Monthly reports
A monthly report is the summary your agency submits to DCS for each active case, once per calendar month. It pulls together the month's contacts, the time delivered, and how the family progressed on each goal.
The good news: FCR builds most of it from the notes you've already approved. Your job is to keep your notes current, fill in the goal-section narratives, and submit.
The staff member on the case drafts the report; the author's supervisor or a Practice Manager approves it. Submitting the finished report to DCS (through KidTraks) is the Practice Manager's step — you don't upload it yourself.
Which report you'll see
FCR picks the right report for the service automatically — there are three kinds:
- Family Preservation — for FP cases.
- General — for hourly home-based services (casework, therapy, counseling, and similar).
- Visitation — for supervised parenting time.
You don't choose the type; it follows the referral's service. For a DCS case there's one report per case per month. For a Choices or Medicaid case, you file one report per service component each month — see below.
The Monthly Reports area
Everyone has a Monthly Reports area in the sidebar. Open it to see, for a chosen month, every report on your cases — what's already filed and what's still owed — in one place, so nothing slips past the deadline.
- You see your own caseload. As a staff member, the area shows the reports for the cases assigned to you — and only those. Supervisors see their team's, and practice managers and admins see the whole agency's.
- Pick the month at the top. It defaults to last month (the one you're most likely filing now); you can go back up to a year for late or corrected reports.
- Filter by payer. A DCS / Choices / Medicaid / DMHA filter lets you view one source at a time — it defaults to DCS. The sources aren't blended into one list, because each follows its own billing workflow.
- Start a report right here. Use + New monthly report at the top, or Start report on any case that still owes one for the month — you don't have to open each referral separately.
Choices and Medicaid cases report per component. Where a DCS case files a single whole-case report each month, a Choices or Medicaid case with more than one service component files a separate report for each component — each one covers just that component's work and is submitted on its own. When you start one of these reports, FCR asks which component it's for, and the Monthly Reports list shows each component's report as its own row (labeled with the component name). Everything else — how the report builds from your approved notes, the goal sections, and submission — works the same as a DCS report.
It's built from your approved notes
The contacts list and the time delivered come straight from your approved progress notes and visitation notes dated within the month. The goal sections are organized around the case's approved treatment plan goals, and your goal-tagged notes feed the work into the right section.
On a report that covers more than one service, each goal appears only under the services it's assigned to on the treatment plan — so a goal tied to Court shows under the Court section, not repeated under every service. That keeps a multi-service report focused on what's relevant to each line instead of listing every goal everywhere.
A note only counts toward the report once it's approved. If a contact is missing from the report, the most common reason is that its note is still a draft or waiting for review. Get the month's notes approved and the report fills in.
Contacts from the intake phase (before a treatment plan was approved) still show in the contacts list and count toward time delivered, but they won't appear in a goal section — there was no goal to file them under yet.
Writing and submitting the report
- Start from the Monthly Reports area (pick the month, then + New monthly report or Start report on a case that owes one) — or open the referral and choose the monthly report for the month you're reporting.
- Review the auto-filled contacts and time delivered — they reflect your approved notes for the period.
- Complete the goal-section narratives and any summary the report asks for.
- Choose Submit. FCR checks the required pieces are in place, then sends it to your supervisor or Practice Manager.
- After it's approved, your Practice Manager uploads it to DCS.
DCS expects each monthly report by the 10th of the following month. Build in time for review and upload — aim to have your part submitted well before the deadline.
Quick actions
While you're editing a monthly report, look at the Quick actions panel in the right-hand column. It gives you one-click helpers so you don't retype work you've already done. The panel only appears while the report is still editable (a draft, one returned for revision, or an approved report you've reopened to correct).
The buttons you see depend on the report type. General and Family Preservation reports show all four below; Visitation reports show Import Non-Billable Notes and Prefill Monthly Report.
Import notes → Goal Discussions
(General and Family Preservation reports.) Each treatment-plan goal has a Discussion of Services Provided box where you describe the work done toward that goal during the month. If you've already written that up in your approved progress notes, you don't have to retype it.
Click Import notes → Goal Discussions and FCR takes the approved progress notes you tagged to each goal during the report's month and drops them into that goal's Discussion of Services Provided box. It's a starting point — the text lands in the field and you can edit, trim, or reword it.
- This one replaces, so FCR asks first. It overwrites whatever is currently in each goal's Discussion box with the imported notes. A confirmation appears — choose Replace to go ahead, or Cancel to keep what you have.
- Goals with no matching notes are left alone. If a goal has no approved notes tagged to it this month, its box isn't touched — importing won't blank out a goal you'd already written.
