The KPIs You Need to Run a Profitable Assisted Living Business
Jul 31, 2025
Starting and running an assisted living business can feel overwhelming if you don’t know which numbers you should be tracking to know if you're running a profitable business.
Good news! This guide breaks down the key performance indicators (KPIs) every assisted living owner needs to track to keep their business thriving and profitable.
Let’s dive in! ๐
Check out this video, too:
Why Tracking KPIs Matters
KPIs are simple numbers that tell you how your business is doing..
You can create your own KPIs by simplying asking yourself:
โ
Are my beds filled?
โ
Are my payments coming in on time?
โ
Is my staffing enough to deliver great care?
Creating and tracking KPIs that help you answer these questions help you know where you stand and help you make smart decisions.
Step 1: Pick the Right Tools to Track Your KPIs
Before tracking your numbers, you need the right tools to stay organized:
๐ ๏ธ Project Management Software — Asana, Trello, Monday.com, or Notion help you keep tasks and progress on track.
๐งฎ Spreadsheets — Excel or Google Sheets are perfect for tracking and analyzing your KPIs.
๐ CRM (Customer Relationship Management) — Manage potential residents and communication efficiently.
๐ป EHR (Electronic Health Records) — Track care, medications, and finances in one place.
Choose tools that fit your style and stick with them!
Step 2: Track Your Essential KPIs (here are 5 to get you started)
1. Occupancy Rate
๐ How many of your licensed beds are filled?
Example: 8 beds filled out of 10 = 80% occupancy
Why? More occupied beds = more income!
2. Payments
๐ฐ Track all payments — on time, late, or missed.
Why? No payments = no cash flow. If you're seeing a lot of late/missed payments, create a system to follow up on late payments.
3. Staffing
๐ฉโ๏ธ Keep an eye on staff levels, quality, and attendance.
Why? Proper staffing keeps residents safe and your facility compliant.
4. Missed Shifts
โฐ Track how often staff miss scheduled shifts.
Why? Missed shifts disrupt care and could hurt your reputation, tracking this also gives you a leg to stand on if you need to let a member of your staff go.
5. Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)
๐ Bathing, dressing, feeding, medication management — carefully track which actions happen and how frequently they happen.
Why? It shows the level of care you provide and helps justify your rates, plus it can help you increase Medicaid rates if you work with a Medicaid population.
Step 3: Use Your KPIs to Make Smart Decisions
When you regularly track KPIs, you’ll:
๐ Spot trends before they become problems
๐ก Know when to adjust pricing or marketing
โ๏ธ Improve staff scheduling and training
๐ Grow your business sustainably and profitably
Next Steps: Take Control of Your Assisted Living Business Today!
๐ Ready to get serious about your business KPIs?
โ
Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist and start tracking your numbers.
โ
Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
โ
Step 3: Use this guide to keep your business profitable and sustainable!
Got questions? Drop a comment below — I’m here to help! โฌ๏ธ
Show full transcript ๐
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:47
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months in today's video we're going to be getting into the key performance indicators or the kpis that you need to run a profitable Assisted Living business I also want to remind you to go grab the free underwriting calculator at the Assisted Living investing. net big blue in the top right corner go grab that free resource to help you make some progress and determine if this is going
00:00:23 - 00:01:28
to be profitable for you or not welcome to Assisted Living investing hey friend welcome back to the channel again we are talking today about the key performance indicators or the kpis that you need to be aware of so you can run a profitable Assisted Living business there's a lot that goes into running this business and a key performance indicator really at its core is something that is their very simple easy to digest numbers that are going to let you see the health of the business and understand if you're profitable or not
00:01:01 - 00:01:53
or which leverage you should be pulling so that you can create more profit in your business create more sustainability in the business to help you be successful okay so that's what a key performance indicator or a kpi is and and why you need it for your business now let's talk about some of the tools you can use as you are trying to figure out which kpis you want to be creating and and how you're going to be doing this there's a few tools number one is project management software things like
00:01:26 - 00:02:23
Asana or Trello or monday.com those types of of tools are really good at helping you determine how to kind of keep on top of everything that you're trying to do and run a successful business so I really encourage you to figure out one of those don't use all of them but go play around with them watch some YouTube videos see which ones work for you and then start using it I personally use notion is it's it's kind of a a Green Landscape of things that you can do it's very customizable and
00:01:56 - 00:02:45
you can build it but if you're not familiar with how to do a lot of that stuff relational database and stuff like that might not be for you I love it it works really well for how I manage all of my stuff and then I can do reporting off of things in there as well but find a project management software start using that it's going to help you be successful and and see exactly what's going on in the business another one is Excel Excel is great because it lets you see numbers and lets you get a feel for
