A management system to see whether the home is making money.
A residential facility for self-sufficient elderly guests, 25 residents and private fees only. The owner asked for one specific thing: an honest picture of the present, meaning whether the facility makes money.
For a residential facility for self-sufficient elderly guests we are building a management system in Laravel 13 and Filament 5. The database itself prevents two open stays on the same bed, fees are agreed per stay and the first rate period is created automatically. The plan is split into ten batches, up to a dashboard built on frozen monthly closes, on an accrual and a cash basis. It's the same facility where we had already built the network.
Context
The facility houses 25 self-sufficient people in 15 rooms, single and double, for 25 beds. Fees are private only: no public contracts, no public reimbursement. The client already knew us, because we designed and installed the building's network.
The problem
With private fees only, the facility's result depends on a few variables: how many beds are occupied, at what rate, and what running the place costs. But with mid-month arrivals, double rooms, deposits and payments, knowing whether a month went well meant piecing together scattered data. And a closed month that can still be edited makes any comparison with the past unreliable too.
What we did
- 01
Rules in the database, not just the interface
Each bed can have only one open stay: a database constraint guarantees it, so not even a code bug or an import can assign the same bed to two guests.
- 02
Fees agreed per stay
The fee is agreed for each stay, with different rates for single and double rooms. When a stay opens, the first rate period is created automatically; later changes are added as new periods.
- 03
Ten batches, one at a time
Fee engine, monthly billing, contacts and deposits, payments and notes, costs, monthly closes, dashboard, roles and settings. Each batch goes live when it is complete, without waiting for the others.
- 04
Closed months that don't change
Each month closes with a frozen snapshot, read in two ways: on an accrual basis, what the month produced, and on a cash basis, what actually came in.
- 05
Releases without downtime
A MariaDB database and zero-downtime deploys through Laravel Forge. Access to the panel is limited to two company email domains.
How it went
The first two batches have been live since May 2026; the rest are in progress. The next step is a step-shaped break-even simulation: how many occupied beds, at which rates, the facility needs to stay in the black.
Tools
FAQ
Why not an off-the-shelf care home package?
Because many packages are built for publicly contracted facilities, with regional rates and reporting to the health authority. Here there are only private fees and one clear question from the owner: is the facility making money?
What do accrual and cash mean here?
On an accrual basis you look at what the month produced, even if it hasn't been collected yet; on a cash basis at what actually came in. You need both: the first tells you whether the facility makes money, the second whether it has the cash to pay its bills.
Why a step-shaped break-even?
Because costs don't grow smoothly: past a certain number of guests, staffing and expenses change and the break-even point moves. A step-shaped simulation makes those thresholds visible.