The Prepare plan is for a home that is not registered with Ofsted yet. It lets you set up your team, your policies and your compliance before you open, for £29 a month per home. When you register, you move the home to the Full plan and the rest of ARC opens up.

It is set per home. Other homes in your company can stay on the Full plan.

Choosing Prepare

In the setup wizard, or when you add a home, you are asked whether the home is registered with Ofsted. Answer that it is not registered yet and Prepare is offered. You agree to the Prepare plan terms along with the Customer Agreement.

Prepare is not offered if you say the home is registered, or enter an Ofsted URN. It is also monthly only. If your company pays annually, Prepare shows as unavailable.

A new company that only has Prepare homes still gets its first two weeks free. Discount codes do not apply to Prepare homes. A code you have is kept, and it applies once a home moves to the Full plan.

What is open and what is locked

Open on Prepare: Dashboard, Home Overview, home finances, Staff Rota, Tasks, On-Call, Documents, Policies, Reports, the Audit Log, staff HR, the Competency Matrix and Company Admin.

Locked on Prepare: Children, Incidents, Safeguarding, Medication, Journals, Important Conversations, Appointments, Handovers, Summaries and Ofsted Inspections. Other records that are about a child are locked too.

Locked items stay in the menu with a lock beside them. Selecting one tells you it is part of the Full plan and offers to unlock it. Nothing is hidden, so you can see what you will get. A Prepare home cannot have children added to it, and a child cannot be moved onto it.

Moving to the Full plan

You can move a home to the Full plan at any time, as soon as you are ready for children. A URN is optional.

Open Billing & subscription, and find the home under Your homes. You can also select Move to Full plan from any locked menu item.
Select Move to Full plan. ARC shows the home's price, which comes from its registered beds, and today's prorated charge for the rest of the billing period.
Confirm. ARC charges the difference at once, and the child features unlock as soon as the payment is through.

If the payment does not go through, the home stays on Prepare and nothing changes. You can try again.

The 12-month limit

A home can stay on Prepare for up to 12 months from the day it goes live. The free days at the start count inside the 12 months.

30 days before the end, ARC emails you and shows a banner in the app.
At 12 months, the home moves to the Full plan on its own, at the price for its registered beds. The difference for the rest of that billing period goes on your next invoice.

If Ofsted is running late, contact ARC and ask for an extension before the date. ARC decides each request and confirms any new date in writing. Only ARC can change it.

If you do not want the home to move to the Full plan, you can remove the home from ARC before the date instead.

Moving back to Prepare

You cannot move a home from Full back to Prepare yourself. ARC can do it for a home that is not registered and has no child records at all. Contact ARC if you think that applies to you.

The full wording is in the Prepare plan terms. Prices for the Full plan are in Pricing and what you're billed for.