Steps Required for a New Office

Leaving or Joining a CARES Office

Please consult the Changes to Office section of OCR's Billing Policies & Procedures.  Each CARES account is linked to one office which shares communal payment information and access to appointments.  Therefore, if an existing contractor joins or leaves a shared office, the OCR is required to give the Attorney/Managing CC a new account in CARES.  This means the Attorney/Managing CC will need to end any ongoing appointments in their former account and enter those appointments in their new account.

Efficiency Tip: If you are responsible for your old and/or new office's invoicing, time your office change to coincide with the end of an invoicing period so you can submit your final invoice from the old office, then start billing in the new office without needing to request an exception from OCR's Executive Director to invoice twice in the same month.

Change Request Forms can take up to two weeks for OCR to process, so please plan ahead.  After OCR notifies you of your new account in response to your Change Request Form, follow the steps below to finish the transition between offices in CARES.

Next Steps for a New CARES Account

You must complete the steps below before your new office invoices for activities in your new account.  Your old CARES account is tied to your former office.  Your new CARES account is tied to your new office.  While you transition between CARES accounts, both your new and your old account are accessible through the normal CARES login page—each of your accounts has a different user name.

I) New Account Steps:

Start here, using your new CARES account.  It's easier to enter appointments in the new account before changing anything in the old account.

1. Log in to your new account: to set your password, navigate to https://cares.coloradochildrep.org/#!/forgot and carefully type the email address at which you received these instructions and notice of your new account.  You will receive a password reset email within a few minutes--use the user name at the top of the email and the email's link to set a password and log in to your new account.  Need more help?
   
   
2. Navigate to User Settings from the CARES left-side menu and set your General Settings preferences in this new account.  Review User Settings > My Office to make sure your staff is up to date; if needed, request to add or deactivate staff members with the buttons in the upper right, being sure to use your new firm name on those request forms.
   
   
3. Follow the standard steps in Create an Appointment to enter your open appointments into the new account.  (If you are a Managing Case Consultant, request access to appointments and disregard the bullets below).

   • The cases you need are already in CARES but you need to create new appointments for your new office. Only an appointment links a case to an office.

   • On child party screens for each D&N appointment, use the “Reason for late or missed 30-day in-placement visit" box (above placements) to enter the reason, “Office change, visit/reason logged in old account” as long as that is true.  OCR will exclude these re-entered appointments from your quarterly Initial Visit Report if you enter this reason.  (Please note, this says "reason/visit" because, even if you made no 30-day visit in the old account but you already entered an explanation there, you can point to your previous explanation with this "office change" language rather than re-explaining your missed visit.)  More on this

II) Old Account Steps:

Complete the remaining steps below using your old CARES account only after the steps above.

1. Log out of your new account and log in to your old CARES account using your previous user name and password through the normal CARES login page.
   
   
2. Close every appointment in your old office by adding an end date to each child party and the “Office Change” end reason. The cases should remain open because you already set them up in your new office.  (Note, if you are a Managing Case Consultant, you do not have appointments and can skip this step.)  Need more help?
   
   
3. If you are responsible for invoicing in the previous office, finalize and submit your last invoice from the old account. Anything on this invoice will go to your former office.
   
   
4. Notify OCR ([e-mail]) that you finished entering activities and invoicing in the old account.  This is a very important last step before invoicing in your new office.

All finished!  Use the new account for all new activities and invoicing going forward, and be certain never to double-bill OCR in the new account for any activity already invoiced in the old account.

If no other OCR contractors remain in the former office, you can continue to access the old account for reference as needed through the same normal CARES login page with your old user name.  However, if other OCR contractors remain in the former office, you will no longer have access to the old account after this transition (to protect both offices' confidentiality).

Remember, if your email address changed, attorneys may also need to notify [e-mail] to update the court appointed counsel system's appointment email notifications (that is not a system managed by OCR).