Payer setup

Add brokers, Medicaid Direct, custom payers, and facilities, and set the default pricing and shared schedules that price your trips.

Last updated October 2, 2026

Settings → Payers is where you define who pays for trips and at what rates. Only company admins can manage payers. The page has two sections: Payers (brokers, Medicaid Direct, and other contracted billing entities) and Facilities (nursing homes, day programs, clinics — each can carry its own rate sheet).

Payer types

When you add a payer you pick one of three types:

  • Broker — a transportation broker. Broker payers can be connected to a live data integration (see Broker Integrations); their trips bill as electronic claims.
  • Medicaid Direct — state Medicaid billed directly, with a rate sheet.
  • Custom — any other contracted payer.

Facilities aren't added here as a "type" — manage them in the Facilities section below, where setting up billing creates the linked payer for you. Trips with no payer at all are Private Pay and bill to the member's billing contact.

Adding a payer

  1. Click add in the Payers section and choose the Payer type.
  2. Enter the Name.
  3. For a Broker, pick which broker it is from the list. 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. For Medicaid Direct or Custom, choose the Billing method: Per mile (computed from rate tiers) or Flat rate (fixed amount per trip).
  5. Add contact details — Contact email, Contact phone, Address, Notes — and leave Active on.
  6. 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 → 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

In the Facilities section, each facility row shows its type and billing state. Use Set up billing to attach billing (and optionally a rate sheet) to a facility, Edit to change details, or Archive to retire it. Facility-billed trips generate invoices to the facility — typically batched monthly from the payer's Invoices action (see Invoices for private pay and payers).

Billing readiness

Each payer has a Require a rider signature before a claim is ready to bill switch, 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.
  • 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 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 → Schedules lists them. New schedule asks for a name, the mobility types it prices, a 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 group. 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.
  • Coverage (Settings → Pricing) is the whole company on one screen: payers as rows, mobility groups as columns. Green cells are schedules (click to open), blue cells are default pricing. It flags default rates a schedule makes unused, payers that price to $0, and mobility types nothing covers.

Facility documents

Each facility row has 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.

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