Accounting Tools for Care Homes
The social care industry is no stranger to immense pressures. From evolving legislation such as changes to National Minimum Wage and National Insurance contributions, to ongoing challenges with funding – care homes are navigating a challenging landscape.
By embracing financial technology and data-driven tools, care homes can weather the storm and build foundations for long-term success in a digital world.
In this article, we’ll explore how finance leaders can lead the charge in transforming operations through smart, strategic use of technology.
4 Key Areas Where Technology Makes a Difference
1. Reporting & Insights
Manually building reports takes up a large amount of time and is prone to errors. You need to fulfil your regulatory responsibilities and update Care Home Managers, Regional Managers and the Board, but time and reporting options are limited.
Modern reporting tools integrate with your business systems to feed live data from across your business into one place, including KPIs such as occupancy and cost per resident.
Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is a dynamic analytics tool that connects live data sources, helping you to visualise trends and make informed decisions.
2. Cashflow Management
Careful cashflow management helps you to spot issues early, identify savings opportunities and make decisions with confidence.
There are lots of dedicated cashflow management tools out there which provide a real-time view of cashflow. Tools that integrate with your core accounting system ensure everything is in sync and cuts down manual processes.
Agicap
Agicap is a cash flow management platform which centralises banking and ERP data for a one-stop shop for managing your cash.
3. Automation
While you may be tired of hearing about automation and AI, they’re helping many businesses to free up time and prevent mistakes.
From auto-matching purchase invoices to chasing payments and flagging discrepancies, automation streamlines repetitive tasks and allows your team to focus on strategy.
Credit Hound Cloud
Credit Hound is a credit control solution which handles automatic chasing and helps you to gain visibility of what accounts are outstanding.
4. Budgeting & Forecasting
Spreadsheets are the go-to budgeting solution for many businesses, but the manual nature makes it difficult to find the time to sit down and accurately build budgets. Most small care homes don’t have large finance teams, so budgeting and forecasting falls by the wayside.
Modern budgeting and forecasting tools are designed to help you build detailed budgets and revisit them whenever you need to make any adjustments.
Testing out different scenarios is a breeze, helping you to understand how different variables affect profitability, so you can prepare for worst case scenarios.
Sage Intacct Planning (SIP)
SIP is an easy-to-use budgeting and forecasting tool for finance teams who want to move fast and have greater impact.
Sage Intacct
If you’re looking for a powerful cloud-based accounting platform for your care home group, look no further.
Managing multiple homes and legal entities is easy with Sage Intacct. Customisable dashboards display real-time KPI data at group, region, entity or even at individual office level, displayed in easy-to-understand reports, charts and graphs.
Imagine having dashboards where managers can report on and view data for all sites they manage in a region, regardless of the legal entity they belong to. With Sage Intacct, you can have all that and more:
- Automatic updates every quarter with no downtime
- No hosting equipment and maintenance costs
- Protected by 24/7 cyber monitoring & security experts
- Open API for seamless integration with external systems
- In-platform automation, such as AP Automation, GL outlier detection and AI assistant
- Built-in approval workflows
Finding The Right Tools
You don’t want new technology for the sake of it. All this does is puts more pressure on the shoulders of your staff to learn new tools, creating even more problems.
We recommend identifying key processes that are time-consuming and could be more efficient, then prioritise which one is the most important right now.
Once you have a key area to focus on, investigate solutions to your problems. Use industry publications that you trust, read case studies, speak to real users. Compare the solutions to whittle it down to what will genuinely deliver the most impact for your business.
Other popular tools to consider:
- Log My Care – User-friendly care management platform offering everything from care plans and eMARs to rostering and risk assessments. *
- Workforce – Workforce management software built for businesses with hourly and shift workforces, covering scheduling, HR and payroll. *
- Pleo – Spend management platform which helps you to control and track employee expenses with smart company cards. *
Final Thoughts
In uncertain times, it’s tempting to delay big decisions. However, slow and outdated systems are the last thing you need when you’re up against it.
We’ve seen how care homes that embrace technology gain a competitive edge through better insights, smoother operations and stronger financial control.
If you’re ready to explore accounting solutions, we’re here to help. Let’s talk about your current systems and how we can support your goals.
For more information about Sage Intacct for care homes, complete the enquiry form.
*Some of the tools mentioned in this article are intended as a guide only, we recommend you do your own research to ensure they’re the best solution for you.
