By Susan Saldibar

Have you ever known of a CFO who got dragged into a lot of other stuff?

This goes back a few years, but I remember a friend of mine who worked for a CFO in a small company that found themselves flush with about $5 million in their coffers after selling off some real estate assets. They were looking to spend it.

Senior management was throwing around a lot of crazy ideas to propel their business up to the next level.

But they needed their CFO and finance operations team to help them analyze the financial impact of each idea. It’s understandable, but it took the team down more than a few rabbit holes. That took time away from …

the basics, like keeping the company financially stable, and primed for growth.  

Here’s the upshot. The basics lagged as the CFO and a few of his team members spent all their time analyzing all these potential projects. According to my friend, the CFO felt the pressure and left the company. Who can blame him?

Obviously, they could have organized the whole thing differently. They could have rebalanced the workload and had corporate leadership take on more of it.

Or, better yet, they could have outsourced their day-to-day primary accounting operations and unshackled their CFO to focus 100% on adding real value.

That really makes sense. So why aren’t more senior living operators outsourcing finance and accounting operations?

That’s what QX Global Group (a Foresight partner) is out to change. They know there are huge issues out there for operators, such as:

  • Inflation and increased wages
  • Rising talent shortage for accountants
  • High utility costs
  • Debt and capital management
  • Lack of data visibility and timely reporting
  • Maintaining optimal occupancy

If ever an industry was ripe for outsourcing finance and accounting operations …

QX Global is spearheading a new wave of outsourced services that take on the day-to-day accounting work and tackle other finance pain points that can cost time, effort, and overhead to solve in-house.

Outsourcing finance and accounting operations makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. 

Here are a few:

  1. Cost reduction and efficiency. In this economy you can’t just keep charging residents more money. Operators have to look at cost reduction. Outsourcing can reduce operational costs by a lot because you’re eliminating the overhead of a fully staffed in-house finance department.
  2. Access to specialized expertise. This is huge given the dynamics of this industry and those ever-changing regulatory and compliance issues that operators can’t afford to let slide. Outsourcing gives you instant access to experienced accountants who look at this stuff all day, every day, without any distractions.
  3. Scalability and flexibility. What if, instead of scrambling to fill gaps or lay off employees when occupancy changes, you could just scale up or scale down the level of support to meet the need? They could also handle unexpected financial tasks like year-end reporting and audits.
  4. Business continuity and uninterrupted services. That means no gaps in coverage over holidays, staffing shortages, or any other local disruption. And no time zone issues, assuming they have global support.

With all this off their backs, what could CFOs do for their communities?

For starters, maybe focus on the finance and accounting pieces needed to improve resident care, improve occupancy rates, and help identify new business opportunities like mergers and acquisitions.

Is outsourcing the future of senior living finance and accounting?

It may be, for these reasons:

  • Can reduce overhead costs by 40-60% (QX Global data)
  • Gives access to pools of experts who live and breathe accounting as well as regulatory and compliance issues
  • Takes the heat off dealing with staffing and training

There’s a huge upside to leveraging outside expertise if you can find the right partner. I like where QX Global is taking outsourcing. You may too after you learn more about their services. Why not check out their website? Your CFO will thank you.