Are payment runs included in a monthly fee?
Usually only the preparation, not the payment itself. When a care home proposal quotes a monthly figure for "accounting" or "bookkeeping and management accounts", it almost always means the firm will get your supplier invoices into order and hand you a payment list, not that it will log into your bank and pay anyone. That distinction is easy to miss when two quotes look the same on price, and it is exactly where homes get caught: they assume payment is handled, the fee covers preparation, and nobody is clear who presses the button each week.
So the question to ask is not "is it included" but "which part is included". A good proposal from a care home accountant names the prepare step, the approve step and the release step separately and tells you who owns each. This guide sets out what a payment run actually is, what a monthly fee should and should not cover, and the short list of things to pin down in writing before you commit. Start with what the phrase really means.
What counts as a payment run?
A payment run is the regular cycle of settling what your home owes its suppliers. In a care home that means the agency staff invoices, the food and catering accounts, pharmacy, laundry, maintenance, utilities and the dozens of smaller bills that arrive through the month. The accountant collects them for the period, checks each one against the order and the delivery, codes it to the right account, and builds a dated list of what is due to whom. That prepared list is the output of the run. What happens next, approving it and sending the money, is a separate act, and in most homes it should stay on your side of the line.
The picture below is the one to hold in your head when you read a proposal. Three parties touch a payment run, and a monthly fee normally buys you only the first.
Keeping these three jobs apart is not bureaucracy, it is the control that protects the home. If the same party both prepares a payment and releases it, the separation that catches a duplicated invoice or a wrong bank detail disappears. That is why a well run service hands you a payment list to check and authorise rather than quietly paying on your behalf, and why the better proposals are proud to draw the line clearly rather than gloss over it.
What a proposal should spell out
A monthly proposal should name a deliverable and an owner for every step, not leave "payments" as a single word. The table below is the shape to look for: each task in the run, who prepares it and who approves it. If a quote you are holding does not make these distinctions, that is the gap to close before you sign, because the silence usually means the work is yours to do, not theirs.
What a monthly care home service should cover on payments, and who owns each step:
| Task in the payment cycle | Who prepares it | Who approves it |
|---|---|---|
| Collect and record supplier invoices | Accountant | Not applicable |
| Match invoice to order and delivery | Accountant | Home manager queries |
| Code each cost to the right account | Accountant | Not applicable |
| Prepare the dated payment list | Accountant | Director reviews |
| Approve the payment run | Not applicable | Director |
| Release the money from the bank | Not applicable | Director or signatory |
Read down the "who approves it" column and you can see where the fee stops and your job starts. An accountant can prepare everything up to the payment list and set up the controls around it, but the approval and the release sit with you unless you deliberately hand that authority over, which almost no home should. The aim is a run where the preparation is off your desk and the decision stays firmly on it.
What is included and what costs extra
The monthly fee covers the routine run, but several jobs around it are commonly charged separately, and that is fair as long as it is stated. New supplier set-up, chasing a disputed invoice, an urgent same-day payment outside the normal cycle, or rebuilding a backlog of unrecorded bills are all real work that a flat monthly figure does not usually stretch to. The problem is never that these cost extra, it is finding out they do halfway through a crisis. The table below separates what belongs in a standard monthly run from what you should expect to see quoted on top.
Typically in the monthly run, and typically commissioned separately:
| Work | In the monthly fee? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Routine weekly or fortnightly payment run | Usually yes | The core recurring deliverable |
| Coding and matching normal supplier invoices | Usually yes | Part of preparing the run |
| Setting up a brand new supplier | Often yes, within reason | Light if occasional, flagged if frequent |
| Chasing or disputing a supplier invoice | Sometimes extra | Open-ended, depends on the case |
| Urgent same-day payment outside the cycle | Often extra | Breaks the batched routine |
| Clearing a backlog of unrecorded bills | Separate project | One-off clean-up, not routine |
None of this should be a surprise on an invoice. Ask for the boundary in writing: what counts as a normal run, how many new suppliers a month is "within reason", and what triggers an extra charge. The management accounts service we run for care homes sets this out at the start, because an owner who knows where the line sits never has the awkward conversation later.
Who has to approve the payments?
As director, you do, and that is not a preference, it follows from being responsible for the company's money. The records a limited company must keep include a record of all money it spends, and the Companies Act 2006 requires day-to-day entries of all sums of money received and expended by the company. You can delegate the preparation of those entries to an accountant, but you remain the person who answers for the spending, so the approval of a payment run belongs with you. You also have to keep those records for six years from the end of the financial year they relate to, which is a good reason to want a firm that prepares the run cleanly and leaves you a proper trail.
There is one point most firms will not raise because it only bites larger groups, and it is worth knowing where your home sits. A large company must publicly report how quickly it pays its suppliers. The duty applies where a business exceeds two of three thresholds, turnover above 36 million pounds, a balance sheet total above 18 million pounds and more than 250 employees, at its last two balance sheet dates, and a caught company has to publish twice a year within 30 days of each reporting period. A single care home almost never meets this, but a group running several homes can approach the headcount figure without realising, so if you are expanding it is worth checking before the duty applies rather than after you have missed a report.
How soon can they run your first cycle?
A clean handover usually takes the first month, and knowing the shape of it stops a new firm promising to pay suppliers on day two when the access is not even in place. You cannot run a payment cycle without the supplier list, the bank access arrangement and an agreed approval route, and setting those up properly is what the first few weeks are for. The timeline below is the typical sequence for a care home moving its finance work across, with the first prepared run landing in weeks three to four and the first full management accounts a month after that.
The slowest part is almost always your own records, not the accountant. If supplier statements are up to date, bank access is clear and someone can say who approves payments, the first run can be early in the schedule. If the bills are in a drawer and nobody is sure which account pays what, expect the clean-up to come first, and expect it to be quoted as the separate project it is. Either way, a firm that maps this out before you sign is one that has done it before.
Before you sign: pin down the scope
Our position, after running monthly finance for care homes across London, is plain: never accept "payments" as a single line in a proposal. Make it name who prepares the run, who approves it, who releases it and how often, and get the extras, new suppliers, disputes, urgent payments and any backlog clean-up, written down with a price or a clear "included". A monthly fee that reads this clearly is usually a firm that has run care home payments properly before; one that waves the question away is telling you the detail will arrive later, on an invoice. The checklist below is the one we hand owners weighing a proposal.
Payment run service scope template
Hold a monthly proposal against this before you sign. It is the order we use when we scope a care home finance service.
- Does the fee name a payment run at all, or only "bookkeeping" and "management accounts"?
- Who prepares the payment list, and how often, weekly, fortnightly or monthly?
- Who approves each run, and is it clearly you or a named signatory, not the accountant?
- Who releases the money, and does anyone other than the home ever hold payment authority?
- Are coding, matching and normal supplier set-up inside the fee?
- What is charged extra: disputes, urgent payments, new suppliers above a limit?
- Is clearing any existing backlog of unrecorded bills quoted as a separate project?
- Will the run leave you a clean record of every payment for your six-year company records?
Comparing monthly proposals is the kind of job that gets squeezed between a staffing rota and a care inspection, which is exactly when the payments question gets waved through. This is one part of what a specialist care home finance team takes off your desk: we read the proposals with you, make the payment scope explicit, and run the prepared payment cycle each month so the only thing left on your side is the approval you should keep. It sits inside the wider monthly finance function we run for homes once the admin outgrows the office. LOYALS is a King's Cross firm of accountants and business consultants working with care providers across London.