Income and Benefit Details
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The systems "Benefits and Income" feature allows users to record details of the benefits and income that their clients receive. Usually this is in the context of a project which helps clients apply for benefits of some kind, and so it is important to hold information about the client's financial status.
Access to the Benefits and Income feature is controlled by a setting in Group Access, and this is one of the features that system administrators commonly choose to restrict access to.
Click on the "Benefits and Income" link at the bottom of the Client Details screen to use the feature.
This screenshot shows the view you will have when no information has yet been stored. Click on the "Enter New Benefit" button to enter information.
You will then come to the following screen:
You can now enter any of the following information:
- Dates - applied for, notified, awarded, ended. Fill in these dates when any of the relevant stages are reached. The most commonly used are "date applied for" and "date awarded". You can use the "notified" field in whatever way suits you and your organisation (perhaps to record when the client was notified of an application on their behalf being entered). It is not compulsory to use all of these date fields, although if you enter data in them you will then be able to use them in reporting, and the Benefits and Income feature would be of limited use without entering at least some dates.
- Benefit - filling in this field with the relevant benefit will automatically fill in the "value of award" box below. The list of available benefits is driven by the Benefit Descriptions drop-down list which can be altered by system administrators. It may also have been brought in on the pre-implementation spreadsheet. If your organisation does work around obtaining benefits for clients, it will be important that this list is maintained (particularly, it will need updating if and when benefit amounts change).
- Lump Sum/Backdated Award - to be used if you are applying for, or recording details of, a backdated award.
- Client Benefit Obtained By Us? - set as appropriate (i.e. whether your organisation helped the client obtain this benefit or not). You can opt to report on only benefits obtained by you, by others, or both.
- Benefit Obtained By Staff/Volunteer? - select from the list of staff/volunteers on your system. This is likely to be a long list, so once someone has been used once, they will appear in the list on the right. This list will therefore grow over time to display only those members of staff who obtain benefits.
- Confirmed or Estimated? - set as appropriate.
- Referral Outcome Reference No. - this drop-down list will display the referrals (chains of action) linked to this client. If possible, link the benefit you are recording with the referral relating to the application for that benefit.
Reporting outputs for the Benefits and Income feature are found in the Benefits Report.
Rob Kay - manual author (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2015 (BST)
