Why P&L by Home Still Breaks in Multi-Site Care (and how to fix it)
If you’re a Finance Director in a multi-site care provider, you’ve almost certainly been asked some version of this question:
“Which homes are really making money?”
On paper, the answer should be simple. In practice, producing a credible P&L by home is still one of the hardest things to get right in care.
Not because finance teams don’t know what they’re doing.
But because most care finance setups were never designed to support it.
The common misconception: “It’s a reporting problem”
When P&L by home is slow, inconsistent or constantly challenged, the instinctive response is often to look at reporting tools.
- New dashboards.
- New BI layers.
- More spreadsheets to reconcile differences.
But P&L by home rarely breaks because of reporting. It breaks because the underlying structure and data flows don’t support it. Until those foundations are fixed, better reporting just makes the cracks more visible.
- Inconsistent cost centres stop comparability
This is the most common issue we see.
Across a multi-site care provider:
- The same supplier is coded differently by different homes
- Staffing costs sit in different buckets depending on who posted them
- Central costs are treated inconsistently, or not allocated at all
The result is that every home technically has a P&L, but none of them are comparable. When Board or PE ask why margins differ between two similar homes, finance teams are forced into caveats instead of answers.
A credible P&L by home starts with:
- A consistent chart of accounts
- Standard cost centre structures across every site
- Clear rules for what sits locally vs centrally
Without that discipline, P&L by home will always be questioned.
- Staffing data is usually the missing piece
In care, staffing is the biggest margin driver. Yet in many setups, staffing data and finance data don’t fully align.
Common symptoms:
- Rota data lives outside finance
- Payroll posts as a lump sum after the fact
- Agency spend is visible only once the money’s gone
- Variances are spotted too late to act
When staffing isn’t aligned with finance:
- Month-end becomes reconciliation-heavy
- “What happened?” analysis is slow and manual
- Forecasting becomes guesswork
A credible P&L by home requires staffing data that:
- Reconciles cleanly to payroll
- Can be analysed by home and department
- Supports meaningful variance analysis
Without that, you’re managing margin in arrears.
- Dashboards don’t fix broken inputs
Dashboards are often sold as the answer to P&L by home.
But dashboards don’t fix:
- Inconsistent coding
- Manual re-keying
- Spreadsheet-based reconciliations
- Misaligned payroll and billing data
If the numbers going in aren’t reliable, the numbers coming out won’t be either, no matter how polished the dashboard looks.
- What “credible” P&L by home really means in care
A credible P&L by home isn’t about speed alone.
It means:
- Figures you’re comfortable putting in front of the Board
- Numbers that stand up to audit and investor scrutiny
- Variances you can explain without caveats
- Comparisons between homes that actually mean something
In practice, that requires:
- Finance structures designed for multi-site care
- Proven integrations between payroll, rota, billing and finance
- Controls that enforce consistency without slowing homes down
Before you invest in another reporting tool
If P&L by home is still painful, the question isn’t:
“Which dashboard should we buy?”
It’s:
“Does our finance structure actually support P&L by home?”
That means stepping back and assessing:
- Cost centre consistency
- Staffing and payroll alignment
- Integration gaps
- Where spreadsheets are acting as hidden systems
Reporting becomes much simpler once the structure is right.
A final thought
Most care finance teams are working incredibly hard to produce P&L by home. When it still feels fragile, the issue is rarely people or effort. It’s almost always the setup they’ve inherited.
Before you invest in another reporting tool, make sure your structure can support P&L by home.
Where SoMax fits
SoMax is a Social Care finance management system provider, with Qualified accounting consultants specialising in finance management solutions for multi-site UK care providers. We help finance teams put the right structure, integrations and controls in place so P&L by home becomes credible and repeatable.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your current setup, book a short call with SoMax. We’ll help you pinpoint where structure, coding and integration gaps are creating rework, and map a practical plan to get to credible P&L by home without disrupting operations.
