Finding your way around ARC

Everything hangs off the sidebar, grouped by what you're trying to do rather than by what kind of record it is.

The groups

Overview — Dashboard, Home Overview (the building's certificates, registers and inventory), Home finances and Summaries. Where you start a shift. See The staff dashboard and The Home Overview.

Care & safeguarding — Children and Incidents, and Safeguarding if you are a designated safeguarding lead. Most of what you open in a day is behind here.

Daily work — Shift Handovers, the rota (Rota, shown as Company Rota to managers, deputies and admins, plus Staff Rota for them to build it), Medication, Journals, Important Conversations, Tasks, Appointments and On-Call. The things tied to a shift rather than to one young person.

File library — Documents held at home level.

Compliance — Ofsted Inspections, Reports, Policies, the Audit Log and the SoP/Children's Guide. The audit log is open to everyone who works in the home. See The audit log.

People (HR) — staff records: Staff HR if you hold the HR role, or the Competency Matrix if you are a manager without it.

Company Admin — Company Admin, Analytics and Billing & subscription, across every home. Only for company admins. The Company Admin page groups its areas as Homes & people, Recording & compliance, Rotas & pay, Money and Company & billing.

Your account menu

The name at the foot of the sidebar opens My Account: Profile, What's new and Log out. See What's new in ARC.

If a group isn't there

Sections appear based on what you can actually reach. A staff member has no Company Admin group; someone without the HR role has no People group. Nothing is hidden as a punishment — an empty section you can't use is just noise on a small screen.

Your dashboard depends on your role

Managers, seniors and safeguarding leads each land on a different dashboard built for what they need to act on. Staff, seniors and managers share the same layout: tiles across the top and three tabs, Needs attention, Children and My shift. If your dashboard changed after a role change, that is why.

On a phone

Phones get a stripped-back version built for one-handed use on shift: quick logs, the young people, tasks, handover and incidents. There's a "switch to desktop site" option if you need the full thing.