Provider software that does less, on purpose.
Participants, staff, rosters and shift notes. The four things a small provider actually opens, and not much else.
If you coordinate a handful of support workers, you are probably paying every month for a system built for an organisation ten times your size, and opening a fraction of it. The reporting suite you never read is in that bill.
One price for the whole business, not a price per person. Add a worker, pay the same. When we set the number it will be a year at a time, and it will not move because you grew.
Twenty minutes on the phone, and you get a say in what gets built first. No cost, no card, and not a sales list.
I run two disability support providers. I am not building this from a product brief, I am building it from the same admin I do on a Sunday night, and from watching what a small provider actually opens in the software they pay for.
Kim Matthews, founder of Sparks Flow
What we are not going to build.
Most software gets more expensive because it keeps adding things you did not ask for. This is the list we intend to keep saying no to, so you can decide today whether we are wrong for you.
An app your workers have to download
Support workers get a link by text and open it. No account to create, no app to install, nothing to talk a new casual through at nine on a Sunday night.
Endless reports
Four things you can print or hand over: a participant summary, a shift and hours record for a period, a worker compliance list, and an incident record. That is the reporting. There is no suite to configure and no monthly export nobody opens.
Your payroll
We are not going to run it. We are going to make handing it over easy: approved timesheets go across to Xero, and pay happens where your bookkeeper already works.
Anything that holds your money
Flow will help you produce the invoice and the claim. It will never hold, move or process the funds, and you stay the one who sends it. That boundary is deliberate and it is not moving.
A worker marketplace
We will never match workers to shifts for you, and we will never host participant-facing profiles. You employ your team. Flow keeps track of it.
A longer feature list than the next product
The absence is the product. If a gap here is a dealbreaker for you, we would rather you knew now.
Enough to run properly. Not enough to get lost in.
Everything a small provider has to do to run properly is either working now or on the list below. Nothing is missing because we could not be bothered.
Flow already runs every day for families managing their own support team. The provider side is being built on top of that, and it is not finished. Here is the honest split.
Working today
In the product now
- Participant records, with their goals and the notes attached to them.
- Your staff, their availability, and the credentials you have to keep an eye on, flagged in the app before they lapse.
- A roster you build once, including shifts that repeat.
- Shift notes written by the worker on their phone, through a link you text them. Nothing for them to download, no account for them to make.
- Recruitment when you need it: the ad, the applications, and the interview questions.
Being built for providers
Not available yet
- NextA provider account, with your business on it rather than a family profile.
- NextItem codes and invoicing, if you would rather raise invoices here. If you would rather work in Xero, they merge across and the information flows both ways.
- After thatTimesheets that merge to Xero, so pay happens where your bookkeeper already works. Flow never touches the money.
- After thatIncident reports, and a register you can actually keep.
- ThenService agreements for every participant, not only the plan managed ones.
- ThenA period report you can hand to a plan manager, or bring to a plan review.
The first providers in shape the order these get built in.
You are not starting again.
Your participants and your staff come across as records. Your history comes across as documents, so the notes you already have stay with the people they belong to. Nobody is retyping a caseload into a new system at nine o’clock at night.
While there are only a few of you, we do it by hand
The import tool is being built. Until it is finished, the honest offer is better than the tool: send us your export and we move it across for you, then you check it before anything goes live. There will not be many early providers, so this is a real offer and not a figure of speech.
If you want to know whether your current export will come across cleanly, that is exactly the sort of thing worth twenty minutes on the phone. Bring the file.
Help us build the right half first.
We are talking to small providers about what they actually need before we build the rest of it. Twenty minutes on the phone, and you get a say in what comes first. If you would rather not talk, leave the box unticked and we will just keep you posted.
Worth being clear about
Sparks Flow is software you run your own team with. It is not an agency, not a marketplace, and not an employment, payroll or HR service. It does not match workers to participants.
On money, the line is worth being exact about. Flow will help you produce invoices and the files you need to claim. It will not lodge them for you and it will never hold, move or process the funds. You stay the one who sends it, and payment happens between you and the payer, the same as it does now.
On price, the number is not set yet and we are not going to invent one. The shape is set: one price for the whole business, billed a year at a time, and never a charge per person. You will hear the number from us before you hear it anywhere else.
This is general information, not financial or NDIS advice.