Spend Management for Healthcare Procurement Teams
Whether you’re in Patient Care or Advancing Medical Research, PLANERGY streamlines your organization’s spending. Discover how our intuitive procurement solution eliminates paperwork in a
fast-paced environment.
Assisted Living and Care Homes Challenges
Care homes and assisted living facilities face several challenges in the procure-to-pay (P2P) process due to budget constraints, decentralized operations, and regulatory requirements.
Key challenges include:
- Budget Constraints and Cost Control
- Many care homes operate on tight budgets due to funding limitations.
- Rising costs of medical supplies, food, and utilities make it difficult to manage expenses.
- Lack of real-time spend visibility can lead to overspending.
- Supplier Management and Compliance
- Care facilities rely on multiple suppliers for medical equipment, medications, food, and maintenance.
- Ensuring regulatory compliance with health and safety standards is critical.
- Suppliers may have inconsistent pricing, service levels, and contract terms, causing disruptions.
- Manual and Inefficient Processes
- Many care homes still rely on paper-based or outdated systems, leading to slow approvals and errors.
- Lack of automation in purchase orders, invoice approvals, and payments increases administrative burden.
- Delays in invoice matching and approvals cause late payments and strained supplier relationships.
- Inventory and Stock Management
- Keeping track of medications, personal protective equipment (PPE), and consumables is essential.
- Overstocking or understocking can impact care quality and operational costs.
- Poor visibility into stock levels leads to emergency purchases at higher prices.
- Regulatory and Audit Challenges
- Care homes must comply with strict CQC (UK), CMS (US), or other local health regulations.
- Procurement decisions need to be auditable to ensure spending aligns with policies.
- Failing an audit due to missing documentation can result in penalties or funding cuts.
- Integration with Finance and Care Management Systems
- Many P2P processes are not integrated with finance, ERP, or electronic health records (EHRs).
- Disconnected systems make it difficult to track spending against budgets and patient needs.
- Fraud and Mismanagement Risks
- Lack of proper spend controls can lead to fraud, duplicate payments, or unauthorized purchases.
- High staff turnover can result in inconsistent procurement practices.
- Handling Emergency Purchases
- Unpredictable demand (e.g., flu outbreaks, COVID-19 surges) forces last-minute buying at premium prices.
- Need for fast supplier onboarding and approvals during crises.
Addressing these challenges requires automation, centralized control, and enhanced visibility to optimize procurement, ensure compliance, and maximize the impact of limited assisted living and care homes resources.
How PLANERGY or a P2P Solution
Can Help
A digital procure-to-pay solution can help care homes:
- Automate workflows for purchasing and invoicing.
- Improve spend visibility and cost control with real-time dashboards.
- Ensure regulatory compliance and maintain audit trails.
- Manage suppliers efficiently with contract and price tracking.
- Streamline inventory management to prevent shortages and waste.
- Prevent fraud and duplicate payments through built-in controls.
With PLANERGY you don’t have to waste time focusing on managing your spend.
Spend Visibility and Budget Oversight
Real-time visibility into spending by location, category, supplier, or GL codes, with automated reports and spending alerts.
Track Price Volatility
Use PLANERGY’s PriceWatch to monitor vendor price changes, and negotiate better deals or switch suppliers before costs rise.
Ensure Compliance With Procurement Policies
Replace paper and email with automated workflows and tailored approval rules, ensuring orders follow policies, use preferred suppliers, and leave full audit trails.
Connect All Your Locations on One Spend Management Platform
Standardize vendor selection, prevent unauthorized or unnecessary purchases, and get real-time visibility across your whole organization.
Better Compliance with Procurement Policies
- Automate policy enforcement through built-in workflows and approval rules tailored to each facility’s needs.
- Ensure all purchases go through pre-set approvals and are linked to preferred suppliers.
- Track audit trails for every transaction, helping maintain compliance and simplifying audits.
More Efficient Invoice Processing and Payment Delays
- Match purchase orders with invoices automatically (3-way matching) to detect discrepancies and expedite approvals.
- Automate invoice processing and routing to the right approvers to prevent delays.
- Improve vendor satisfaction through timely payments and improved accuracy.
Real-time Budget Tracking
With PLANERGY, you can manage all your budgets in real-time from a single, integrated platform. Track spending, see what’s left, and make budget-informed approvals with confidence.
- Set up budgets based on departments, projects, locations, and more.
- See how the budget is going to be impacted by a purchase before approving.
- Review live charts and graphs to see price trends, actual vs budget, spending by category, supplier performance, budget utilization, and cost-saving opportunities.
