1. Acceptance of these terms
These terms are an agreement between you and BrandTelligence (Pty) Ltd, trading as BT iLocum. By creating a BT iLocum account or using the platform you agree to be bound by them. If you are signing up on behalf of a clinic or hospital, you confirm you have authority to bind that organisation.
2. Who can use Locum
Professional accounts require a current registration in good standing with the statutory council for your profession (for example HPCSA for medical practitioners, dentists, radiographers, allied health professionals and psychologists). Facility accounts require a registered South African healthcare practice. We verify both before account activation. Shifts are profession-matched: you may only apply for shifts of your registered profession, and registration categories that require supervision may not take independent-practice shifts. You agree to keep your registration and licence details current; we may suspend accounts whose underlying registration lapses. In accordance with section 15 of the Employment Services Act, professionals are never charged any fee for using the platform.
3. The marketplace
Locum is a technology platform that connects healthcare professionals with healthcare facilities. We are not the employer of any professional and not the recruiter of any facility. The shift agreement is a direct contract between the professional and the facility, with Locum acting as the marketplace and audit-log custodian — and, only for escrow shifts (section 5), as the payment intermediary.
4. Fees
Locum charges no placement or subscription fee to professionals, ever. Posting shifts, applying, and booking are free for facilities on the standard service. On escrow shifts (section 5) a platform fee is charged to the facility on top of the professional's pay and is disclosed at shift-post time: the standard (Single) tier fee is 15% of the professional's pay, and volume tiers (Group / Enterprise) may reduce it. Direct-payment shifts carry no platform fee. Optional paid features for facilities and professionals — the verified-professional directory, the Facility Premium and Locum Premium plans, professional featuring, and prepaid boost packs — are described in section 14 (Subscriptions and paid plans). Current published pricing is at /facilities/pricing and /pricing. Fees may change with 30 days' notice; shifts already funded, and paid periods already purchased, honour the price in effect at the time.
5. Payment models
Each shift runs under one of two payment models, shown on the shift before any application is made. (a) DIRECT PAYMENT: the facility pays the professional directly on terms agreed between them; the platform processes no money for these shifts, holds no funds, and is not a party to the payment. (b) ESCROW (where enabled): the shift becomes visible only after the facility has funded the full professional pay plus the platform fee at posting time — from the facility wallet, a PayFast card payment, or a split of both; an unfunded shift sits in a PENDING_PAYMENT state, is never visible to professionals, and expires unfilled if not funded before its start time. Sections 6–8 and the refund and cash-penalty provisions of section 9 apply only to escrow shifts.
6. Release of escrowed funds (escrow shifts only)
Funds are released for payout when the booking is marked COMPLETED and the release is confirmed, and are paid to the professional by EFT per shift, typically within 1-2 business days of release. There is no weekly batch. Completion requires at least one successful QR-attendance scan against the facility-issued attendance code (a short-lived JWT rotated approximately every two minutes on the facility's screen). Scans are recorded in an append-only audit table; if no scan is recorded, the booking cannot be marked completed and the funds remain in escrow pending dispute resolution.
7. Payouts (escrow shifts only)
Released escrow shifts are paid out per shift by EFT to the professional's nominated bank account, typically within 1-2 business days of the shift being completed and released. There is no weekly batch and no fixed payout day. Outstanding professional-cancellation cash penalties (see section 9) are deducted from that shift's payout before the transfer. Out-of-band manual settlements made by Locum operations are recorded against the same Payment record and surface on the professional's reconciliation page with the bank reference visible.
8. Facility wallet
Each facility has a single wallet ledger used to fund shifts without re-entering payment details on every post. Credits come from explicit PayFast top-ups, refunds from cancelled or expired shifts (when the facility elects the wallet refund route), and operational adjustments. Debits come from shift funding, withdrawals to bank, and operational adjustments. The wallet is an append-only ledger; the displayed balance is a denormalised cache of the sum and is reconcilable against the ledger on demand.
9. Cancellation policy
Professional-initiated cancellations are graded by lead time relative to the shift start: 48+ hours (no reliability penalty), 24–48 hours (private soft signal), 2–24 hours (-15 to reliability, decaying linearly over 12 months), and under 2 hours (-30 to reliability, decaying over 12 months; on ESCROW shifts additionally a 25% cash penalty of the planned pay, recorded as a holdback deducted from the professional's next per-shift payout — direct-payment shifts carry no cash penalty). The earliest 2-24h or critical-window cancel in a rolling 90-day window is auto-excused (one-free-pass). Admin may waive penalties after an emergency review on documented evidence. Facility-initiated cancellations on escrow shifts: if the shift had no accepted booking, the facility receives a full refund routed to the original source (wallet → wallet, card → PayFast refund); if an accepted booking existed, the facility receives a refund of the professional pay only — the platform fee is retained — and the professional's reliability is not affected. Direct-payment shifts involve no platform-held funds and therefore no platform refunds.
10. Backup invitations
When a confirmed professional cancels, the platform automatically broadcasts the open slot to a tiered backup roster (prior-applicant professionals, alumni of the facility, specialty matches within the facility's travel radius). Invitations are first-come-first-served and expire on a tightening schedule (5 minutes for critical-window, 30 minutes for late, 2 hours for standard). Manual invitation by the facility from the recovery panel is also supported.
