Healthcare Services Company Eliminates Data Entry and Overpayments by Automating Payroll in Microsoft Dynamics GP
Customer: VNA Community Healthcare & Hospice
Website: connecticuthomecare.org
Location: Guilford, CT
Industry: Non-Profit Healthcare Services
Former System: Navision
Customer Profile
VNA Community Healthcare & Hospice’s mission is to promote and preserve the health, safety, dignity and independence of individuals and families by providing therapeutic and preventive healthcare services in their place of residence and in the community.
Download “We were manually entering 600 timesheets. Payroll took at least 18 hours a week. Now it is down to only eight hours per week with the Dynamics GP automation.”
Maria Fowler, Payroll Administrator, VNA Community Healthcare & Hospice
The Challenge
VNA Community Healthcare & Hospice has 600 employees and an extremely complicated payroll commission structure. Their main goal is to keep patients out of the hospital and healthy and safe in their own homes. They want to focus on providing care, rather than wasting time on manual processes related to accounting and payroll.
Their old accounting software system was not connected to the Payroll system, so it was difficult to analyze one of the biggest expenses: salaries. Another challenge was financial reporting, as it was difficult to get the information they wanted out of the system. When their software became outdated, they knew it was time for a change.
The Solutions
After evaluating several accounting software packages, the company selected Microsoft Dynamics GP because it was a solid product backed by Microsoft. CAL Business Solutions, the Microsoft partner they chose, had experience working with other home care agencies in the area.
Maria Fowler, Payroll Administrator at VNA Community Healthcare & Hospice, said, “I think what really sold us on CAL and Dynamics GP is when we realized we knew other homecare agencies CAL worked with. We talked to them directly about their decision, and they gave really good feedback. That was something that we weren’t able to do with the other software products we were evaluating.”
Maria explains the benefits of using Microsoft Dynamics GP:
The Benefits
Automating Payroll Saved 10 Hours A Week
“In the past we were manually entering 1,200 timesheets every two weeks. Plus, we have a very complex way of calculating payroll based on variables such as type of visit, category, pay rate and quotas. This data is pulled from a separate revenue system that stores all of our nurses’ timecards, clinical notes and patient documentation.
Now that Payroll is included in Dynamics GP, CAL Business Solutions was able to build an application that pulls the raw data from the revenue system and applies logic to perform the complicated calculations to make sure everyone is getting paid the right amount.
All the exempt and non-exempt office personnel are entering their time into Greenshades and that also gets imported. Then Payroll is processed in Dynamics GP.
Payroll used to take at least 18 hours a week. Now, it is down to about eight hours a week to review, edit and run the process.”
Caught Error That Saved $20,000 in First Seven Months
“A big chunk of time had been spent keying information into the system, and, of course, this resulted in mistakes; we did not have the time to properly analyze the data. During this process, CAL found out that we had been overpaying our employees for a specific exception for mileage and travel time. They built a rule into the payroll system that catches this error. In seven months, we have already saved about $20,000.”
Employees Picked It Up Right Away
“I think the Dynamics GP system is very user friendly. It is very easy to navigate. Most of the modules are similar to each other, so if you understand the concept of one, you’ll understand the concept of another. We have employees that are on different learning curves, and they picked it up right away.”
Easy-to-Pull Financial Reports
“For our financial reports, we use the out-of-the-box Dynamics GP reports and Management Reporter, which are easy to customize. SmartLists is a wonderful tool. In our old system, we had trouble reporting different periods and doing comparisons on expenses or revenue. With SmartLists we can report across multiple periods and pull all the data from one place. That has been very helpful for us.”
Complex Journal Entries Posted in 2 Minutes
“Dynamics GP has saved us so much time. We use Infinia Integrator to copy and paste into Dynamics GP. We can keep journal entries in the same format, update amounts, and just import that data each month. In the past, a complex journal entry would probably take us 20 minutes. Now it takes us two minutes.”
CAL is Very Responsive
“I would absolutely recommend CAL to other companies! The team has been very responsive and great teachers. They built an application to handle a very complicated process and took the time to get it to work. I think you guys are great.”
So Much More to Learn
“I think Dynamics GP has so much more capability than we even know. If I have anything negative to say, it would be that there is just so much more to the system that we could learn. But I think that the system itself, as we use it now, is great.”