- Reports with more than one component let you choose. On a General report covering several services, you can import for all components or just one. Family Preservation and single-component reports skip that choice and import everything.
- It tells you what came in — and what didn't. After importing, FCR reports how many goal narratives it replaced. If any approved note couldn't be placed because its service isn't matched to the goal it was tagged to, it says how many were left out so nothing goes missing silently.
- It always uses the current version of each note, so if you corrected and re-approved a note, importing again reflects the fix.
Import Non-Billable Notes
(All report types.) Some of your progress notes for the month aren't billable — no-shows, cancellations, and collateral contacts, for example. Those still belong in the report's story, but they don't show up in the billable contact log.
Click Import Non-Billable Notes and FCR pulls every approved non-billable progress note from the report's month and appends it into the Overall Recommendation field — each one labeled with its date and contact method, followed by the note's narrative. It's a starting point: the text lands in the field and you can edit, trim, or reword it like anything else you typed.
- Click it again after adding more notes and it brings in only the ones you haven't imported yet — it won't duplicate what's already there.
- It always pulls the current version of each note, so if you corrected a note and re-approved it, importing again reflects the fix.
- Nothing is imported if there are no approved non-billable notes in the month, or if you've already imported them all.
- This is the non-billable-only slice of the fuller Import all notes → Recommendation below.
Import all notes → Recommendation
(General and Family Preservation reports.) When you want the whole month's story in the Overall Recommendation field, not just the non-billable pieces, this pulls in every approved progress note from the report's month — billable and non-billable — in date order.
Click Import all notes → Recommendation and FCR fills the Overall Recommendation with all of those notes, each labeled with its date and contact method followed by its narrative. It's a starting point you can edit freely.
- This one replaces, so FCR asks first. It overwrites everything currently in the Overall Recommendation field — including anything you brought in with Import Non-Billable Notes, since those notes are already part of this fuller set. A confirmation appears — choose Replace to go ahead, or Cancel to keep what you have.
- It won't wipe your field on an empty month. If there are no approved notes to import, nothing changes.
- Very long months. If a month has so many notes that they wouldn't fit the field, FCR tells you instead of quietly cutting them off, and suggests using Import notes → Goal Discussions, which spreads the notes across each goal and has more room.
- It always uses the current version of each note.
Prefill Monthly Report
(All report types.) Some parts of a monthly report say the same thing month after month — the reason for referral, the family's functional strengths, and (for visitation reports) the visit rules like prohibited persons, the court-ordered guideline, the schedule, supervision, activities, and the code of conduct. Rather than retype those every month, you can carry them forward.
Click Prefill Monthly Report and FCR finds the most recent approved report of the same type for this case and copies those carry-forward fields into the report you're editing. You can then edit anything that has changed for this month.
- It only pulls from an approved report for the same case, from a month before the one you're working on — so it brings forward your last finalized wording, not a draft.
- If any of those fields already has text, FCR asks first. Importing is all-or-nothing: choosing Replace all overwrites the whole set with the prior report's values; choosing Cancel leaves everything exactly as it was. (If the fields are empty, it just fills them — no prompt.)
- First report for a case? There's nothing to import yet, so you'll see a short "no prior approved report" message and nothing changes.
The Quick actions panel is built to grow — new one-click buttons will show up here as we add them. If your agency has a particular quick action turned off, you simply won't see its button.
If you fix a note after the report exists
For most report types, the report re-reads your latest approved notes each time it's opened — so correcting an approved note (after a supervisor reopens it for revision and re-approves it) flows through to the report automatically. You don't rebuild the report by hand.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the contacts list already filled in? The report assembles itself from your approved notes for the month. You're reviewing and adding the goal narratives, not re-entering every visit.
A visit is missing from the report. Check that its note is approved and dated within the report's month. Drafts and notes awaiting review don't appear yet.
Do I send the report to DCS? No — you draft it and your supervisor or Practice Manager approves it. The Practice Manager handles the upload to DCS.
A contact shows in the list but not under a goal. That's expected for notes written during intake, before a treatment plan was approved. Once a plan is in place, goal-tagged notes land in the goal sections.
A goal isn't showing under a service section I expected. Each goal only appears under the services it's assigned to on the treatment plan. If a goal should show under a service, open the plan and check that service for the goal. (You can adjust this at the next plan review without losing any work already on the report.)
An older report is organized differently from my newer ones. Reports show each goal under the services it applies to going forward. Reports you'd already started keep their original layout, and any narrative you'd already written is always preserved — nothing you've typed disappears.
Need help with something this guide didn't cover? Contact support and we'll walk you through it.