Agency spend is discovered, not managed
The cost of covering a vacancy lands in the ledger weeks after the shift, so the decisions that drove it are long past being changeable.
Residential care
Occupancy, staffing and fee income joined at the level of the home
The three numbers that decide a care home — occupancy, staffing cost and fee mix — reported together rather than in three separate systems on three different timetables.
Care operators live and die by occupancy and agency spend, and typically hold each in a different system with a different owner. Fee income varies by resident, by funder and by care package; agency cost spikes weeks before anybody sees it in a management account. We join the care system, the rota and the ledger so a home manager can see the effect of a placement or a shift on contribution while there is still time to act on it.
Discuss your operationWhat we usually find
The problems that come up in almost every one of these businesses.
Fee income is more varied than the reporting admits
Local authority, NHS and private fees carry different rates, uplifts and payment behaviour, and blending them into one revenue line hides which mix is actually profitable.
Occupancy is a headline, not a driver
Reporting shows the occupancy percentage without the dependency mix behind it, so two homes at the same occupancy can have entirely different economics.
Where we start
What the first engagement usually covers.
Scope depends on the state of your systems. These are the pieces that recur in this sector.
Home-level contribution
Fee income, staffing, agency and controllable cost per home, reconciled to the ledger and reported on a timetable a manager can act on.
Agency and vacancy tracking
Agency cost attributed to the vacancy that caused it, surfaced weekly rather than at month end.
Fee and funder mix
Contribution by funder type and care package, so the commercial effect of a placement decision is visible before it is made.
Occupancy against dependency
Occupancy joined to dependency and staffing requirement, so the number reflects the work involved rather than just the beds filled.
What changes
What is different afterwards.
You own all of it: the code, the written definitions and documentation aimed at whoever maintains this after us.
- Contribution by home, reconciled to the ledger
- Agency spend attributed to the vacancy behind it
- Fee mix analysed by funder and care package
- Occupancy reported against dependency and staffing
The builds behind it
Sector knowledge decides the order. The builds are the same four.
Single source of truth
Your finance, customer and operational records joined into one dataset, with each figure defined once and traceable back to the system it came from.
Analytics layer
Reporting built on top of the joined data, aimed at the few revenue and cost drivers that actually change the result.
Workflows
One defined task, automated inside a process that already exists, measured against whatever it replaced.
Financial modelling
Driver-based models built on the same definitions as your reporting, so the forecast and the actuals stop disagreeing.
Worth asking
Questions this tends to answer.
- Which homes make money, and on which fee mix?
- What is agency cover actually costing us?
- Which placements improve contribution and which do not?
- Where is staffing out of step with dependency?