Software for independent private-duty nurses paid by families

The person paying a private-duty nurse is often not the patient. It's a daughter two states away, a son with power of attorney, or three siblings splitting the bill. They want a clear hourly rate, a signed agreement and an invoice they can forward to each other. Your admin is mostly hours: overnight shifts, weekend rates, the extra two hours when the aide didn't show, and making sure all of them get billed.

From the family's first call to a paid week

1. A hospital discharge planner or an elder law attorney gives the family your name. Your Link in Bio page has a free 20-minute call with the family and your rates for day, overnight and weekend shifts.
2. The family books the call from another state and sees your slots in their own time zone. The booking form asks who's paying, the city and when care should start.
3. The in-home assessment is a 90-minute meeting type paid at booking, with the address as a required question and a 60-minute buffer for driving.
4. Send a care proposal: weekday hourly rate, overnight rate, weekend and holiday rate as separate lines, a 4-hour minimum per shift and a deposit equal to one week of scheduled hours (an example, not a rule).
5. The service agreement goes out for e-signature to the person paying and, if they're able, the patient. It covers rates, cancellation notice, what happens if the patient is hospitalized, and who you report to.
6. Log each shift in Time Tracking against the family's project, by timer or by hand when you get home. Shifts don't go on your booking page: bookings run up to 8 hours and don't repeat.
7. Every Monday, open an invoice and add the week's unbilled time as line items. The family pays by card through your Stripe account or with the ACH or Zelle details on the invoice, and reminders go out if it's late.

A typical week

• Monday: last week's invoice goes to the Ramirez family with 42 hours, built from the shift entries. The daughter pays by card at lunch.
• Tuesday: a new family books the call from Chicago. You send the proposal that evening with overnight and weekend rates.
• Wednesday: the in-home assessment. The son signs the service agreement before you leave; his sister signs from her phone an hour later.
• Thursday: you add 2 extra hours to Wednesday's shift by hand after the aide was late, with a note on the entry.
• Saturday: overnight shift. On Sunday you log the mileage-heavy week's gas and a new blood pressure cuff in Expenses.

All 13 tools, one by one

Proposals, E-Signatures, Time Tracking and Invoicing carry a private-duty practice. Scheduling only covers calls and assessments, not shifts.

• Link in Bio: a page for discharge planners and elder law attorneys to pass on, with the family call, your shift rates and the counties you cover.
• Short Links: a short link and QR code on the card you leave at hospital case management offices, with clicks counted per hospital.
• Forms: a care inquiry form for families who'd rather write than call: who needs care, city, start date, shifts per week and who will pay.
• Scheduling: the free family call and the paid in-home assessment, with a driving buffer. Shifts don't fit: bookings max out at 8 hours and don't repeat.
• Proposals: the care proposal with day, overnight, weekend and holiday rates as lines, a minimum shift and a deposit.
• E-Signatures: the service agreement signed by every family member who pays, plus the patient when able, each from their own link.
• Document Tracking: your rate sheet and agreement as PDFs for the siblings who weren't on the call; you see which of them opened it.
• Screen Recording: seldom useful for a nurse in the field. Useful once: a 5-minute video at your computer that walks the family through your invoice and how hours are counted.
• Notes & Boards: a board of families by status (call, assessment, active, paused for hospital stay) and your own to-dos, with no clinical notes.
• Time Tracking: each shift logged against the family's project, by timer or entered afterward, so every hour ends up on the weekly invoice.
• Invoicing: a weekly invoice built from unbilled shift hours, sent with a card pay link, your ACH or Zelle details and late reminders.
• Expenses: gas, parking, scrubs, supplies and license renewals with receipts. Mileage isn't logged as miles; use the calculator below for the deduction.
• Automations: a thank-you email when the agreement is signed, and an email to the family when an invoice is still unpaid a few days after sending.

Taxes, licenses and estimates

• IRS Publication 926 lists private nurses among household workers. If the family controls what work you do and how you do it, you can be their household employee, and they owe employment taxes once they pay $3,000 or more in cash wages in 2026. If only you control how the work is done, you're self-employed and invoice them. A worker sent by an agency that controls the work isn't the family's employee. Settle which one you are with a tax professional before you send the first invoice.
• Under the Nurse Licensure Compact, an RN or LPN/VN with a multistate license from a compact state can practice in other compact states. APRNs need a license in each state, and a noncompact state needs its own single-state license.
• Ask your state health department and board of nursing whether your work needs a home care or home health agency license, and ask again before you hire a second nurse or an aide.
• If you're a state-licensed provider billing families directly, the No Surprises Act may require a Good Faith Estimate for scheduled care. Read the CMS page and ask your lawyer how it applies to private-duty shifts.

HIPAA: who can use SoloWOS and for what

HIPAA applies to health care providers who send health information electronically in standard transactions, such as billing insurance. A cloud service that stores protected health information for a covered provider is a business associate and needs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). SoloWOS doesn't sign BAAs and isn't HIPAA compliant.

• If you bill insurance electronically, you're a covered entity: don't put your patients' health information in SoloWOS. Keep using your EHR or practice-management system for anything clinical.
• If your practice is cash-pay only and never bills insurance electronically, HIPAA may not cover you, but state health-privacy laws can still apply. Ask your lawyer before you rely on that.
• Either way, keep intake forms and booking questions administrative (name, email, preferred time, reason for the visit in general terms) and leave clinical questions for the visit and your records system.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules vary by state; check yours with a lawyer or your licensing board.

SoloWOS or HoneyBook: which fits

Choose HoneyBook if:

• You want payment plans and recurring payments processed by HoneyBook itself.
• You want a native mobile app and a QuickBooks Online integration.

Choose SimplePractice if you need visit notes and a signed BAA, because you bill insurance or keep clinical records digitally.

Choose SoloWOS if:

• You bill families by the hour and want logged shifts to turn into the weekly invoice.
• Card payments should land in your own Stripe account, with ACH and Zelle details printed on the same invoice.
• Several family members need to sign and read the same documents. See HoneyBook vs SoloWOS for the rest.

Prices and features checked between October 17 and 23, 2026 on each company's site.

Start with these three

Proposals with your shift rates saved as a template, E-Signatures for the service agreement, and Time Tracking with a project per family. Invoicing follows on the first Monday, and Scheduling only needs the family call and the assessment.

Free tools that help

• Time card calculator to check a week of shift hours before you invoice.
• Mileage deduction calculator for the drives between families.
• Self-employment tax calculator if you work as an independent contractor.
• Day rate calculator to price a 12-hour or live-in shift.
• Invoice late fee calculator for a late fee you've written into the agreement.

What SoloWOS won't do for a home care nurse

• No care plans, medication administration records or visit notes.
• No shift scheduling for a team of caregivers, no electronic visit verification (EVV) and no Medicaid or insurance billing.
• No payroll: if you hire a second nurse or an aide, pay them through a payroll service.
• Bookings max out at 8 hours with one client per slot and don't repeat, so shifts are tracked as time, not booked.
• Nothing charges a family's card automatically; each weekly invoice is paid from its link.
• SoloWOS doesn't file taxes, issue 1099s or collect sales tax for you. Invoicing sends the invoice with a pay link (card through your Stripe account) and your other payment details; your accountant or tax software handles the rest.