When you have multiple participants living in a group home or SIL, chances are you'll have joint costs like groceries, utilities and other miscellaneous items. Here's how you can use SpendAble to manage these joint funds.
In this article we will step you through how to set up the accounts for a full SIL house.
Why would I use SpendAble for joint costs?
In our example we have 3 participant's (John, Alicia & Stephanie) living in a SIL house (High St SIL).
Managing joint costs can be challenging, especially when it comes to separating personal funds of participants that you're managing from the joint costs.
This is often done by separating into different pouches or envelopes — but it is easy for these funds to be mixed up.
SpendAble makes it simple and easy to manage all costs, while ensuring they're accounted for accurately and easily.
Setting up the users for joint costs
To create the correct users for the SIL house to work you need to create 4 participant's:
- High St SIL
- John
- Alicia
- Stephanie
Start by pressing the "Onboard User" button on the dashboard and selecting "Add Participant"
Fill in the users details and create the user.
If your SIL house or participant's don't have an email or phone number you can read this article to understand what to do in that situation. (https://spendable.simplebase.co/en/category/set-up-your-organisation/article/add-your-participants)
Setting up wallets for joint costs
During the "Add Participant" process it will ask you to create a wallet for each of the participant's and house. Create at least 1 wallet where money can be deposited for participants and the house.
- High St wallet
- John's wallet
- Alicia's wallet
- Stephanie's wallet
An added option is that you can create multiple wallets to separate and categorise the joint costs. To do this:
- Identify the categories of joint costs — i.e. Groceries, Electricity Bill, Water Bill etc.
- Create a wallet for each identified category for the house
Order a card for each user
During the "Add User" process you will be asked if you want to order a card for the participant/house. For each user we recommend ordering a card so that you have flexibility to:
- Make joint purchases using the house card
- Make individual purchases using the participant's card
A house card should be a "Card for their support workers".
Participant cards could be either a "Card for the participant" or "Card for their support workers". You can read more about which type to choose here (https://spendable.simplebase.co/en/category/ordering-cards/article/what-cards-should-i-order)
Who needs access to the joint costs wallets?
You need to decide who needs to access the money to pay, view or report? People such as:
- Support workers to pay
- Parents, house & area managers to see what is being spent
- Trustee's and financial guardians to view spending
Create the required users in the onboard user process by selecting participant or guardian. If you need to add admins or operations managers, you need to do this from the 'Users' tab in the hub.
Connecting support workers
- Go to the 'wallet' tab in the hub
- Find the wallet in the list you want to connect the user to and select the edit pencil
- In the wallet, find the 'Users Connect' box click the '+' button.
- Input the email of the user you are connecting
- Click connect
How to get money into the joint funds account
There are two options to deposit money to the wallets:
- Transfer from an external bank account
- Internally transfer from another wallet in SpendAble (Requires funds in the other wallet)
In the top right hand corner of the wallet details page, you'll see the bank details for your wallet.
By simply using the BSB, Account Number and Description, you can directly transfer funds to the wallet.
How do I transfer between the participant account and house wallet?
Read this article to understand how internal transfers are made.