand new rostering system built from the ground up. It lets a homecare agency build a visit pattern once and have the rolling rota materialise from it, on the same record as the care plan, medications, funding and the audit trail.

A strong roster is critical to a healthy homecare business: it decides not just who goes where and when, but what care gets invoiced, and when carers get paid. However, homecare providers have historically had to compromise on the type of tool they use, choosing between:

• A template-driven rostering engine, disconnected from the care record. The pattern gets built once, but every care plan or funding change is re-keyed between two systems, and compliance evidence is assembled after the fact. 
• Rostering that’s integrated with care management, but functions as a copy-paste exercise, rebuilt by hand every week, with the drift that comes from copying old rotas forward.

Upgraded Rostering removes that choice, combining two core elements in one: 

• The roster shares the care record, so tasks and medications attach to visits automatically, conflicts surface as a visit is created, and confirmed visits flow straight to finance.
• It’s built on a templating engine, so multi-week and alternating-week templates hold the intended pattern of care and the rota rolls forward, meaning coordinators touch only what genuinely changes. 

"The roster is the heart of a care business," said Max Parmentier, CEO and co-founder of Birdie. "But for too long care providers have been forced to make a choice between rostering that’s easy, and rostering that’s connected to care records. Upgraded Rostering means they no longer have to make that trade-off."

Fifty hours a week, back into care

Harmonize Care, a domiciliary provider in Suffolk, moved to Birdie after its previous software left it without a working roster for three weeks. Templates there broke repeatedly, visits went uncovered, and schedules had to be built week by week.

On Upgraded Rostering, the team has around 50 hours a week back from scheduling and the admin around it. Once a schedule is set, it rolls on continuously, and the on-call manager can see at a glance which visits are in progress and which are done.

The time saved has gone back into the business. "Other things then have become a lot more efficient," said Lisa Edwards, Operations Manager at Harmonize Care. "So we're now picking up more care packages."

Tell it once, and the roster runs the rest

Built from a template, the rota holds the intended pattern of care, supporting the continuity of care: the same carers, at the same times, for the same people, as the default rather than something a coordinator protects by hand every week. Anything that differs from the pattern is a visible, deliberate, logged exception.

Because that template sits on the care record, everything downstream reads from it. The carer arrives with the right tasks and medications already attached to the visit. The family can see who’s coming. Confirmed visits flow into pay and charge without being re-entered. And the compliance record assembles itself as the work happens, so the evidence is already there rather than being pulled together in the weeks before an inspection. 

This is what Birdie has championed in its near-decade of supporting care delivery: define the standard, deliver to the standard, and where reality diverges, show what changed and why.

Proven before launch

Upgraded Rostering has been in the hands of over 160 selected Birdie partners through a phased rollout, and has now delivered more than 3.1 million hours of care and 1.7 million visits. In side-by-side testing against one competitor system, schedule setup was 75% faster, carer assignment 40% faster, and visit and medication setup 40% faster.

Agencies moving across from Birdie's previous roster see the difference in the weekly routine: rota planning up to 70% faster, around 40% less time updating visit schedules, and around 30% less time creating and updating visit plans.

Availability

Upgraded Rostering is generally available to UK homecare providers from today. It is part of the Birdie platform and is not sold separately. Birdie is running a free online launch session on Tuesday October 6th, and Upgraded Rostering will be on show at the Care Show at the NEC Birmingham on October 7th and 8th.

For more information, visit www.birdie.care/rostering.

Notes to editors

About Upgraded Rostering

Upgraded Rostering is Birdie's template-driven scheduling system, built into the same record as care, compliance and finance. Multi-week and alternating-week templates materialise the rolling rota automatically, so there is no weekly plan-rota step. Visit overrides and one-off visits let agencies flex for real life without disturbing the underlying pattern. Runs and shifts extend the template model to larger, multi-branch operations.

About Birdie

Birdie is the smart technology platform that helps homecare agencies work smarter, not just harder. Launched in 2017 and trusted by over 1,200 providers to power over 68 million care visits annually, Birdie integrates every process from care management to finance, helping under-pressure teams work smarter to improve care quality and drive business sustainability.

For more information on Birdie's product developments, visit its Smarter Care Lab at www.birdie.care/smarter-care-lab