How to Improve Group Home Care By Getting Rid of Cash and Paper

People have been talking about paperless offices since the 1980s.

Back then, it simply meant replacing printed budgets, reports, and communications with computer files. Today, it’s everything from e-signing documents to real-time, work-from-anywhere collaboration.

This is how an organization landed a modern, paperless accounting workflow… when the only paper they set out to replace was cash.

When Cash Isn’t King, but a King-Sized Headache

Health and Behavioral Dimensions (HBD) provides residential services for adults with autism, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and mental illness. To meet the day-to-day needs of each client, they had to make sure each of their group homes had plenty of cash on hand.

That meant transporting large amounts of cash to the locations. There, it would sit around until it passed through multiple hands — managers, staff, and the people who needed help spending.

Meanwhile, HBD’s funding came from government programs, so they had to account for every penny. You can imagine the headaches that lost receipts could cause. No surprise that they chose PEX. The solution includes:

• Prepaid Disburse Cards: PEX lets HBD give each resident a unique PEX Visa® Prepaid card account. This helps ensure that money earmarked for an individual is only spent for that individual’s benefit.
• PEX Credit Expense: Used for larger spending needs, PEX Credit Expense gives HBD a 30-day float and up to 2% cashback rewards on spending.
• Virtual Vendor Cards: This solution for secure vendor payments also pays cashback rewards on purchases.
• Receipt Capture: Staff photographs and submits receipts through the PEX mobile app.
• Single-Platform Simplicity: HBD administers and tracks its spending for corporate and individual residents through the same console on the PEX website or mobile app.

Now, when managers and staff need to spend for the benefit of a particular resident, they use the resident’s Disburse card and submit receipt photos electronically. There are no petty cash forms to fill out. If a receipt gets lost before it’s submitted, HBD still has the transaction information.

Managers and staff need less time to track spending, giving them more time to care for residents

From Reactive Accounting to Proactive Management

Organizations like HBD can receive dozens of social security payments each month, one for each resident. The law requires that each payment only be used for that specific resident. Also, there are restrictions on how that money can be spent.

Every month, the accounting team at HBD spent hours combing through receipts and notes, and entering them in ledgers to document compliance. PEX replaced that routine with:

• Controlled Funding of Beneficiary Accounts: PEX gives HBD the ability to direct each social security payment to the resident’s card, either through manual funding or an automated process. 
• Automated Policy Enforcement: HBD can create spending rules in the PEX platform, to ensure that the cards can only be used for authorized purchases at approved times.
• Anytime, Anywhere Funding: The PEX website and mobile app let administrators approve and fund purchases at any time of the day or night.
• Real-time Visibility: Alerts let accounting teams know instantly when a card is used or a purchase is declined.

The new approach is not only more secure than cash, it helps ensure that funds are used properly. And it works entirely in the cloud.

From Cashless Workflows to Paperless Accounting

Along with replacing cash, the PEX solution helped HBD replace its paper trail with a modern, real-time digital solution. Spending approvals and receipts are now in the cloud. PEX also integrates with HBD’s accounting system. The result is a smooth, paperless workflow:

• Cloud-based Requests and Approvals: PEX keeps an auditable record of funding requests made through its digital app, approvals, and card funding.
• Automated Allocations: PEX reports spending and receipt submissions using HBD’s general ledger codes, and charges spending to the right accounts in real-time.
• One-Click Reconciliations: PEX queues up transaction data and receipts for review. Uploading it to accounting software is as easy as approving it with a click. 

PEX is proven to improve expense management workflows, delivering massive improvements in productivity and efficiency. Learn more with a free demo.