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Strategic planning for senior living: Better spend, better outcomes

Aug. 22, 2025 · Authored by Jennifer Schwalm, Corinne Flores, Tim Caver

Many senior services organizations are overspending, and they don’t even know it. The costs associated with manual purchasing and payables processes; delayed reporting and fragmented workflows are common examples of those hidden costs. In the senior care and skilled nursing sectors, ineffective procurement systems silently erode margins, increase risk and undermine performance. Financial leaders must find ways to tighten controls, improve transparency and streamline operations without adding complexity or administrative burden. These efforts are essential to effective strategic planning for senior living, ensuring that financial operations support long-term sustainability and better resident outcomes.

Addressing these challenges requires both structural change in workflow and the use of modern tools. By shifting away from paper-based purchasing and siloed approval chains, organizations can gain real-time visibility into spending, reduce inefficiencies and enhance compliance across the board. Solutions like Sage Intacct are built to support this transformation, offering automated workflows and centralized oversight designed specifically for multi-entity environments like senior services.

As part of Baker Tilly’s Senior Services Financial Leadership Series, the first session titled “Best practices for expense management and procurement controls in senior services” explores practical solutions for gaining visibility, improving workflows and tightening internal controls, equipping finance teams to lead with greater confidence and clarity. This article highlights key takeaways from that session, featuring proven strategies and real-world examples of how a tool like Sage Intacct can help senior services organizations improve efficiency, oversight and financial performance.

Manual procurement slows everything down

Procurement inefficiencies often begin with manual, disconnected processes. Requisitions sent by email, spreadsheet tracking orders, and invoices waiting in inboxes are all too common across senior services organizations. Manual check requests without sufficient documentation also creates a level of risk for inappropriate spending. These outdated workflows create friction from start to finish, slowing down approvals, delaying payments and making it difficult to enforce accountability.

Even basic functions like matching an invoice to a purchase order can become time-consuming if records are not stored in the same place or accessible in real time. The result is an environment where delays are expected, exceptions are frequent, and compliance is difficult to prove.

By digitizing procurement from requisition to payment, organizations can streamline every step of the cycle. Systems like Sage Intacct automate key tasks including purchase approvals, three-way matching and invoice validation. Instead of tracking down paperwork, finance teams gain real-time insight into where transactions stand and can move them forward with confidence.

Closing the loop: Simplifying payment processing

Even when purchase approvals and invoices are handled correctly, some organizations still struggle with the final step, issuing timely, accurate payments. Manual routing for approvals to pay, outdated check runs and inconsistent payment schedules can impact vendor relationships and cost organizations valuable early-pay discounts. In these examples, team members may also incur additional time to field inquiries from vendors regarding payments.

By integrating payment workflows into the same system that handles purchasing and invoicing, finance teams can close the loop from requisition to resolution. Approvals can be embedded directly into the system, checks or ACH payments can be scheduled automatically, and every step is logged for transparency and audit readiness.

This final layer of automation reduces risk, saves time, ensures better cash management and improves vendor satisfaction, ensuring that procurement improvements extend all the way to payment execution.

Enforcing policy and strengthening internal controls

A written procurement policy only works if it’s consistently followed. Too often, approvals are handled over email, exceptions slip through, and there’s little documentation to prove what was approved and by whom. Without that structure, even the best policy is just words on paper.

This is where procurement systems come into play. A platform like Sage Intacct embeds those policies directly into workflows, ensuring requisitions cannot advance without required documentation, designated approvals or budget validation. Every action is logged, creating a clear audit trail and making it simple to track compliance.

The right configuration also helps maintain the separation of duties that is essential for risk mitigation. Role-based permissions prevent one person from controlling an entire transaction from start to finish. Automated workflows can require multiple approvals, flag conflicts of interest and stop payments that don’t meet criteria.

When set up correctly, these controls protect financial integrity without slowing operations. Teams gain confidence that policies are being enforced, risk is reduced, and procurement keeps moving efficiently.

Centralizing vendor relationships to reduce risk

Dispersed vendor management only compounds the challenge. When facilities or departments operate independently or maintain their own supplier relationships, organizations risk vendor duplication, inconsistent pricing and uncontrolled spending. Without central visibility, procurement leaders cannot analyze buying behavior or leverage purchasing power.

Consolidating vendor data within a single system helps standardize the sourcing process, prevent rogue vendors and enable stronger contract negotiation. With clean vendor records and uniform purchasing protocols, finance teams are better equipped to drive savings and reduce variability across locations.

