.png)
Senior living communities operate in a heavily regulated environment with significant financial compliance requirements. Modern financial management systems can dramatically reduce compliance burden while improving control and reducing risk.
Senior living communities must comply with various regulatory frameworks depending on their services and funding sources including Medicare and Medicaid billing requirements, state licensure financial reporting, Fair Housing Act and resident trust fund regulations, and tax-exempt organization requirements for non-profits.
Each framework imposes documentation, reporting, and control requirements.
Perhaps the most fundamental compliance requirement is the ability to demonstrate who did what and when. Sage Intacct maintains complete audit trails including every transaction entry and modification, user authentication and access logs, approval workflow history, and report generation and access records.
These audit trails are immutable and tamper-proof, meeting the highest compliance standards. Sage Intacct is fully HIPAA-compliant and Sage will also sign a BAA.
Effective internal controls require segregation of duties between incompatible functions. Sage Intacct enforces segregation through role-based permissions that prevent users from both entering and approving transactions, initiating and approving payments, and accessing incompatible functions.
System-enforced controls are more reliable than policy-based controls that depend on voluntary compliance.
Different transactions require different approval levels. Sage Intacct supports configurable approval workflows based on transaction type and amount, department or cost center, property or entity, and vendor.
Workflow configuration ensures appropriate review and approval while maintaining processing efficiency.
Communities that manage resident trust funds face specific requirements for segregation of funds, detailed transaction records, regular statements and reconciliation, and annual audit documentation.
Sage Intacct's fund accounting capabilities support proper trust fund management with complete separation from operating funds, detailed transaction tracking, automated statement generation, and comprehensive audit documentation.
Read more in my earlier blog about How Senior Living Technology is Transforming Community Operations.
Revenue recognition in senior living involves complexity around entrance fees, service revenue, ancillary charges, and insurance billing. Sage Intacct supports proper revenue recognition through automated revenue recognition schedules, multi-element arrangement handling, and detailed revenue tracking by source.
Proper revenue recognition is essential for accurate financial reporting and tax compliance.
Communities receiving government contracts or grants must track and report expenses by funding source. Sage Intacct's dimensional chart of accounts and Grants Tracking and Billing module enable detailed cost allocation by grant or contract, automated compliance reporting, and audit-ready documentation.
Financial compliance requires retaining supporting documentation for specified periods.
While Sage Intacct isn't primarily a document management system, it integrates with document management solutions and provides attachment capabilities for key documents, links to supporting documentation, and automatic retention per configured policies.
Regulatory bodies require various periodic reports. Sage Intacct streamlines compliance reporting through configurable report templates, scheduled automatic generation, consistent formatting and calculations, and electronic submission capabilities where supported.
Communities report reducing compliance reporting time by 60-70% with automated report generation.
Non-profit senior living organizations face additional requirements including fund accounting and net asset classification, Form 990 preparation support, donor restriction tracking, and functional expense allocation.
Sage Intacct's non-profit specific capabilities address these requirements comprehensively.
Organizations with complex structures must properly consolidate financial results and eliminate inter-entity transactions. Sage Intacct automates consolidation with automatic elimination entries, appropriate roll-up hierarchies, and consolidated financial statements.
Proper consolidation is essential for accurate financial reporting to boards, lenders, and regulators.
Annual financial statement audits are standard for most senior living communities. Sage Intacct facilitates audits through direct auditor access to the system, standardized confirmation processes, complete transaction detail availability, and automated lead sheet and workpaper generation.
Auditors appreciate working with communities that have modern, well-controlled financial systems.
Rather than point-in-time compliance assessment, leading communities implement continuous monitoring. Sage Intacct supports this through exception reports for policy violations, automated control testing, and regular management review reports.
Continuous monitoring identifies issues immediately rather than waiting for annual audits.
Strong financial systems and controls reduce organizational risk including fraud risk through preventive controls, compliance penalties through systematic adherence, operational disruption through business continuity, and reputational damage through reliable reporting.
Insurance companies and lenders increasingly recognize and reward strong financial controls.
Communities with weak financial systems face significant costs from audit findings and remediation, regulatory penalties, fraud losses, insurance premium increases, and lender concerns and restrictions.
These costs far exceed the investment in proper financial management systems.
Learn how Sage Intacct's compliance and control features can reduce your audit and
regulatory burden.
Request a demo or reach out to solutions@blytheco.com to begin your journey with an ERP built for your industry. Here are the 5 Reasons Why Sage Intacct Is the Right Choice for Senior Living.
Sage Intacct Solutions Engineer
Todd has over two decades of experience in marketing, sales, presales, and professional services and held roles as Director of IT and CFO. Throughout his career, he successfully established and developed nine practices from the ground up. This experience equipped him with a proven track record of implementing and managing various accounting and ancillary software solutions, including Sage Intacct. He leverages his vast business and software background to lead companies to successful and efficient solutions.
