Prepare Plan Terms

1. What the Prepare plan is

The Prepare plan is for a home that is not yet registered with Ofsted as a children's home. You choose it home by home, when you add the home to ARC. Your other homes are not affected.

By choosing Prepare for a home, you confirm that the home is not registered at that time. A home that is already registered cannot be put on the Prepare plan.

A home that is not registered does not have to use the Prepare plan. You can put it on the full plan at its normal price instead.

2. What is included

A Prepare home can use the parts of ARC for running a home and its staff. These include staff and HR records, the rota and on-call, policies and documents, the Statement of Purpose, compliance and home logs, tasks, home finances, reports, and company administration.

A Prepare home cannot use the parts of ARC for recording and overseeing children. These include children's records, daily journals, handovers, incidents, safeguarding, medication, important conversations, appointments, summaries, children's plans and risk assessments, and Ofsted inspections and inspection evidence. You cannot add a child to a Prepare home.

These lists may change as ARC develops, as described in section 2 of the Customer Agreement. ARC shows which features are locked on a Prepare home.

3. Price and payment

The Prepare plan costs £29 per home per month, or the price shown in ARC when you choose it if that is different. There is no setup fee. Fees exclude VAT, which is added where it applies.

The Prepare plan is only available with monthly billing. If you want annual billing, every home on the Prepare plan must first move to the full plan.

Discount codes and offers do not reduce the Prepare plan fee. A discount you hold for a home will apply once that home moves to the full plan, as stated when the discount was given.

Any free trial for new customers applies to Prepare homes as stated when you sign up. Otherwise, section 5 of the Customer Agreement applies, including how failed payments and price changes are handled.

4. Moving to the full plan

You can move a Prepare home to the full plan at any time from ARC. From then on, the home is charged at the full price for its band of registered beds, under section 5 of the Customer Agreement.

When you move a home yourself, we charge the difference between the two prices for the rest of your current billing period straight away. The locked features open once that payment is confirmed. If the payment does not go through, the home stays on the Prepare plan.

You should move a home to the full plan once it is registered and ready to care for children.

5. The 12-month limit

A home can stay on the Prepare plan for up to 12 months from the date it started on it, including any free trial. ARC shows this date for each Prepare home.

We will email you at least 30 days before a home reaches the limit. At the limit, the home moves to the full plan automatically, at the full price for its band of registered beds. The difference for the rest of that billing period is added to your next invoice.

If registration is taking longer than expected, you can ask us to extend the limit before it is reached. We may agree to an extension at our discretion, and we will confirm the new date in writing.

If you do not want a home to move to the full plan, you can remove the home from ARC, or end the Customer Agreement under section 10, before the limit is reached.

If your subscription ends and you return after a home's limit has passed, we will give you at least 30 days' notice before that home moves to the full plan.

6. Moving back to the Prepare plan

You cannot move a home from the full plan to the Prepare plan yourself. If you ask, we may do it for you, at our discretion. We will only do it for a home that is not registered and where no child has ever been recorded.

7. Your records

Records you create on the Prepare plan are Customer Data under section 6 of the Customer Agreement. They stay in place, unchanged, when the home moves to the full plan.

Section 10 of the Customer Agreement applies if the agreement ends while a home is on the Prepare plan. This includes your right to export your records, and that fees already paid for a billing period are not refunded.

8. Changes to the Prepare plan

We may change or withdraw the Prepare plan for homes added after the change at any time.

For a home that is already on the Prepare plan, we will email you at least 30 days before any change to these terms or the Prepare price applies to it. If we withdraw the plan, homes already on it keep it until they reach their 12-month limit, or an extended date we have agreed, unless you move them earlier.