Assessing Financial Data
It is vital that the health and social care system should be more effective in nature and the health and social Act 2012 advises the health practitioner to be more accountable as well as productive in nature. Hence, in order to ensure that it is important that the health practitioner and social manager should be more practical and accountable. With the aid of Care South Group various aspects of health care will be studied and proper emphasis will be provided on the health care operations.
The main purpose of the task is to determine the controls of business and the procedures of costing. It includes the assessment of the financial data of the institution by analyzing several different topics like expenses, revenues, cost controllers, breakeven points, profit dealings, cost-benefit analysis and the basic software’s. Also there is another business control system which states that an institution should only hire proficient employees for their specified job. It should also be kept in mind that the organisation and the business are having a system that can handle the situations and thus can keep the time of providing the service to its maximum. This shows the intention of Care South Group Care home to maintain perfect and timely records. Perpetuating the employees helps in easy comparison of the financial records of the firm. These types of maintained financial records of an organisation also helps an auditor by making his work easier to carefully analyze the given information about the dependability of the employees of the firm which is clearly mentioned in the provided data (Needles & Powers, 2013). Thus it also decreases the chances of the bad impression of the auditor’s assessment as it will make the job of the auditor very easy thus not letting him make any misstatements.
The correct maintenance of record helps the firm to maintain clear view on the type of business transaction being held. Basic procedures for the management of records are to store documents, using the technology and also keep a back up of all other procedures. This also helps to ensure that there are no mistakes in the recorded data for the financial statements. An effective business thus always maintains correct, secular and custodial accounts with a good accounting functionality. According to the environmental protection agency the cost of the operational activities of the firm reduces if the records are managed with great care. Also it helps the firm to make the procedures more efficient thus leading to less litigation needs. Safeguards help to prevent the firm from any problems and also help in the assessment of the firm’s assets. There are two types of safeguards, Tangible safeguards which include the securities like the locks on doors and safe lockers , and Intangible safeguards which are in the forms of computer software’s or passwords (Parrino et. al,, 2012). They are very necessary for the proper protection of a firms control system as they help to secure the most needed aspects of the business like the inventories, cash, supplies and any other secret information which the company do not want to get exposed. Care South Group Care home should keep in mind to keep even the small things like the signature stamps, letterheads, and bank cheques in the safeguard as they also need a proper safeguard (Merchant, 2012). All such information and the physical amenities should be kept in proper safeguard by the firm and the safeguards stored should only be allowed to be accessed by trusted personnel.
Business Control Systems
The information given by the management of the financial data comes from the organizations work of reaching its targets. The firms requirements is having different basis on which the operational activities, managerial activities, financial activities and labour requirements are divided. The different type of activities performed by the organization helps to ascertain the need of the financial resources of the firm for the achievement of their targets. The data which is required for the assessment can be obtained from the values of the inventories left, the financial documents, operational activities, revenue generated, cash and bank balances and any other cost activates made within the border of the firm (Peirson et. al, 2015).
There are various regulatory conditions that are needed to be taken into consideration for the assessment of the financial resources :
- It sets up the internal and the external audit committees for the firm.
- It takes various types of insurances which help to protect the firms and its customers from any type of loss.
- It trains the financial department in a way which makes it efficient to make decisions no matter how much the expenses increase.
- It also carries out a process which helps it to monitor and check the processes it is undertaking, the expenses incurring and the control systems used by the firm.
- The operational risks are managed according to the changes made in the rules and the regulations of the acts.
It is a very important and necessary function for a firm to assess the final statements for the risks and the hidden information which may have been missed and thus may affect the data of the upcoming years. South Group Care home must take the policies of the competitors in the same field and apply them so that they can improve their system. They should also try to make their processes strong and thus make their employees more efficient in their works.
