Payer setup

Settings → Payers is where you define who pays for trips and at what rates. Only company admins can manage payers. The page has three tabs:

• Payers (?tab=payers) — every payer and facility in one searchable list.
• Billing rules (?tab=billing) — Bill before service and Multi-modal billing.
• Invoices & payments (?tab=invoices) — invoice branding (logo, phone and email on invoices), Stripe payments, and QuickBooks.

Finding a payer

The Payers tab lists brokers, insurance and private payers, plus your facilities (nursing homes, day programs, clinics — each can carry its own rate sheet). The line above the list counts your payers, how many are connected by API, and how many need attention.

• Search by name, email, facility or address.
• Filter chips: All, Needs attention, Brokers, Insurance, Private & facilities, Inactive.
• Needs attention shows payers marked No rates (an active payer with no rate tiers, no fees and no shared schedule) and facilities marked No billing set up. Click the count in the status line to apply it.

Payer types

When you click Add payer you pick one of three types:

• Broker — a transportation broker. Broker payers can be connected to a live data integration (see How broker trips arrive); their trips bill as electronic claims.
• Insurance — state Medicaid, managed care plans, and other insurance billed with a rate sheet.
• Private/Invoice — a directly invoiced payer. You then choose its Type: Facility, School, Nursing Home or Other.

Payers created earlier as Medicaid Direct or Custom keep their type, shown as "Legacy type — cannot be changed", and work as before. Medicaid Direct payers appear under the Insurance filter. Trips with no payer at all are Private Pay and bill to the member's billing contact.

Adding a payer

The payer editor has four sections, with a jump bar at the top: Payer, Contact, Trip & billing rules, and Rates & fees.

1. Click Add payer and choose the Payer type.
2. Enter the Name.
3. For a Broker, pick which broker it is under Which broker?. The Data connections box shows what's available for that broker — a live API integration and/or File import (uploading files manually). Manual trip creation is always available regardless.
4. Add contact details under Contact — Contact email, Contact phone, Address, Notes.
5. Under Trip & billing rules, set the booking contact, MRN and billing readiness rules, and leave Active on.
6. Under Rates & fees, for Insurance or Private/Invoice payers choose the Billing method: Per mile (computed from rate tiers) or Flat rate (fixed amount per trip). Build the Rate sheet (below) and click Save.

How pricing works

Every payer has default pricing: its own rate sheet and fixed fees, edited on the payer. A shared pricing schedule is a complete price list for one or more mobility types that you can assign to any number of payers. When a payer holds a schedule that covers a trip's mobility type, the schedule prices that trip; every other mobility type uses the payer's default pricing. The Pricing button on each payer shows which one prices what, and Settings → Pricing → Payer coverage shows it for every payer at once. Trips, the New Trip estimate and Ready to Bill all say "Priced by …" so there is never a guess.

A blank fee on a schedule means "no charge" — it does not fall back to the payer's default.

Rate sheets

The rate sheet is a set of mileage bands that price each trip:

• Each tier has From mile, To mile, a Flat $ amount, and a $ / mile rate. The first band's flat amount is your base rate.
• Leave the last band's "To mile" blank to make it open-ended ("and up").
• Use + Add tier to add bands, and the built-in Sample bill calculator to sanity-check: enter a trip distance and see the computed charge.

Note: A payer with no rate sheet shows "No rate sheet — bills compute to $0.00 until tiers are added." Set rates before you start billing.

Facilities

Facilities appear in the same Payers list. A facility that doesn't bill yet is marked No billing set up and has Set up billing and Edit: Set up billing attaches billing (and optionally a rate sheet) to the facility. Once billing is set up, the facility's payer row has the usual Edit and Archive actions. Facility-billed trips generate invoices to the facility — typically batched monthly from the payer's Invoices action (see Invoices for private pay and payers).

To add a facility or change its name, type or address, use Settings → Facilities.

Billing readiness

Each payer has a Require a rider signature before a claim is ready to bill switch (in the editor under Trip & billing rules → Billing readiness), on by default. Leave it on for payers that need a signature as proof of service. Turn it off for a broker whose electronic feed carries times and GPS only — completed claims for that payer then skip the No signature hold on Ready to Bill. Captured signatures still attach to the trip either way. The other checks (pickup time, drop-off time, assigned driver with a license on file) always apply.

Housekeeping

• Inactive payers are hidden from the trip-creation dropdown but keep their history. The Inactive filter chip lists them.
• Archive removes a payer from new-trip selection while preserving existing billing records. ZeitRide warns you if the payer is linked to a broker integration.

Fixed fees

Alongside the rate sheet, each payer carries a Fixed fees section (under Rates & fees) for per-trip charges:

• Pickup fee — separate Wheelchair and Ambulatory amounts. The right one is applied automatically from each trip's mobility, on top of whatever the mileage tiers produce. Don't enter the pickup fee in the rate tiers themselves — keep tiers for mileage only.
• Attendant fee — applied automatically (per leg) when a trip has an attendant.
• Wheelchair rental fee and Discharge fee — applied when the trip is booked with the matching switch in the New Trip form.

Free miles work through the rate sheet: make the first tier cover 0 through your free-mile limit at $0 flat and $0 per mile, then a second tier "and up" with your per-mile rate — only the miles beyond the limit get charged.

Shared pricing schedules

Use a schedule when prices differ by mobility type, when several payers share one price list, or when you need cancellation, no-show, bariatric or stair fees (those live only on schedules).

Settings → Pricing opens with a strip showing your shared schedules, active payers, how many are on a shared schedule or on default pricing only, and how many need attention. Click any item to jump to it.

• The Shared schedules tab (?tab=schedules) lists them as cards showing mileage, pickup fees, wait time, extras and the payers that use them. Search by schedule, mobility type or payer, or filter to Not assigned or Inactive. A schedule assigned to no payer prices nothing yet. New schedule opens the editor, with sections Basics, Mileage, Fees & extras and Payers: a name, the mobility types it prices, a mileage rate sheet and fees, and the payers that use it. A payer can hold one schedule per mobility type; assigning an overlapping one is refused with a message naming the conflict.
• On a payer, click Pricing. The top shows what prices each mobility type. Default pricing summarises the payer's own rates and warns when a schedule makes them unused. Convert to shared schedule copies the default into a new schedule, assigns it, and can clear the default so the numbers live in one place. Tick or untick shared schedules below; each shows a 20-mile sample next to the default so the change is visible before you save.
• A trip's price is set from the rates in force when it is booked, and invoiced trips are locked. Editing a schedule reaches new bookings, any uninvoiced trip whose amount is still blank, and the wait-time, cancellation and no-show fees worked out at billing; you are asked to confirm and told which payers use the schedule. To apply a retroactive rate change to trips already priced, adjust their amounts in Ready to Bill before invoicing.
• Payer coverage (?tab=coverage) is the whole company on one screen: payers as rows, mobility groups as columns. Each cell shows what prices it, as the legend explains: a shared schedule (click to open), the payer's own rates, or nothing. The Needs attention filter lists payers with no pricing, mobility types nothing prices, and payers that price to $0.00.

Facility documents

Facility rows have a Files action that opens a document slideout — store contracts, licenses, consents, and other paperwork against the facility (up to 50 MB per file). Files are private to your company.