Smarter Care Lab Notes, April 2026: New finance date selectors, Upgraded Rostering updates and SmartPlans waitlist

Welcome back to Lab Notes, your monthly update on the latest product developments at Birdie. This is where we share the innovations, improvements, and ideas that are shaping the future of care technology. This month: a new time-saving feature for confirming visits, big steps forward for Upgraded Rostering, and how to get early access to SmartPlans. Let's get started.

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What's new

Find and confirm visits faster with date presets

We’ve made confirming visits quicker and easier. The date selector now includes a dropdown of handy shortcuts – like 'Today', 'Last 7 days', and 'This month'. Pick one and your visits load instantly, saving you a few clicks every time you open the page.

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What's in the works: Upgraded Rostering

We’re continuing to rebuild rostering as part of our built-as-one platform and as the new heart of your care business. This new foundation is already making weekly rota planning up to 70% faster for our early partners.The first version of Upgraded Rostering is being used by a small group of partner agencies, and a full rollout is planned for later this year. When it’s your turn, our team will provide hands-on support to ensure a seamless migration for your agency.

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Recently delivered on Upgraded Rostering

Based on your feedback, we’ve been working on these features to give you more control and visibility:

• Plan care with the weekly roster views by client: Manage a full week of care from a client-centric view to ensure their contracted hours are met.
• A clearer view of a carer’s weekly utilisation: See a carer's preferred working hours range with new visual indicators that show their weekly utilisation at a glance. Preferred working hours is available for Upgraded Rostering partners with Advanced and Plus packages.
• Get deeper insights with new Birdie Analytics reports: We’ve expanded Birdie Analytics with new reports focused on care management, including the Visit Logs, Completed Visits, Secure Check-in/Out Success, Alerts Raised & Resolved and more. You can see the full list of available reports here.
• Audit quickly with the new timeline tab: See a simple, chronological view of visit timing and date changes to a visit made from 14th April 2026 onwards. We’ll be adding more events to this over time to make auditing even easier.
• Stop active visit schedules: Respond quickly to care plan changes by stopping active visit schedules, allowing for fast and simple template updates.

What's next: Planned improvements

To give you more flexibility to handle the daily realities of care coordination, we’re working on these next:

• Absence management: We're introducing a dedicated Time Off system that streamlines approvals and reduces back-and-forth. Carers will be able to book absences directly from the app, and you’ll be able to view and manage carer requests – including holidays and sickness – directly in the Agency Hub. This will be available for Upgraded Rostering partners with Core, Advanced, and Plus packages.
• Visit overrides: Make one-off visit edits while keeping everything else in sync with the original visit template.
• Additional Birdie Analytics reports: We're expanding our reporting suite to include more finance-focused insights.

We’re continuing to work on the first versions of runs and shifts as a high priority. We’re also exploring bulk assignment of carers on visit schedules. To follow our progress and submit feedback, you can visit our public roadmap here.

Want to see more? Take a quick product tour of Upgraded Rostering.

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Coming soon: SmartPlans

We are continuing to test SmartPlans, our new AI-powered tool designed to help you turn care assessment conversations into person-centred care plans. The tool records your client conversation and uses AI to generate the first draft of the care assessment for you to review – freeing you up to focus on the human side of care.

You can get a preview of SmartPlans in our recent webinar, and we now have a waitlist for agencies who want to be the first to get access! Learn more about SmartPlans and join the waitlist here.

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