The organisations should try and apply the basic and major requirements which may help them to guarantee their success. These requirements also help the organizations for the functioning of their tasks within the boundaries of the statutory provisions made by the particular country where the firm exists. In United States the “Health and Social Act 2012” regulates all the financial transactions of the health organisations of the country. It states the basic principles which are required for the presentation or the making of the financial contracts of the firm. There also exist the regulation standards of all the basic agreements and forces which are needed for the health organisation. The contracts also contain the information about the declarations, bailment, pledges and also helps in providing the provisions of breach of contract. Another important regulation is to sustain the use of the making of quality management system (Leo, 2011). Federal Bureau is the government body which is given the power to make the laws and quality standards for the firms which gives any product or service to the public.
In order to check the financial management system of Care South Group Care home which is a health and care related institution, the completion of expectations of the clients and the related organisations are needed to be assessed. Care South Group Care home have created such policies of management which will help them to cover almost all the risks which may arise in its health care facilities by using the method of resource allocation in which all the users interests are met with their need. The most promising clients for Care South Group Care home are their patients and staff members (Laux, 2014). The methods of cost reduction and financial expediency have helped the institution to achieve the desired goal and thus leading to provide social care to the large part of the public.
Safeguarding
The diverse sources of income are as follows:
Internal Sources – the internal sources comprises of working capital, assets sale, and retained profits.
External sources – such sources can be of long term or short term. Long term sources here includes items such as long term liabilities where the components can be from debentures, investment from third party, mortgage, venture capital, etc. the short term source will comprise of Stock control, debt factoring, trade credits, etc.
The diverse sources of income that is available to CareSouth Group care home are as follows:
Residential care services – the group provides residential care services where the patients and other people are provided services pertaining to health. Such care services help the home to diversify the business and attain a formidable position. Further, it helps the home to carry on the operations and enhance the income (Petersen & Plenborg, 2012). It is one of the vital sources of income because residential care services help the patients to recover and hence, needed by a vast majority. The income was more in 2012 that is £30.1m, however, declined to £29.1 in the year 2013.
Domiciliary care services – It is even termed as hospital care and constitute a major part of the income generation of the home. Those who cannot care for themselves are provided care at this particular place. It is one of the chief sources of income generation. It is helping the business to flourish. However, the income was stagnant was in both the years that is 2012 and 2013.
Investment income – the group even had investments. It is one of the primary sources of earning revenue. Any group needs to invest as it helps in fetching income. The investment income of the group grew marginally in the year 2013 indicating that the group stressed the concept of income.
The main factors that affect the presence of the funds and also the hindrance of the funding can be both caused because of the changes in the external or internal environment of the firm. The mixed effect of the internal and external business environments causes the hindrance of the funding in a firm. The institution may be obliged to pay some irrelevant expenses like the social welfare funds, charitable funds and taxes not related to business which cause a change in the financial position of the firm (Rosenbaum, 2016). Also one of the other factors which may lead to an increase or decrease in the firms funding position is the strategies and target set by it. In easy words it can be explained as when the firm tries to improve its business and grow in the field, it needs more investment which may lead the institution to face funding problems (Foo, 2017). Also, the budget set by the government of state may influence the investment strategies of the firms as the budget mentions various factors which are needed to be taken into consideration while making the fiscal plan for funds.
Regulatory Conditions
Size of the working capital – If the firm is having huge figures in the working capital then the organizations may not have face the problems of funding in near future. Also, the realization of the actual values of the assets plays a vital role in the enhancement of the funds (Ferris et. al, 2010).
The assets owned – If the institution will have more assets, then the value of the business increases automatically, leading to the ways of funding by loan as it will be easier to apply for loans if the institution is the owner of high valued assets (Ferris et. al, 2010).
Comprehensive budgeting is also known as referral budgeting. It is presented in a very detailed and elaborated form and thus is helpful in finding the limit of spending which is may be caused because of a shortage of funds. Because of the changes in the budgeting plans, the incomes of the Care South Group Care home have decreased which lead them to spend less on the unnecessary expenses. It also helps the institution to organize the data of the capital investment according to the needs of the firm. These budgets will help the institution to make their budget according to the detailed patterns and data of the past years.
