Locum and agency nursing: shifts, timesheets, and your own records

Agency and locum nursing runs on timesheets, shift codes, and agency portals — systems that are mostly out of your hands, which is exactly why keeping your own simple record alongside them is worth the small effort.

Why keep your own record if the agency already tracks it?

Because agency systems occasionally get it wrong — a shift logged incorrectly, an unsociable-hours uplift missed, a cancellation fee applied that shouldn’t have been. Having your own note of what you actually worked, where, and for how long gives you something concrete to check your payslip against, rather than just trusting a portal you don’t control.

For each shift, worth noting:

• Ward or department and site
• Date, shift pattern (day, night, long day), and hours
• Which agency booked it
• Any agreed uplift (unsociable hours, last-minute booking, specialist skill)

Multiple agencies, multiple portals

Many nurses work with more than one agency to keep their diary full, which means shift confirmations and payslips arrive through several different systems. Keeping one place of your own that captures everything — regardless of which agency or portal a shift came through — makes it far easier to see your actual month at a glance, rather than piecing it together from three different logins.

Mileage and travel

Some agencies offer their own travel allowance or mileage payment as part of a booking — worth checking your agency’s terms directly, since this varies. If travel costs are something you’re covering yourself, logging every trip as it happens (site, date, miles) means you’ve got a clean record whatever the answer turns out to be for your situation.

Registration and revalidation costs

Worth keeping track of, regardless of anything else:

• NMC registration fee
• Revalidation-related costs — courses, reflective accounts, any paid CPD
• Indemnity, and confirming what’s covered by the agency versus the NMC’s own cover, versus anything you might need independently

These tend to be annual and easy to lose track of precisely because they’re automatic.

How LocumBook helps with this specifically

LocumBook gives you one place to log every shift — ward, site, hours, which agency booked it — the moment it happens, so you’ve got your own record to check against every payslip that comes in, no matter how many different agency portals you’re juggling. Mileage attaches directly to each shift if you’re tracking travel, with distances calculated automatically from your saved home address. And every shift’s payment status is tracked in one view, so instead of remembering which of three agencies still owes you for last month, you can see it at a glance.

Agency nursing is often PAYE — confirm yours with Self-employed or agency PAYE?. For logging shifts in the app, see Getting started.