What the screen is telling you.

The app tried to read those records and the read failed — usually a moment of poor signal. It is not saying the task was missed, and it is deliberately not saying it was done.

Most systems show a green tick here, because an empty result and a failed result look identical unless the software is built to tell them apart. StaffCore refuses to.

Tap the row and look. If the screen opens and shows the records, everything is fine and the row will correct itself. If it keeps saying it for more than a few minutes on a tablet that has signal, tell your manager.

Exactly what it says. Carry on working. What you write is held on the tablet and sent up as soon as it reconnects, and the banner tells you how many records are waiting.

Nothing. Do not re-enter anything — that creates duplicates. Walk back toward better signal at some point in the shift and the queue empties on its own.

Different from being offline, and more serious. The tablet reached the database and the database refused the record — usually a required field that was empty.

The record has been kept, not thrown away, and the banner will not clear itself.

Tell your manager, and say what you were recording when it appeared. It needs a person to look at it — it will not resolve on its own.

A check the app could not run is not counted as passed. If one row says “Can’t check”, it stays out of the completed count until it genuinely completes.

That is why the number can look one lower than you expect. It is counting what it knows, not what it assumes.

Tablets check for a new version about once a minute and whenever the screen wakes, and they apply it automatically — but only when nobody is typing, so an update never interrupts a record halfway through.

Lock the tablet and wake it again. If the version at the bottom of the screen still has not moved after a few minutes, close the app fully and reopen it.

Alerts come from two places, and the difference matters when you are working out what happened. Open the alert and read who raised it:

• “system” — raised when somebody opened the medication screen.
• “system (scheduled check)” — raised by the background check that runs every fifteen minutes.

The time on the alert is when the check ran, not when the dose was due. An alert timed 14:05 can be about an 08:00 dose.

The usual cause of a false one is a dose given but signed for later, or signed under a different time slot from the one it was scheduled in.

Check the resident’s MAR chart for that day. If it was signed, acknowledge the alert and note why. If it genuinely was not given, follow your medication policy — the alert has done its job.

Almost always that it is an as-required (PRN) medicine, and that is correct. A PRN has no scheduled times because it is given when needed, so an empty time list is the right state rather than a missing setting.

Check whether the medicine is marked as-required. If it is, nothing is wrong. If it is not marked as-required and has no times, tell your manager — that one needs correcting against the pharmacy chart.

Two entries at one time slot can be legitimate — two strengths making up a combined dose — or it can be a typing correction where the first entry was never stopped, which would prompt for more than the resident is prescribed.

Alerts always appear inside the app. They are emailed only to the addresses set up for your home — and if none were ever entered, no email is sent and, on older installations, nothing on screen says so.

A manager should check the alert recipient list in Settings. If it is empty, add at least one address that somebody reads out of hours.

A NEWS2 score needs all six measurements: respirations, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, pulse, level of consciousness and temperature. If any are missing the app shows the time the observations were taken and refuses to produce a number.

It is not a fault. It is the app declining to add up a partial set.

If you need a NEWS2, record a full set of observations. Which form you use matters: the quick vitals card does not include respirations or consciousness, so a full set has to be entered on the observations panel. Your manager can tell you which your home uses.

No. Zero is a real NEWS2 score and a good one. It is shown as 0 precisely so it is not confused with a blank, which means something quite different.

Observations taken today show a time only. Anything older carries its date — “Obs yesterday 16:47” — because a bare time makes a day-old reading look like it was taken this morning.

A count is only recorded when it is signed off — counted by one person and witnessed by another, with the two being different people. Entering the figures without completing the sign-off leaves the round outstanding.

There are two rounds a day, morning and evening, with cutoff times your home sets. Both have to be signed for the day to read as complete.

Open the count and complete the sign-off with a second member of staff present.

A difference is recorded as evidence and needs a note explaining it. The app will not adjust the balance to match what was counted — a difference is something a manager must look at, not something software should quietly tidy away.

Record what you actually counted and write what you know in the note. Every signed-off difference raises an alert naming the resident, so a manager sees it the same day.

The transactions could not be read, so the balance cannot be worked out. The app shows nothing rather than a figure it cannot stand behind.

Entries are not deleted — they are voided, which leaves the original visible with a record of who voided it and when, and removes it from the balance. Ask a manager; it is deliberately not something the app lets you erase.

Usually one of three things:

• Too many wrong PIN attempts, which locks the account for a period.
• Their name is hidden from the tablet list — management and back-office roles are hidden by design.
• They have no PIN set yet.

A manager can set or reset a PIN from the staff record. If the name does not appear in the list at all, check the role on their record.

The commonest cause is two staff records sharing one login email. When that happens the app cannot tell which role applies, so it refuses access rather than guessing and handing somebody the wrong permissions.

Contact support with the email address. It is a one-line fix, but it needs someone to confirm which of the two records is the real one.

Mark them as left, which removes them from the tablet list and from everything current. Their records are never deleted — the notes, medication signatures and observations they wrote stay attached to the residents they cared for.

That is not a limitation. A care record with entries missing because the author left is not a care record.

Freedom to Speak Up sends to a named guardian’s address held in Settings. If no address was ever configured, the app says plainly that nothing was sent — it does not pretend to have delivered it.

StaffCore uses three different states where most software uses two, and the wording tells you which you are looking at:

Amber is not a fault. Red is. Amber that will not go away is worth reporting; amber for a minute in a bad corner of the building is the system being honest about signal.

• Nobody can sign in at all, on any device.
• Medication records will not open or will not save.
• A red “couldn’t be saved” banner affecting more than one record.
• Anything where a resident’s safety depends on a record you cannot reach.

Everything else — a wrong label, a report that will not print, a question about how something works — email is fine and gets a written answer you can keep.

Check the status page before ringing. If it says everything is reporting normally, the problem is likely local — your internet, one tablet, or one account.

If the status page says a system has not been heard from, that is us and we already know. It will never claim everything is fine simply because nothing has reported a problem.