Care Direct - Leigh Lawry Accountancy

Care Direct

The Challenge

To produce accurate costings for the provision of health care services, which enable a profit to be made, but is competitive enough to win a tender for a six-year contract from a local authority.

Background

The company were about to compete for a 6-year local authority care contract and wanted to ensure the service provision costings they had calculated were accurate. If successful, the contract would effectively double the size of the company.

There were no systems in place to produce standard costing information, so all costs had to be developed from other information which existed (both financial and non-financial). The deadline for completing the costing information and submitting the bid was two days.

Approach

  • Review the costing template to be completed for the local authority
  • Discuss previous approach to costing work
  • Identify and review other information available to support cost creation
  • Propose a formal approach for costing of services for tenders
  • Produce standard templates and cost structures

Outcome

  • Maximum and minimum value tender quotations produced
  • Identified errors in original costings (stating costs 3% lower than actual)
  • Utilised information which had not previously been considered
  • Formal templates with supporting calculations created
  • Standard format could be used for future tenders

Benefit

  • Potentially saved £225,000 due to errors in original costings
  • Identified challenges the business would face from rapid growth
  • Up skilled management in standard costing techniques
  • More effective use of existing information to drive company performance