Each of your office's appointments in CARES opens to a Profile tab. Here, you can view the county/court, case type, nickname, appointed attorney, office, appointment billing allocation, case billing percent, and children/youth.
Appointment Nickname
You can enter and edit a nickname for your appointment as needed. The nickname is optional and is only for your office’s convenience; CARES displays nicknames in the Appointment header, on your My Appointments list, and in a few other places where your appointments are listed for you.
Appointment Billing Allocation
The amount of your appointment's billing allocation is displayed on the Profile Tab. Be sure to consult OCR's Billing Policies and Procedures to learn more about your Appointment Billing Allocation, including what to do for appointments that start with a zero-dollar allocation until you provide certain paperwork to OCR. Read on to learn about how CARES will warn you as you run out of funding.
Warn When Billing Reaches (Percentage)
By default, each appointment will warn you when the total dollar amount of all activities is at or over 80% of the Appointment Billing Allocation. You can edit this percentage to any other whole number on any specific appointment. For example, if you have an appointment with a small allocation, it may be beneficial to see a warning when that appointment has reached just 50% of the allocation; if you have a very large allocation, you may want to see warnings only at 95%. Warnings show on the Home Screen and on the appointment itself--you cannot "dismiss" these alerts, but you can change this "Warn When Billing Reaches" entry for the appointment to adjust when the alert shows.
Efficiency Tip: Apply a "Nearing Maximum Billing Allocation" filter on Cases > My Appointments to view a list of your appointments that may need Additional Funding Requests (see Additional Funding Requests for more on these requests which are the responsibility of the appointed office).
Case Billing Percent
The billing percentage shown on the Profile is automatically applied to all un-invoiced activities. For some case types, OCR will only pay for services after a court finds one or more of the parties who are responsible for the cost to be indigent. E.g., if one party is indigent, OCR will pay only the indigent party’s portion, and the Case Billing Percent shows "50%." Be sure to consult OCR's Billing Policies and Procedures about findings of indigence.
% Updated On
The "% Updated On" date only provides a record of the date OCR updated the case billing percent; it is not considered in the percentage calculation. The percentage calculates retroactively to all un-invoiced activities regardless of date. For most appointments, the "% Updated On" date is the date the appointment was created in CARES (when the billing percent was automatically set).
Child Party Table
At the bottom of the Profile screen, you can find a table of child parties on this appointment—notice the summary data on the right side of the table, including "Attorney Role" and "Latest Visit" which pulls from your activities. You can click on a blue Child Party name to edit their information, e.g., Applicability of ICWA, placement history, and educational setting history. For D&N appointments, use the "Reason for late or missed 30-day in-placement visit” checkbox directly above “Placements” if applicable to assert why the initial D&N 30-day in-placement visit is missing or late for this child. More on this
To indicate a child is no longer active in this appointment, click their name and, in the pop-up screen, enter a Representation End Date and reason. Whenever you edit any Child Party information, scroll to the bottom of the pop-up window to click Save Changes, or click Cancel to exit and discard any changes.
You can also click on the blue name of the Current Placement in the Child Parties table on the Profile tab. This is a shortcut to bring up that contact information if needed. Click "Close" when finished. If you need to change the placement, click on the child's name instead, and be sure to enter an end date in the previous placement. More on this
Any inactive child parties (with an end date) on this appointment are automatically hidden; select the "Show Inactive Children" checkbox above the table to show them in the table.