Healthcare Financial Software: How to Automate Healthcare Accounting

If you’re an overwhelmed finance or accounting leader at a growing medical practice, you’ve probably heard by now about the benefits of cloud healthcare financial software. The advantages of automation are numerous, but understanding how to get started on your transformation journey can be a huge barrier.

Dozens of companies in situations just like yours with multiple locations, multi-currency, decentralized payables and receivables, and manual monthly close processes have crossed the chasm to Sage Intacct, the only HIPAA-certified medical practice accounting software. Here are the steps they followed to automate their accounting.

Analyze and identify your challenges
In most cases, the low value-add activities are obvious and well known. During this phase, it’s important to seek input from as many levels as possible of your finance and accounting organization to identify the overwhelming manual processes, non-integrated systems, and missing tools you and your team need to make a greater strategic contribution to your organization.

Some of the questions you’ll want to ask include:

• What processes/reports are we relying on spreadsheets for that could be done quicker, more accurately, and with more collaboration? (Watch out for Financial Reporting, Revenue Management, Allocations, and Dashboards in this phase.)
• In the case of multiple, stand-alone systems lacking integration, what data do we have to enter several times?
• Are we lacking a single source of truth that we can trust?
• Are we satisfied with our current levels of auditability?

Assess the impact and ROI
Now that you’ve pinpointed the areas of concern, it will be important to assess the impact of the status quo. In other words, “what will it cost if we do nothing?” One of the many things driving healthcare organizations to adopt cloud financial software is rapid growth in the practice through acquisitions or mergers, and increasing complexities of modern healthcare accounting. With that in mind, consider what you’ll need not just for your organization as it exists today, but what is upcoming and planned for the future.

Documenting and calculating ROI is another way to measure and assess impact. Be sure to aggregate your current costs to support manual processes, plus the cost of IT staff and software for your existing solutions, and the increased demand of potential growth to get closer to your total cost of ownership. You may be shocked at how much it’s all actually costing you. (If you’re not sure how to calculate ROI, contact us for help.)

Act!
There is no time like the present to start your transformational journey. Don’t be like 85% of surveyed Intacct customers who stated that they wished they had switched to Intacct sooner. Being an agent for change isn’t always easy, so we recommend putting a plan in place with an internal team. Getting early buy-in to the benefits and purpose of switching will help mitigate resistance you may face. Here are examples you can share of significant ROI gains for new Intacct users:

• Real-time data: Financial reporting, including Dashboards, are continuously consolidated even with multiple entities (i.e. locations), or currencies.
• Shorter closes: You no longer need to wait until the end of a time period. Deliver up-to-the-minute data to your decision-makers in minutes, not weeks.
• Automated accounts payable: save time and potentially headcount by automating entry, coding, approval, and even payments.
• Best-in-class system integration: Intacct collects input from your choice of CRM, budgeting and forecasting, and travel and expense management solutions so if you like what you have, you can keep it.
• Streamlined workflow and approvals: Timesheets, expense reports, purchase requisitions, and more can be automated to save you time. 
• Integration with our medical billing system
• Manage your fixed assets from a single system

If you’re manually managing multiple locations, struggle with decentralized payables and receivables, and must shorten your monthly close, you can confidently choose Sage Intacct, the only HIPAA-certified medical practice accounting software.

Contact us to learn how Sage Intacct helps streamline business processes.