in: Home Health Care, Company News
The right home care management software can help you grow your agency. A busy home healthcare agency needs the right accounting software. Without it, you’ll spend too much time tracking costs, billing, invoices, and payroll. With the best software, you can streamline operations so you can focus on what is important to your business and to your clients.
Home Care Management Software Solves Common Problems
Many home health agencies are started by healthcare professionals with a passion for what they do—providing great care for patients in the comfort of their homes. However, when it comes to the day-to-day operations of their agencies, especially the accounting and financial management, many agency owners would rather do anything else than think about software!
Yet they face common problems that could be easily solved with an accounting solution that integrates with home care management software. Do you face any of these common problems?
- Exhausting, time-consuming audits because all your accounting is kept on multiple spreadsheets, and it’s never reconciled. Finding and reporting correct billing, insurance, and other financial data feels like a needle in a haystack. Mistakes abound, and even one simple clerical error can result in many corrections that take a long time to find and fix.
- Cash flow problems because you forgot to bill patients, providers, or insurance companies, or you’ve sent out invoices but neglected to follow up on overdue payments.
- Hours spent tracking down time sheets, calculating payroll costs, and paying wages and taxes due.
- Uncertainties with scheduling, gaps in scheduling, or conflicts in scheduling because you are still relying on employees to sign in and out at the home office before heading to their next appointment.
- Off-the-shelf small business software that cannot handle multiple locations or the unique billing needs of a home healthcare agency.
An integrated home care management software system that adds a robust accounting system to an industry-specific home health care agency software can support the growth your agency needs to be successful.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Specialized Accounting, and Financial Management Software
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is specialized accounting and financial management software. This software does not replace your home care management software but integrates with it to create a comprehensive software system that supports all needs and functions of your business.
When you add an ERP system to your home care management software, you can solve many common problems faced by growing healthcare agencies.
Accounting Needs of Home Healthcare Agencies
The accounting needs of home healthcare agencies go beyond that of many businesses. Costs per visit, including costs for medical supplies as well as hourly time and travel time, must be factored into billing. Specific insurance coding must be applied, and various agencies or insurance companies billed appropriately.
These complexities go beyond that of most small business accounting packages. ERP systems were created to handle complex systems and situations and can be quickly and easily customized to the nuances of a home healthcare agency.
With an ERP system, you can:
- Integrate time tracking into the payroll system to easily calculate payroll and taxes
- Track and automate invoicing
- Integrate scanned documents into the system with the aid of additional software that streamlines accounts payables
- Maintain thorough and detailed records of client needs and billing, invoicing, payments, and more
Many home healthcare agencies find that an accounting ERP added to their home care management software saves them hours of time each week. The time saved on tedious accounting tasks can be used much more effectively on sales or marketing initiatives, customer service, and more to grow your agency instead of handling the most basic of tasks.
Easier Audits
Audits are never pleasant, but they are a necessary part of maintaining the appropriate licenses. With the right accounting software integrated with your home care management software, audits can be much faster and less onerous.
ERP systems provide comprehensive and detailed data. This data can be viewed at any time using the reporting feature. Such reports can be as simple or as detailed as you like. Cloud ERP systems integrate data entered from anywhere in real-time, so reports are updated almost to the minute.
Generating the appropriate reports to satisfy auditors is much easier with an ERP accounting system integrated with your home care management software. Instead of downloading data from the system and inputting it into countless spreadsheets, with the touch of a button you will have the information you need to fulfill audit requirements.
Updated Time Tracking and Client Reports
Another benefit of cloud ERP systems is their portability. Caregivers can update the system using any mobile device such as tablets or smartphones. Equipped with such devices linked to the accounting system, they can log in and update their client records immediately. You’ll be able to track and document their time as well as any expenses directly in the system instead of receiving paper-based timesheets which then have to be manually inputted into the accounting system. With one touch, you have your employees’ hours, plus an updated record of on-site expenses.
Improved Inventory Tracking
Many home care agencies find tracking inventory is another chore they’d rather do without. Keeping tabs on the inventory of supplies using paper-based methods leads to many mistakes. Not only can there be mistakes in the stock count, but there can also be mistakes inputting the data into spreadsheets. The stock count is rarely accurate, and certainly not up to the minute.
ERP systems integrated with home care management software make this task easy and up to the minute. An additional software package added to the ERP transforms smartphones and tablets into handheld barcode readers. It’s easy to teach people how to use such scanners since they’re already used to using these mobile devices to scan QR codes and take pictures.
With each scan and swipe of items going into inventory or leaving inventory, your accounting system is updated. Imagine the ease of reordering supplies when you know precisely what you have on hand and what may be needed next week. By using an accounting system integrated with your home care management software, you’ll have updated inventory counts on all supplies as well as patient records, so you know what’s needed and by whom.
Free Guide to Choosing Home Care Agency Software
We know that choosing home care agency software can be a difficult task. That’s why we’ve put together a free guide to help you choose your home care agency software. We know that choosing the right package—the basic home care management system, the accounting system, and any other software needed—can seem like learning a new language if you aren’t completely familiar with the software industry. We’ve tried to make it easier for you with our free white paper.
Download your free guide to choosing home care agency software today.
Grow Your Home Care Agency
In order to help your home care agency grow, you need time, focus, and the right tools. Ensuring you have the best accounting package to integrate with your home care management software is a great step to helping your agency grow. Cloud ERP, a type of accounting software, can make many tasks easy, efficient, and cost-effective for your agency. Find out more today.
Mindover Software Consulting
At Mindover Software, we understand the challenges faced by home healthcare agencies seeking to improve customer service. We’d be happy to help you get started. You may contact us online or call 512-990-3994 to learn more about software that enhances customer service.