- Reduce your month-end close by up to 50% with no additional headcount.
Highly Configurable Approval Workflows
Customize, automate, and streamline approvals to ensure control and compliance effortlessly.
- Custom Approval Rules – Set multiple workflows based on department, budget, or hierarchy.
- Automated Routing – Approvals are instantly sent to the right approvers.
- Budget Aware Approvals – Approvers can see real-time budget impact before approving spend.
- Real-Time Tracking – Monitor approval progress and eliminate bottlenecks.
Since implementing PLANERGY, our month-end close has been reduced from 20 days to just 10.
The efficiency gains have been game-changing!
Assisted Living and Care Homes Case Studies
Explore these case studies to gain insights into successful strategies, challenges overcome, and lessons learned in the pursuit of high-quality, person-centered care.
Before PLANERGY, we had no system. There was no visibility, and we were closing accounts on day 20. Now, we close at day 10 with complete oversight.
Joanne Muldowney, CFO, Sandstone Care Group
Sandstone Care Group Transforms Financial Operations with PLANERGY
Sandstone Care Group transformed its financial operations with PLANERGY, reducing month-end close time by 50%, automating procurement, and improving budget control.
Real-time visibility, seamless Xero integration, and compliance tracking helped scale operations efficiently while cutting costs and improving accuracy.
I must have looked at demos from every major provider on the market, but none offered the right combination of budgetary control and automation.
Rakesh Patel, Finance Manager, Handsale Care Homes
Handsale Care Homes Transforms Spend Management with PLANERGY
Handsale Care Homes streamlined procurement with PLANERGY, cutting invoice processing time by 40% and month-end reporting by 15 days.
The cloud-based system automated purchasing, improved budget control, eliminated paper storage, and enhanced financial efficiency, ensuring better cost management and compliance.
PLANERGY was a godsend for Meallmore, I wish we had found it sooner. It transformed our purchasing.
Gavin MacKenzie, Group CFO, Meallmore Group
Meallmore Enhances Purchasing Efficiency and Compliance with PLANERGY
Meallmore deployed PLANERGY to manage purchasing across its 26 care homes, gaining centralized control, real-time spend visibility, and streamlined approvals.
By replacing paper processes, they’ve reduced admin time, improved supplier management, and ensured compliance—freeing up staff to focus more on delivering high-quality care to residents.
Top organizations trust us,
You can too.
What Our Healthcare Customers Are Saying
Discover how healthcare organizations use PLANERGY to boost efficiency, saving time to focus on what matters most to their organization.
PLANERGY has completely transformed the way we manage our spend.
We now have full visibility and control, ensuring financial discipline across all our care homes.
Joanne Muldowney
CFO, Sandstone Care Group
PLANERGY was the only platform that offered the advanced features we needed while being easy to use and scalable.
Rakesh Patel
Finance Manager, Handsale Care Homes
The automation of accounts payable with PLANERGY has been a huge time saver.
I can now process hundreds of invoices quickly and accurately, without the manual workload.
Rebecca Taylor
Purchase Ledger Clerk, Sandstone Care Group
PLANERGY was a godsend for Meallmore, I wish we had found it sooner. It transformed our purchasing
Gavin MacKenzie
Group CFO, Meallmore Group
With PLANERGY, we’ve streamlined our procurement process, cut down on unnecessary spending, and improved compliance across all our care homes.
Joanne Muldowney
CFO, Sandstone Care Group
I must have looked at demos from every major provider on the market, but none offered the right combination of budgetary control and automation.
Rakesh Patel
Finance Manager, Handsale Care Homes
PLANERGY has enabled us to do more with less.
We’ve significantly reduced finance staffing needs while improving accuracy and efficiency.
Joanne Muldowney
CFO, Sandstone Care Group
Before PLANERGY, area managers had to request information from the finance team.
Now, they can retrieve what they need themselves, speeding up decision-making.
Rakesh Patel
Finance Manager, Handsale Care Homes
Since implementing PLANERGY, our month-end close has been reduced from 20 days to just 10.
The efficiency gains have been game-changing!
Joanne Muldowney
CFO, Sandstone Care Group
PLANERGY’s flexibility, ease of use, and comprehensive features make it the perfect fit for any care home operator managing high volumes of transactions.
Rakesh Patel
Finance Manager, Handsale Care Homes
Better Spend Management
Find out how PLANERGY’s Procure-To-Pay platform can revolutionize your organization’s Spend Management. Schedule a short demo to find out more.
Book a personalized demo to see the PLANERGY procure-to-pay platform for yourself.