It proves to be a problem-solving budgeting for Care South Group Care as the institution has earned huge revenues in the past years which are not making the condition favorable for them to manage their capital budget in some sections of the accounting. Because of the detailed summary provided by the comprehensive budgeting, it tends to be much more profitable in a general perspective (Field & Brown, 2007).
Care South Group Care uses this budgeting process to determine the amount of capital it needs to invest the share capital of other social and healthcare facilities. The main purpose of this type of budgeting is to facilitate the institution to examine and deploy the capital for a particular desired goal. Care South Group Care uses this method to prepare the dividends to the shareholders.
The cost-benefit analysis is one of the major concepts that helps in shedding light on the factor of expenses. The analysis is an approach that is systematic in nature and enables to estimate the strength, as well as the weakness of the functional requirement of the business. The option that provides the best result is selected through this and in the case of Care South Group Care, it will help in the management of financial resources (Deegan, 2011).
Sources of Income
This will help the institution to maintain the inventory of making decisions and cost-effective allocation of resources. The cost-benefit thesis gives Care South Group Care an advantage in absence of perfectly operating competitive markets and this making income distribution not acceptable (Rosenbaum, 2016). Therefore, an analysis will help in knowing the prospect and the manner in which the funds can be managed. A proper and a detailed analysis will help in driving the business forward.
The cash flows of the company are needed to be theorized properly so as to save the institution from any kind of financial shortfalls. The department should make it necessary to assess the expenses of each department and thus evaluate the document for finding any expense which was not required to be made. Every department should have an individual budget that helps in evaluating the performance. Whenever there is a shortfall, the same can be known with ease. Moreover, the preparation of budget helps in knowing where the problem lies. It helps in removing the defect with ease and at a proper course of time. It saves time, as well as money (Davies & Crawford, 2012). Further, the home can operate smoothly without any hassle. The budget should be strictly followed by the employees and in order to encourage them, the firm should give incentives for savings and ask for penalties if the expenses are over the required budgeting plan. Care South Group Care has used most of its fund during the time of collaboration which has now made it suffer from lack of funds. Hence it is the duty of the management to make an appropriate plan (Svejenova et. al, 2010). Appropriate plans need to be chalked as it enables the organization to steer and drives in the correct direction. At times, it happens that there are many variances and deviations. Such problems need to be carefully settled by the management.
The Care South Group Care for detecting any suspected fraud in health care and deal with them using the health insurance profitability and Accountability acts (Choi & Meek, 2011). If there are any chances that a fraud is going to take place, then the institution must report the cheats and thus drag them to the court of law for further dealings with the crime committed by him. Health care fraud is a very big offense which not only affects the patient or individual but it also affects the target of government which is to have a healthy population. In short, those involved in such a fraud needs to be punished at the extreme and strong disciplines must be set so that anyone indulging in an unethical manner must be severely punished. Further, the home must have a sensitive place where the data must be stored and every employee should not be provided the access to everywhere (Carmichael & Graham, 2012). The security is the main consideration that can save the home from any risk of fraud. A case of fraud happens when the organization is weak in tracing the activities. To ensure a strong environment, it needs to be noted that the management should be backed up with strong skills.
Factors Affecting the Presence of Funds
Budget monitoring helps the institution to cater the needs of arranging the health or social care organization. Budget monitoring also includes the process of forecasting the cash flows. The process of budget monitoring is an important consideration because it helps the business to trace any difficulty at the earliest. The key procedures of the budget monitoring process are as follows:
- There are regular checks that are needed to be made on the assessment of the completion of the targets set up by the internal budget plan. This helps in knowing the shortfalls and to attain the desired goals (Brigham & Daves, 2012).
- Make all the necessary decisions in relation to the internal budget and thus revise the budget. Revising the budget ensures that the home is constantly taking the feedback into account. Once the revision is done and incorporated it helps in knowing the progress with ease and flexibility.
- Predicting future so that the gaps in the budgeting plans can be filled with the help of assumptions.
