Would your payroll survive a minimum-wage inspection?
Travel time between visits counts as working time — and it's the single most common minimum-wage issue HMRC finds in home care. PayGuard analyses your own roster and payroll exports and shows every carer's true effective hourly rate, with a commissioner-ready evidence pack either way.
Built on a deterministic pay engine — every figure traces to your own data. No software to install; you send two CSV exports.
The averaging trap
Most rostering systems show your rate on contact time. HMRC averages pay over all working time in the pay-reference period — travel and waiting included. A rate that looks safely above the floor can quietly sit below it.
Figures from our synthetic sample report. The Fair Work Agency (live since April 2026) enforces the minimum wage with naming powers and penalties of up to 200% of arrears, and arrears can reach back six years. Care providers headline every naming round.
How it works
Export two files
Your roster/call-monitoring export and your payroll export (CarePlanner, Birdie, Access, PASS, Sage — any CSV works). No service-user data needed, ever.
We analyse
A deterministic engine computes each carer's effective rate per pay-reference period — travel time, deductions, accommodation offset and age bands included.
Evidence pack, within 2 working days
Per-carer results, red flags with plain-English explanations, and a day-by-day appendix. Clean result? Keep it as proof of proactive self-review for commissioners and tenders.
What's in the pack
- Per-carer effective rate vs the correct age-band floor, per pay period
- Contact-only vs travel-inclusive rate — the averaging trap made visible
- Indicative arrears for the audited period, carer by carer
- Deduction analysis: uniforms, DBS, training, accommodation offset
- "Near the floor" warnings before the next April uprating breaches them
- Day-by-day worked-time appendix with the full method shown
- Integrity-hashed data index — every figure traces to your own rows
- HMRC self-review framing, aligned to the official employer guidance
Pricing
- Whole-agency healthcheck — every carer, one full pay period
- Commissioner-ready evidence pack (PDF)
- If we can't read your exports, you don't pay
Prefer to email first? support@novastacks.co.uk
Coming next: a continuous monitor that re-checks every pay run automatically (£99/month), built into CareOps. Healthcheck customers get first access.
Questions owners ask
Is this legal or accounting advice?
No. PayGuard is an automated screening healthcheck based on the data you supply — it organises your records and does the arithmetic, on a deliberately conservative basis that is fully described in the report. It is not legal, tax, payroll or accounting advice, and it is not an HMRC determination. For formal advice, speak to your accountant or solicitor; the official calculator is at gov.uk.
What data do you need — and what about privacy?
Three CSVs: roster (carer, date, visit start/end, optional travel minutes), payroll (element, amount, hours) and a carer list (date of birth for age bands, base rate). We never ask for service-user names, addresses or care notes — client columns are ignored by design. Data is processed for the audit and deleted on your schedule; the report's integrity hashes let you prove what was analysed.
What if the result is clean?
Then you have something most providers don't: dated, methodical evidence of proactive self-review — useful for council contract monitoring, tenders and CQC well-led conversations. Around a fifth of low-paid workers are underpaid immediately after each April uprating, so the "near the floor" list matters even on a clean result.
Why now?
The Fair Work Agency launched in April 2026 as a single enforcement body with naming powers; a new duty to keep holiday records is already in force, and state enforcement of holiday pay arrives from 2027. HMRC's own guidance tells employers to self-review — this is that self-review, done properly.
Our rostering system already sets travel rates — isn't that enough?
Rostering settings decide what you intend to pay. The healthcheck verifies what actually happened: pay ÷ all working time, per carer, per pay period, against the right age band, after deductions. That's the calculation an inspector does — most systems don't show it anywhere.
Who is behind PayGuard?
PayGuard is built by ForgeAI Studio Ltd, the UK software company behind CareOps — rostering and workforce software for domiciliary care agencies. The engine is deterministic and versioned: the same inputs always produce the same result, and every figure in your pack traces to a row in your own export. Healthcheck customers get first access to the CareOps Pay Compliance module, which runs these same checks automatically on every pay run.