00:02:21 - 00:03:18
what those numbers are going to look like how to use those numbers and Excel is very readily available if you can't use Excel use Google Sheets or use a free alternative of of something to really allow you to put things in a spreadsheet really good at doing that another one is a CRM so a CRM is a customer relationship management database I think it sounds for customer relationship management what it does is allows you to look at individuals and capture their information have them keep that information if you have email
00:02:49 - 00:03:41
campaigns or something like that that you're doing allows you to really kind of stay on top of a lot of that uh so that you can be sending out emails on a consistent basis so that you can remember contact information and you can make some good progress with them so you want to have some kind of a database of potential residents that that you could be bringing in or people that you should be networking with the more that you are using this type of a tool the better off you're going to be so crm's great tool
00:03:15 - 00:04:02
there's free versions you can create your own there's all kinds of things you could pay for it but CRM there's a lot of good information on there that it's worth spending time figuring out how to use that and leverage that tool as you're trying to move forward and fill the beds in your assisted living facility and then the other one that I want you to be aware of is ehrs and if you want to learn more about ehrs then type that down below would love to see who is interested in learning about that
00:03:38 - 00:04:32
but ehrs are electronic Healthcare records They are a way for you to track everything with your business they can act as a CRM sometimes they can sometimes track your finances um they they can be really good at that you're tracking resident cares they're interfacing with your Pharmacy all the things that you need to do to operate a business can really be done inside of an eh there's only a few things that can't be and so it's a really good tool for you to have and something I highly
00:04:05 - 00:04:57
recommend that you really look into we personally use ECP and Alice Alis in our facilities but there's a ton of other ones out there as well and I'm building relationships with other companies all the time and there's a lot of great people out there that are building this for assisted living and it's something you want to have this type of a tool for sure now once you have figured out which tools you want to have and spend a little bit of time figuring out what's going to work for you the next thing you
00:04:31 - 00:05:27
need to do is start using that tool and you need to start tracking certain things so I have a few metrics for you that I really want you to dive into and and start tracking and getting a feel for with the understanding that you don't need to do all of these but tracking them in in some capacity is going to allow you to see which levers and things you need to pull what you need to change in your business to allow you to be profitable and to increase your profit reduce your expenses maximize um income coming in all of
00:04:59 - 00:05:52
those things it's going to allow you to see that let's dive into some of these different kpis that are going to allow you to be successful the first kpi that I want you to be aware of is occupancy right this one is pretty self-explanatory you have 10 beds it's your maximum capacity you have eight residents in there your occupancy rate is 80% 8 8 divided by 10 that's it that's your occupancy rate you could also do vacancy rate which is just the inverse of that you have two beds open
00:05:25 - 00:06:17
you're you have 10 beds available 10 beds is what you're license for two beds ail available that's going to be 20% as your vacancy rate so pick one of those and and choose one of them but that's a really big one if you understand what your occupancy rate is and you can see that over time maybe you're going to see some seasonality maybe you're going to see pockets and and be like oh we were we were really profitable during this period of time that's CU we were at 90 100% occupancy whereas on on the flip
00:05:52 - 00:06:43
side we were really low here we're like 50% occupied and that's really hurting us from a from a business standpoint it also is a very easy way to see see how many beds you have available so occupancy rate makes a ton of sense but it's the most basic and probably the best metric for you to be looking at next one is going to be payments so this one could be the amount of payments could be timely payments there's a lot of things around payments that that I want you to be aware of but payments are
00:06:17 - 00:07:06
the lifeblood of your facility of the business that you have and if you're going to be successful you need to have that money coming in so you need to be tracking that is money coming in which payments are missing and and how what's our process for following up on it and if there are outstanding payments following up with them payments is key so you want to make sure that you are following that one have that be a kpi and and have some variation of either timely payments or paid in full amounts
00:06:42 - 00:07:31