- To see and review the budgeting system so as to make more accurate and timely decisions and thus finding the areas of improvement. Once the deficiencies are known it can be negated with the proper mechanism and steps. Such a plan helps in removing the issues that comes in the course of activities.
Thus, budget monitoring helps the organization to find and evaluate the performance of the institution in the various departments and areas by using the information of capital expenditures and the other works which are in progress. This will help the management to find the variations in the organizational projects and thus trying to overcome the faults by correcting them using proper managerial skills. Also, the regular reports of the organizational proceedings help the institution to gather more information on the present and past impacts which can be helpful to conduct the future activities. When the proper course of information is available it helps in taking appropriate decision and leads to a better course of action. It not only helps in taking decisions rather aims at the future course of action. Hence, monitoring is not only associated with the current details or evaluation rather it helps in forecasting the future and deriving from a proper course of action..
Care South Group Care home must make the changes in the budgets and plans by keeping in mind the changes made in the government policies. This clear and accurate preparation of data will help the institution to make much more clear assumptions for the development in future. It is also requested that Care South Group Care home should adopt the policies of equity and excellence model which will help it to improve the effectiveness of its organizational functions (Boussebaa, 2015). Also, the motivation of the employees will help to encourage them to improve which will lead to long-term profit and the growth of the healthcare institution.
The financial managers of the institution Care South Group Care home generally analyzes the financial statements like the cash flow and income statement in order to understand the position of the firm before taking any of the required decisions. If the financial data will not provide the managers with appropriate data then it may cause a blunder thus incurring losses for the institution. Also the firm has a human resource department which is handed with the responsibility to keep a statistical and theoretical data of the employees and also other important information relating to them like their addresses and phone numbers. There are various ways of managing the financial data but for the Care South Group Care home it is best to conduct the process by Care system which divides the financial and non financial differences of the institution (Bodie et. al, 2014). It also looks after the behaviour support, care planning, presence, human resourcing, equipment management, etc. Also an open system may prove to be useful for the recording of the financial and tax-related information. After getting all the required information, the system analyzes the expenses and revenues to find the total effect. This assessment of the system plays a major role in the making of decisions relating to the sales and satisfaction to the customer and services provided.
The financial data provides the expenses which are further used by Care South Group Care home to make a clear analysis of the firms system. This helps in the procurement of a good relation between the employee and the service provided. The business of the firm has increased with the increase in the number of patients and the employees, which have in diligently resulted in the increase of expenses. The growth in the organisations financial framework is very good which shows a huge increase in the revenues, with the increase in the number of patients and also the other services.
There are both the non financial and financial aspects like the income of the individuals, the standard of living, the disease type and any other cost relating to the service provided to the patient. The financial considerations can be summarised in single word “affordability”. The organisational factor present is the availability of the equipment which may be required for the diagnosis of the patient’s treatment. In short, the main emphasis is through the profile of the customer. If the customer can afford then it will be easier for him to approach the health care. Moreover, the care should have a proper scenario where the customers are able to get the value for money. The treatment of disease should be done with ease and the availability of doctors are a must. It helps the business to flourish and attain a strong position.
There are several ways and methods that can be adopted by Care South Group Care home to handle the financial systems and processes in an adequate manner. The system will have greater efficiency if the data provided is correct and also if there is a good controlling system. It should be taken into consideration that any changes made must not create problems to the present patients. The institution should adopt new methods of data collection and storage facilities which may make the work easy. It should be seen that the Care South Group Care home is decreasing the finance costs and expenses. Also a good collaboration ad relation with the government bodies will help to implement new physical policies easily. In a nutshell the financial management system should be vigorous and thus assist the Care South Group Care home to achieve its desired goals and objectives.
Conclusion
Going by the overall discussion, it can be commented that the SouthCare group has function in an effective manner in the year 2013. The new facilities together with the services have aided the business in their operations. Further, it should focus on the services of domiciliary care that will fetch the business more revenue. This will aid in generation of more revenue and help the business to flourish. Overall, the balance sheet remains intact and a more defined financial management can lead to better result for the health care.
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