11. Attendance verification
Attendance is verified by the professional scanning the facility's rotating QR code from the BT iLocum dashboard on shift arrival. The QR encodes a JWT signed by the platform with a ~2 minute expiry; scans outside the scan window (30 minutes before start to 60 minutes after end) are refused. A complementary geofence GPS check-in is also recorded and may flag rows where checkout coords are inconsistent with check-in (>50 km in <2 hours) for admin review without blocking the checkout. The QR scan is the authoritative attendance signal for booking completion.
12. Verified-professional directory and contact reveal
The verified-professional directory is an optional paid feature for facilities (section 14). A facility with active directory access can search verified professionals and view a professional's contact details. Revealing a professional's contact details is a logged event: we record which facility account viewed which professional and when, in an append-only audit table, so the access can be reviewed in a dispute. Directory cards show an approximate area only — a professional's exact home address is never published. Professionals may opt out of the directory at any time from their profile; opting out removes them from directory search and contact reveal without affecting the rest of their account. Professionals may also purchase optional featuring — a local or national spotlight — to appear higher in facility search (section 14).
13. Shift invitations and in-app messaging
A facility may invite a professional to one of its specific open shifts and start an in-app conversation about it ("message about a shift"). Sending an invitation opens a message thread and is an outreach, not a confirmed booking — the shift stays open. The professional may accept the invitation, which turns it into a standard application the facility then confirms, or decline it; accepting does not by itself guarantee the booking, and either party may message within the thread. In-app messages are operational communications tied to a shift. You must not use messaging or shift invitations to recruit users to a competing service, to harass or spam, or to solicit payment off-platform in a way that bypasses the escrow or audit systems (section 15). We may review message content where necessary to resolve a dispute or enforce these terms. A professional who does not wish to receive directory outreach can opt out of the directory (section 12).
14. Subscriptions and paid plans
Optional paid features — the facility directory subscription, the Facility Premium and Locum Premium plans (which bundle a role's paid features at a discount), professional featuring/spotlights, and prepaid boost packs — are sold for a fixed period (for example 30 days) and paid in advance through PayFast. They do NOT auto-renew, and we do not store your card to charge you again: when a paid period ends, the feature simply lapses unless you choose to buy another period. Because access is prepaid for a fixed period, part-period refunds are not available except where required by law, and one-off purchases such as boost packs are non-refundable once granted. The price is shown before purchase (at /pricing or /facilities/pricing) and is locked onto your purchase, so a later price change never affects a period you have already paid for. Owning a plan that includes a feature suppresses that feature's separate charges for the period.
15. Acceptable use
You agree not to: use the platform, in-app messaging, or shift invitations to recruit users to a competing service; send spam, harassing, threatening, or off-platform-recruitment messages; misuse the directory or contact-reveal feature to bulk-harvest professionals' contact details; harass other users; share account credentials; attempt to bypass the escrow, QR attendance, or audit-trail systems; or extract data in bulk. Repeated or serious violations result in account suspension.
16. Off-platform work
After a shift is completed, you may agree to work directly with the same counterparty outside BT iLocum without restriction. We do not enforce a non-circumvention clause for completed bookings.
17. Ratings & reviews
Both professionals and facilities are rated after each completed shift; aggregated ratings (including a star score) are visible to future counterparties and in the directory. False or defamatory ratings will be removed on review; we do not edit ratings to favour either side, and attempting to manipulate or inflate ratings is a breach of section 15.
18. Notifications
By default we contact you about booking events, shift invitations, and messages through in-app notifications, email, and (when subscribed) web push. SMS is reserved for high-urgency events (Critical-window backup invitations, last-minute cancellations). You can change per-channel preferences at any time from your profile and revoke web-push subscriptions per browser. By providing your phone number you consent to operational SMS related to your bookings; marketing SMS, if any, is opt-in only.
19. Dispute resolution
If a dispute arises about a shift — for example a no-show, a discrepancy over hours worked, or a cancellation — first raise it with the other party in the shift's message thread. If it cannot be resolved that way, either party may escalate to BT iLocum support within 14 days of the shift end, with supporting evidence (QR-attendance scans, timestamps, messages). On escrow shifts the funds remain held until the dispute is resolved. We aim to issue a decision within 7 working days; for escrow shifts that decision governs the release or refund of the held funds. This internal process does not remove or limit your rights under South African law (section 24).
20. Data and POPIA
Your data is governed by our Privacy Policy at /privacy and our Cookie Policy at /cookies. We are POPIA-compliant; the full DPIA is available on request to privacy@btlocum.com.
21. Limitation of liability
Locum is a marketplace, not a healthcare provider. We are not liable for the medical, legal, or professional outcomes of any shift. Our maximum aggregate liability for any claim is limited to the platform fees you have paid us in the preceding 12 months.
22. Termination
You may close your account at any time from settings. We may suspend or close accounts for material breach of these terms with reasonable notice except in cases of fraud, regulatory action, or risk to user safety, where we may act immediately. Closing your account does not entitle you to a refund of a paid period already purchased (section 14).
23. Changes to these terms
We notify all users by email at least 30 days before material changes take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
24. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Disputes that cannot be resolved through good-faith negotiation are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Western Cape Division.