those types of things you really want to hone in on that so that you can make sure the money is coming into your business next one is going to be Staffing and this can be how many staff you have it could be your Staffing levels over time where you at there are you meeting the resident caregiver ratio you need to meet in your state what's that looking like are are you compliant with that one something around Staffing to make sure you have the appropriate amount of staff that you're paying them
00:07:06 - 00:08:01
the appropriate amount and that they're showing up on time and they're showing up for their shifts is really good you can use software like time tracking software and things like that for this you can also use HR payroll systems for this and we have a link for Gusto down below for payroll so make sure you go grab that but getting a good feel and understanding exactly how things work from a staffing perspective is going to benefit you a ton there's a lot that goes into that and so you really want to
00:07:33 - 00:08:28
have an understanding of the different metrics that you can be pulling and understanding when it comes to Staffing missed shifts and this one is associated to Staffing but having some kind of a a tool that allows for people to clock in and clock out is going to make sure number one you're paying them the appropriate amount but number two if they are late or if they are missing shifts you need to know that cuz number one you don't want staff that are doing that but number two it it's going to
00:08:00 - 00:08:52
allow you to see you know do I need to replace somebody is there consistent Behavior What's Happening Here do we still have the coverage that we need um in the facility who is covering those shifts you want to see that information so a big one for you to be looking at there around Staffing is missed shifts and what that's going to look like for you another one is adl's track and you're going to do this in your EHR system so this is going to be you're going to have care plans for your
00:08:26 - 00:09:14
residents you're going to say we need to bathe them we need to D them we need to help them brush their teeth we need to feed them and we need to do this is the level of care you know this one is a prompting this one is where we're helping them out and this one we're doing everything for them um so you're going to have those levels of care you're going to have the different things you need to do on a daily basis and then you're going to track it did it get done or did it not get done was
00:08:50 - 00:09:42
medication passed or not um was everything tracked you're going to do all of this inside of your EHR system and that's going to allow you to see number one are we doing the work that we're saying we're doing uh is going to allow you to go back and if you're doing Medicaid or even private pay track the amount of work that is being done and demonstrate to somebody hey we're doing more than we initially planned we need to bump the rates up that's how you're going to be able to do that ADLs is huge
00:09:16 - 00:10:10
in in allowing you to see work levels for your staff but also is there are there ways for you to increase your profitability because you're providing more care and you need to be compensated for the care that you're not providing huge one that you need to really get a hold on something that I personally honestly if I'm being honest didn't really have a grasp on this and for about a year and a half after we started operating our businesses took me about that long to figure that out huge thing
00:09:43 - 00:10:33
for you to have to do plus it's a compliance thing you're going to need to track this information for auditing purposes and surveys that come to you there are so many options out there I've just touched kind of on the surface I think we hit about five of of these different ones there's so many ways for you to slice and dice your business and analyze and see if it is profitable if you have a specific ADL that you like to track or that you're interested in learning more about type that down below
00:10:08 - 00:10:50
comment it so I can give you some extra guidance on that and if we see a lot of a need then we'll create a separate video to tell talk about specific kpis to help you run your Assisted Living business I hope this information was helpful to you again we were talking about kpis uh we were talking about what they are the tools that you can use to do it and the things that you should be tracking if you found this to be helpful make sure you like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get
00:10:30 - 00:11:18
notified every time we put out content like this to help you launch your Assisted Living business and if you need help doing that I'd love to see if I can help you go to the apply to The Mastermind program Alim mastermind.com simple application takes you a couple minutes if I can help you out I will send you all the details and you can decide if it's a good fit for you or not and also go grab the free underwriting calculator Assisted Living investing. net big blue BLX in the top right corner
00:10:54 - 00:11:39
it's going to get you a tool that's going to allow you to see if this is profitable for you or not and help you along the path of launching that Assisted Living business does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at assisted livv investing. net I'm here to help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months and remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep going keep making progress step by step by step and I
00:11:17 - 00:11:34
promise you if you do and you're consistent and persistent you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
Download Your FREE Calculator
Stay connected with news and updates!
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.