Centage

08/31/2026

What if a two-week close isn’t just “how healthcare finance works”?

Month after month, the same cycle repeats:
- Payroll accruals.
- Intercompany reconciliations.
- Variance research.
- Forecast updates.

Then suddenly it’s day 10, the board wants answers, and the finance team is already thinking about next month.

is complex. But complexity and inefficiency aren’t the same thing.
When the mechanics of close consume two weeks every month, the real cost isn’t just time.

It’s everything finance isn’t doing during those two weeks: analyzing contracts, modeling new sites, challenging assumptions and helping leadership make better decisions.

Maybe the question isn’t, “How do we close faster?”
Maybe it’s, “Why does our close still require this much manual work?”

We explored that question in our latest blog.
🔗 https://www.centage.com/blog/two-week-close-is-a-choice

Why healthcare close cycles run ten to fourteen days, and the four process choices a labor-heavy operator can change to close in five without a bigger team.

08/27/2026

A healthcare labor budget can be perfectly calculated and still be millions of dollars wrong.

The problem often isn’t the wage rate. It’s the mix.

Your budget may assume permanent RNs. Reality may be 40% permanent, 40% travel and 20% agency. Add different wage bands, benefits, payroll taxes and locations, and a seemingly small staffing assumption can create a massive gap.

And finance often doesn’t see the full impact until the variance hits.

That’s the bigger lesson for FP&A teams: workforce planning can’t stop at headcount.

The question isn’t just, “How many nurses do we need?”

It’s, “What will the workforce we actually use cost us?”

We break down the math and the hidden $10M wage-mix gap in our latest blog.

🔗 Read the full article: https://www.centage.com/blog/healthcare-workforce-planning-the-10m-wage-mix-gap-in-your-rn-budget

Your RN budget assumes 100% permanent. Your ledger says otherwise. How to model wage mix, fringe, and payroll tax at position level across 2-8 sites.

08/24/2026

A nursing budget can be perfectly built and still be wrong.

Not because the math was off.

Because the people changed.

- A few more senior RNs than expected.
- A shift in the mix between permanent, float, and agency staff.
- One location hiring differently than another.

None of those changes seem dramatic on their own.

But across multiple locations, over an entire year?

That gap can become hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars.
And often, finance doesn't see the full impact until payroll starts telling a very different story than the budget.

That's the problem we wanted to make easier to spot.

That's why we created the "Multi-Location Nurse Wage-Mix Worksheet" to help healthcare finance teams compare what they planned against what their staffing mix could actually cost.

One workbook. Five tabs. About 15 minutes.
Check the comments for the free worksheet.👇

08/13/2026

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned the wrong lesson. That being right is what earns you a seat at the table.

Mark Heinkel, CFO at Athos Commerce, learned something different. Someone once told him:
"You don't have to always be right, but you need to be convicted."

It changed how he shows up in every room. With his team. With buyers doing diligence on a nine figure deal. With himself.

If you've ever held back an idea because you weren't 100% sure, this one is for you.

🎙️ Watch the full episode. Link in the comments.

08/11/2026

He's not anti-AI. But he's not naive about it either.

Mark Heinkel, CFO at Athos Commerce, has a metaphor for AI in finance that stuck with us long after we stopped recording.

"AI is like a very sharp knife. And if you've ever worked with sharp knives, it's very easy to cut yourself sometimes even without knowing it."

Not fear. Not hype. Just honesty about a tool that can transform finance teams... or quietly wreck them if nobody's paying attention.

If you're trying to figure out how AI actually fits into finance, this episode is for you.

🎙️ Watch or listen to the full episode: https://www.centage.com/blog/the-cfo-review-podcast-ep-4

08/05/2026

📣 New episode alert!

In Episode 4 of The CFO Review, Mark Heinkel, CFO at Athos Commerce, sits down with our CEO, Paul Lynch, to talk about what it actually takes to go from a KPMG auditor to a CFO who led a company through COVID and out the other side with a $100M+ exit.

Mark doesn't sugarcoat any of it:
"You don't have to always be right, but you need to be convicted."

That one line changed how he shows up in every room — with private equity buyers, with his team, with himself.

This episode is for every finance professional who's ever felt like they had to have all the answers before they were ready to lead. Spoiler: you don't. You just have to be willing to be in the room when the hard decisions get made.

🎙️ Watch or listen to Episode 4 now: https://www.centage.com/blog/the-cfo-review-podcast-ep-4

07/23/2026

What if the biggest thing holding your finance team back... isn't your people?

It's your FP&A maturity.

Most finance teams don't wake up one day and decide to rely on disconnected spreadsheets, manual workarounds, and reactive planning. It happens gradually. Then one day, budget season takes weeks, reporting becomes a fire drill, and strategic conversations start happening without finance in the room.

The best finance leaders don't just ask, "How do we work harder?" They ask, "Have we outgrown the way we work?"

That's exactly why we built our free FP&A Maturity Assessment.

In just a few minutes, you'll discover:
✅ Where your FP&A function stands today
✅ What's preventing your team from moving faster
✅ The next steps to become a more strategic finance organization

Because the future of FP&A isn't about doing more work.
It's about building the systems that let your team focus on the work that actually matters.

Take the free assessment: https://www.centage.com/blog/fpa-maturity-assessment

Evaluate your organization's Financial Planning & Analysis capabilities across 6 critical dimensions.

07/22/2026

You're paying for market research that your own data already told you weeks ago.

Peter Pixton (CFO, Plus One Robotics) makes a sharp point in this clip about the insight most companies overlook — the data they already own.

"I can look at my new starts and my install base and tell in two minutes exactly what's happening in this market — long before the Gartner report comes out."

Finance teams sit on proprietary signals nobody else has. New logos, churn, install base trends — that's real-time market feedback, straight from the source.

The external report just confirms what your numbers already knew. Cheaper, faster, and you saw it first.

Stop waiting for validation. The answer is in your own data.

🎧 Full episode of The CFO Review, Episode 3 — a conversation you won't want to miss: https://www.centage.com/blog/the-cfo-review-podcast-ep-3

07/20/2026

🎉 Big news: the Centage Partner Marketplace is officially live!

We built it because our customers kept asking the same question: "Who else has solved this problem?"

Now the answer is one click away.

No more asking around for the right ERP consultant, integration partner, or reseller. Just a single, searchable place to find the experts who've already helped teams like yours succeed.

From QuickBooks Online to NetSuite, Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, and Sage Intacct — the right expertise is already there, waiting to be found. 🙌

Read the press release: www.centage.com/news-and-events/centage-launches-new-partner-marketplace

Curious what it could mean for your team? Or your business?
👉 Explore the marketplace: https://www.centage.com/partner-program

07/16/2026

AI isn't the question anymore.

The real question is: Is your financial data actually ready for it?

Every finance leader wants faster insights, better forecasts, and less time spent buried in spreadsheets. AI can absolutely help—but only if it's built on clean, connected, trustworthy financial data. Otherwise, it just helps you make bad decisions faster.

Before investing in another AI tool, ask yourself:
• Can you trust the numbers across every report?
• Is your data connected or scattered across spreadsheets and disconnected systems?
• Are your forecasting processes built for AI—or working against it?

Those questions matter more than the AI platform you choose.
That's why we created a free Financial Data AI-Readiness Assessment.

It takes just a few minutes and helps finance teams understand where they stand—and what to prioritize before making their next AI investment.

Take the assessment and see where your team lands.👇