Accounting Module Revamp in 3 Weeks for a Home Healthcare Delivery SaaS

About Our Client

The Client is an American provider of home healthcare software. Its web SaaS solution combines EMR and ERP functionality, catering to home healthcare agencies' medical and administrative needs.

Urgent Need for Accounting Module Revamp

The accounting module of the Client’s SaaS app had numerous bugs and low-quality business logic, resulting in inaccurate financial records and inconsistent reports. To enhance the app’s accounting logic and improve user experience, the Client was searching for a dependable IT partner to conduct an expert software audit within three weeks.

Accounting Module Audit Revealed Multiple Critical Flaws

The Client chose ScienceSoft due to our 16 years of experience developing custom accounting software and an impressive portfolio of 1,900+ web application projects. For the audit, we formed a team of two business analysts, one of whom also had QA competencies, and one solution architect.

Firstly, the team analyzed the functionality of the faulty accounting module. The module enabled home healthcare agencies to manage their accounting tasks, generate invoices, and track expenses and insurance claim payments. In addition, the app featured COA (chart of accounts) and bank account management, bank transaction recording, reconciliation, and financial report generation. Patients could also use the app to track and manage their accounts and transactions, pay for medical services, and monitor other expenses, such as app subscriptions.

Next, ScienceSoft collected and analyzed software documentation, the SaaS source code, and database files. We set up and tested a local development infrastructure, reviewed the code for compliance and critical bugs, and determined high-risk areas of the module to prioritize during the audit. To validate the accuracy of financial calculations, we tested mathematical formulas, checked account balances, and verified double-entry bookkeeping in a selected sample of transactions. Finally, we reviewed financial statements for adherence to US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and checked financial reports and other module outputs for completeness, accuracy, and regulatory compliance.

ScienceSoft’s specialists spotted the following issues in the accounting module:

• The module did not support double-entry bookkeeping, which often resulted in mismatched debits and credits.
• The code's selective inclusion of transactions in calculations caused calculation errors within the reports and inconsistent amounts between reports.
• The module only supported operations directly related to bank accounts, restricting the scope of operations registered in the system.
• The COA was not user-friendly and lacked categorization, so all expenses (payroll, contract labor, medical supplies, etc.) were mixed together.
• The reconciliation logic was inadequate for accounting purposes as it allowed for non-zero differences and used external records instead of reconciled internal ones, which led to inaccurate reports. Reconciled records could also be altered post factum, saved while blank, or duplicated, which rendered them invalid.

Our team categorized the issues by severity and suggested the following solutions:

• Adopt double-entry bookkeeping to record transactions accurately.
• Establish a general ledger to summarize transactions and generate financial reports (income statements, balance sheets, etc.).
• Use an accounting journal to categorize transactions, ensure that debits and credits are balanced, and prepare accurate financial statements.
• Create appropriate sub-accounts or categories (e.g., cash account, savings account) for each account in the COA.
• Switch from the cash accounting method to the accrual accounting method (recording financial transactions based on their issuance rather than cash exchange) in line with GAAP.
• Associate internal records with ledger accounts instead of bank accounts for potential reuse in accrual accounting.
• Exclude uncategorized transactions from the reports to prevent inaccuracies in account balances and financial statements. Review and categorize all transactions before including them in the reports.
• Revise the COA for appropriate account classifications, consistency in account naming conventions, and inclusion of relevant accounting policies and guidelines following GAAP.
• Enable draft saving for unfinished reconciliations to prevent non-zero differences. Implement server verification to avoid report duplication upon saving. Adjust the UI to disallow saving blank reports and reversing or deleting reconciled accounts.
• Update the reporting logic by optimizing the codebase and algorithms responsible for accounting report generation.

Accounting Module Defects Identified and Ready to Be Fixed

In only three weeks, the Client received a comprehensive audit of the accounting module in its SaaS app for home healthcare delivery. The audit report detailed the flaws found in the module’s accounting logic. ScienceSoft’s practical recommendations for defect fixing allowed the Client’s in-house team to promptly begin error remediation, improving the app’s quality.

Technologies and Tools

JavaScript, HTML, CSS3, Node.js, ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Excel, Confluence.