Improving spend visibility and real-time reporting

Visibility is one of the most powerful tools senior services finance teams can leverage, but also one of the most commonly underdeveloped. In many organizations, spend data is delayed, fragmented or incomplete. Reporting is often built from spreadsheets, shared drives or disconnected systems, making it difficult to see the full financial picture at any given time.

Without real-time access to transaction data, leaders operate reactively. Budget overruns go unnoticed until month-end. Duplicate or unauthorized purchases slip through. Opportunities for reallocation or vendor negotiation are missed.

Sage Intacct transforms this process with real-time dashboards and reporting tools that give finance leaders instant access to budget performance, spend activity and procurement status, a foundational step toward more informed strategic planning for senior living organizations. Instead of waiting on monthly reports, teams can monitor spend dynamically and act on emerging issues as they arise.

These tools allow finance teams to break through silos and see how spend aligns with budgets at every level, from system-wide down to department or location. When financial performance is monitored in real time, decision-making becomes faster, more strategic and more confident.

But visibility doesn't stop with budgets. With deeper configurations, teams can customize reports by entity, vendor, cost category or timeline. This supports more advanced analysis and forecasting while reducing the manual burden of gathering and compiling data.

With the right structure in place, real-time data becomes a strategic asset, empowering leaders to manage procurement proactively, hold teams accountable and steer financial performance with precision.

Reducing vendor sprawl through centralized oversight

Vendor sprawl creates hidden costs and operational risk. When too many suppliers are used without consistent oversight, organizations face duplicate vendors, inconsistent pricing and limited visibility into purchasing behavior.

A centralized system like Sage Intacct helps consolidate vendor records, track purchasing history and apply approval rules across all locations. With these controls in place, finance leaders can better monitor vendor utilization and align purchasing activity with broader sourcing goals. Streamlining supplier relationships reduces complexity, increases transparency and supports more strategic procurement management.

Bringing AI into procurement strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to improve procurement operations. While not a replacement for strong policies or workflows, AI supports teams by identifying anomalies, automating repetitive actions and helping prioritize decisions.

By using AI to augment invoice routing, flag exceptions or forecast spending trends, senior services organizations can shift staff effort toward higher-value analysis, resident services and strategic planning.

Bridging insight and action: What finance leaders should focus on now

Transforming procurement and expense management takes more than new tools; it requires structural improvements that connect strategy with execution. Real-time visibility, policy enforcement and automation are not just fixes. They are enablers of a more responsive, data-informed and sustainable financial model.

For senior services financial leaders, this means focusing on:

• Workflow modernization: Move from manual tasks to automated systems that reduce errors and increase speed.
• Policy-driven configuration: Build controls into the system itself to ensure consistent approvals, compliance and accountability.
• Centralized data structure: Align procurement, budgeting and reporting systems to eliminate silos and drive unified insights.
• Real-time decision support: Use dashboards and alerts to shift from reactive reporting to proactive financial management.
• Scalable governance: Ensure procurement processes can support organizational growth, multi-entity structures and audit readiness.
• Technology adoption strategy: Maximize the value of tools already in place through better configuration, training and continuous improvement.

These changes are not just about efficiency. They are about creating a financial environment that supports mission delivery, adapts to operational complexity and sets the stage for long-term sustainability.

Unlocking the full potential of Sage Intacct

Technology is only as effective as the strategy behind it. While Sage Intacct offers powerful capabilities for procurement, spend management and reporting, many organizations underutilize the tools they already have access to.

Maximizing the value of Sage Intacct means more than turning on modules. It requires configuring workflows that reflect your internal policies, enabling dashboards that match your reporting structure and designing approval paths that protect internal controls without slowing operations.

Baker Tilly helps senior services organizations do just that. Our professionals work alongside finance leaders to align your program’s functionality with the realities of day-to-day operations, regulatory demands and growth objectives. From initial system assessments to workflow redesign and reporting optimization, we help organizations bridge the gap between capability and performance.

The result is not just automation; it is a system built to support better decisions, tighter financial oversight and a more strategic future.

Continue the series: Transform your financial operations

This piece is part one of a three-part series designed to help senior services finance leaders take control of procurement, reporting and performance strategy. Presented by Baker Tilly and Sage Intacct, each session delivers practical guidance and real-world solutions you can put into action, no matter where you start.

Whether you're focused on visibility, efficiency or growth, these sessions offer tools and insights to help you move forward with confidence and support stronger strategic planning for senior living leaders preparing for what’s next. Interested in the full session one recording? Register now to access the complete session library and join the rest of the series.