Author: Joe Admin

Cancellation

Cancelling a Confirmed booking

Gpnetworks does not have a Policy on the subject, since we are not involved in the negotiations between practices and practitioners

Both parties are able to post their terms to their Profile and we send each others terms, during the booking process

We have a logic within our system that relaters to cancellations – as follows:

GPs cannot cancel a booked session (via the system) – they can contact a practice and cancel it verbally with them and ask them to cancel the session on the system

Practices can cancel booked sessions but not on the day of the session – the system provides them a feature to do this and sends relevent communications / updates both parties Calendars etc

Hope this helps

Sole Trader vs Limited Company: Which One Should You Be?

Sole Trader vs Limited Company: Which One Should You Be?

Author: Joshua Danton Boyd – Crunch Accounting

It’s clear the life of a locum doctor can be stressful and time-consuming. It’s no surprise then when it comes to getting paid many will take the simpler choice. While ease may rank highly, in the end, you want to be doing things in the most fiscally efficient way possible. NHS and locum agencies may be simple, but they can also bring your income down.

The next simplest choice is to become a sole trader. In other words, you become self-employed. This is a fairly easy process and pretty much means you become responsible for receiving your wages and ensuring you pay the correct tax on it all. That’s done with a yearly Self-Assessment and can be fairly straightforward if you keep on top of your papers and accounts over the year.

An added benefit though is the ability to claim expenses against the tax you pay. This can include things like travel and equipment costs. While it does make doing your accounts a slight more complicated, it could end up saving you a fair bit of cash too.

Another option is to form your own Limited Company. This, depending on your situation, can have even more benefits. First of all, you can of course claim business costs to bring your tax down which is always handy. After that, things get a little bit more complicated.

A Limited Company is often the most tax efficient way to pay yourself. This is done by giving yourself a set salary equal to the national minimum wage. This brings down the level of income tax that you pay. To top that up, you then pay yourself in dividends which are taxed at a lower rate. This can lead to massive savings.

For example, if you had an income of £40,000, by forming a Limited Company you could be saving yourself well over £2,000 a year. That’s also without including any expenses that you could further claim to bring that number up. The more you earn, the more going incorporated will get you.

A Limited Company does mean more work though and is certainly a more tricky method than being a sole trader. The simple way to think that though is to hire yourself an accountant. In most cases the savings you’ll be making will easily cover the accounting fees with plenty left over.

They’ll take on all the hard work, and with someone like us at Crunch, it’ll just be a matter of using a simple piece of software. We even do the whole process from scratch starting with your incorporation as a limited company!

So, it’s certainly worth looking into if you haven’t already. There’s a lot of money to be saved if you’re willing to make a change.

Visit Crunch now to find out about their services

Why can I not see a doctors contact details?

There are 3 possible reasons for this:

(note: in all cases, you can still Request GPs via the system)

1. The doctor has not published their contact details

2. You are using a FREE practice account (unable to see GP contact details)

3. Your practice is outside the doctors work radius but they have decided to show you their availability anyway (details below).

Details

For example, a doctor has a work radius set in their account of 50 miles (this is how far they are willing to travel to work and affects the list of Practices they advertise their availability to)

Your practice is outside of this doctors Work Radius so, normally, you would not see their availability in your calendar.

However, the doctor has also activated a special feature within their account to show their availability to practices not on their personal list of employers (shows them to practices outside their radius) – but to not show those practices their contact details

Which means you can see the doctors availability and request the doctor via the system but not contact them directly

 

How to find locum work near you

There are a few simple things to do, in order to find locum work that suits you.

Crucial

1. Enter your sessional availability
Each day is broken down into 4 sessions – click any sessions to make them available then save the changes

2. Add you skills and qualifications
Tick the boxes next to the particular skills and/or qualification that you have – then save the changes

3. Choose your work radius and manage your list of surgeries
The work radius determines what practices are in your Surgeries list below and, by the same token, what practices can see your sessional availability and request you to work. It is a general expression of how far you are willing to travel for sessional work. After setting this radius, you can individually select or deselect any of the surgeries in your list. When you are done, click ‘save’ to save the changes.

Notes:
You are not committed to work for a practice because they are in your list. Each Request for work is negotiated between you and an employer directly.

Useful:

Your message to employers
Go to your Profile, scroll down to ‘Optional short message’ and write something that will help practices to understand why they should request you.

Upload your CV and as many professional documents as you can
Update you availability frequently – the more frequently you update the greater your visibility to pracyices looking for sessional cover. This is because availability for any given day is served to employers in lists, within their calendar interface. When you update your availability you go to the top of the lists.

Use the ‘send your availability to anyone‘ feature to send your calendar to employers outside of GPnetworks

This feature is explained in an article here

Private notes and iCal integration

Private notes

All GP accounts have a Notes feature within their Availability Calendar to add private notes – just click on the little ‘n’ next to any session and a notes popup appears into which you can enter text. These are editable at any time by clicking the ‘n’ again.

These notes are, of course, only visible to the owner – and all your notes can be downloaded as a spreadsheet.

 

iCal integration

All GP accounts contain a feature to create an iCal feed from your GPnetworks Calendar – you can customise your feed to contain the data and date range you wish – then integrate that data feed into a number of devices and applications

iPhone / iPad:
Click the iCal feed address link created for you below the feed generator tools, in your Work & Availability screen. This link is generated for you after you click ‘Generate’

Android:
First install Giraffe from the Market then click the iCal feed address as above

iCal
goto: Menu: Calendar: Subscribe – paste feed address into area provided. Or follow the instructions for iPhone above and choose iCal from the options given

Google Calendar
goto: Other Calendars: Add by URL – paste feed address into area provided

Outlook:
Click the iCal link in the menu above – paste feed address into area provided

Thunderbird (+Lightning addon):
goto: File: New: Calendar: Choose ‘on the network’ then ‘continue’ – add feed address into Location field and ‘Continue’