What Is Accrual Accounting? Why It Matters for Telecom and IT Expenses
Your finance team just closed the books on Q1, showing a 15% reduction in telecom spend. It looks like a major win. But in reality, two of your largest carrier invoices, totaling over $250,000 for services used in March, haven’t arrived yet.
Your company’s financial statements are telling a story that isn’t true. This is the danger of relying on cash-based accounting for large, recurring expense categories like telecom and IT.
For finance leaders, this timing mismatch creates a significant blind spot, leading to inaccurate financial reporting and flawed decision-making.
Accrual accounting is the principle that corrects this distortion, ensuring that revenue and expenses are recognized when they are earned and incurred, not just when cash changes hands.
This guide explains why accrual accounting is a non-negotiable for managing complex telecom expenses and how automation is the key to achieving true financial accuracy.
What Is Accrual Accounting?
Accrual accounting is a method that records revenues and expenses when they are earned or incurred, regardless of when the payment is actually received or sent.
This approach provides a more accurate picture of a company’s financial health by matching revenues to the expenses that generated them in the same accounting period.
In contrast, cash accounting only records transactions when money physically moves. While simpler, it can create a misleading view of profitability, especially for businesses with recurring or subscription-based costs.
| Feature | Accrual Accounting (GAAP Compliant) | Cash Accounting |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Recognition | When earned (service delivered) | When cash is received |
| Expense Recognition | When incurred (service used) | When cash is paid |
| Financial Picture | Provides a long-term, accurate view | Provides a short-term, cash-flow snapshot |
| Complexity | More complex, requires tracking receivables/payables | Simpler, tracks cash movements only |
Why Accrual Accounting Is Essential for Telecom Expenses
Cash-based accounting completely breaks down when applied to the complexities of enterprise telecom and IT spend. The nature of these services creates significant timing mismatches that only accrual accounting can properly address.
- Delayed Billing Cycles: Telecom invoices often arrive 30-60 days after the service period has ended. A March service bill might not be paid until May, causing Q1 expenses to be artificially low and Q2 expenses to be artificially high under a cash-based system.
- Multi-Month Invoices and Adjustments: Carriers frequently issue invoices that cover multiple service periods or include retroactive credits and adjustments. Accrual accounting correctly allocates these costs to the specific periods in which they were incurred.
- Disputes and Credits: When you dispute a charge, the credit may not appear for several billing cycles. Accrual accounting allows you to recognize the disputed amount as a potential asset, providing a more accurate financial position.
Real-World Telecom Accrual Issues Enterprises Face
Without a proper accrual process for telecom spend, finance teams encounter predictable and costly problems.
1. Inaccurate Monthly Financials
A large, delayed invoice can make one month look unprofitable and the next unusually profitable, leading to poor resource allocation and flawed performance analysis.
2. Reconciliation Nightmares
Manually tracking which invoices correspond to which service periods across multiple carriers and thousands of assets is nearly impossible. This leads to reconciliation gaps and an inability to close the books accurately.
3. Audit Exposure and GAAP Non-Compliance
For publicly traded companies and many large private enterprises, GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) compliance is mandatory. Cash-based accounting for a material expense like telecom does not comply with GAAP, creating significant audit risk.
How Automation Improves Accrual Accuracy
Manually creating journal entries to accrue for telecom expenses is a time-consuming, error-prone process that is not scalable. Automation is the only viable solution to manage this complexity effectively.
A telecom expense management platform automates the accrual process by:
- Normalizing Invoice Data: Ingesting and standardizing invoice data from multiple carriers into a single, consistent format.
- Aligning Service and Accounting Periods: Automatically mapping costs from each invoice to the correct service period, regardless of when the invoice was received or paid.
- Automating Journal Entries: Generating accrual-ready reports that can be directly imported into your ERP system, eliminating manual data entry and reducing the risk of human error.
How RadiusPoint Supports Accrual Accounting
RadiusPoint is a telecom expense management platform built to provide finance-grade visibility into your telecom and IT spend. It is designed to solve the specific accrual challenges that finance teams face.
- Automated Accrual-Ready Reporting: ExpenseLogic automatically generates reports that show incurred expenses for a given period, even if the invoices haven’t been received yet. This allows your team to make accurate accrual entries with just a few clicks.
- Accurate Cost Allocation: The platform automates the allocation of telecom costs to the correct departments and cost centers, providing granular visibility into your spending.
- Finance-Grade Visibility: With ExpenseLogic, you get a single source of truth for all your telecom spend, enabling you to close the books faster, reduce audit risk, and make more informed financial decisions.
Your organization has a choice: continue to operate with the financial blind spots created by manual processes and cash-based accounting, or implement a system that provides true financial accuracy. Stop guessing what you spent last month and start knowing.
Discover how a telecom expense management platform can automate your accrual process and provide the financial clarity your business needs.
What Is DMS in Healthcare? Managing Devices, Mobility, and Costs at Scale
A nurse grabs a shared tablet to check patient vitals. The device has not been updated in months. No one knows who provisioned it. The data plan bills to a corporate account that finance has not reconciled in two quarters. Three identical devices sit unused in storage, still charging $85 per line every month.
This is the reality for most health systems. Device Management Systems (DMS) have moved from optional IT tools to strategic infrastructure. Without centralized visibility, organizations lose devices, breach HIPAA compliance, and leak budget on ghost lines and misaligned plans.
For 14 consecutive years, healthcare has had the highest data breach costs of any industry, averaging $7.42 million per incident in 2025. With a 279-day average to identify and contain a breach, the financial and operational impact is staggering.
This guide is for the healthcare operations leaders who can no longer afford to ignore this reality. We will dissect what a DMS in healthcare truly means, why it is a non-negotiable for modern healthcare, and how it forms the bedrock of a comprehensive expense management strategy.
We will also show how a platform like ExpenseLogic provides the framework for effective telecom and mobility expense management for healthcare.
What Does DMS Mean in Healthcare?
In healthcare, a Device Management System (DMS) is an integrated platform that tracks, secures, and optimizes the entire lifecycle of every mobile device and endpoint.
This is a significant evolution from basic Mobile Device Management (MDM), which is primarily focused on security policies.
| Capability | Basic MDM | Enterprise Healthcare DMS |
|---|---|---|
| Security Policy Enforcement | Yes | Yes |
| Telecom Expense Visibility | No | Yes |
| Invoice Reconciliation | No | Yes |
| Cost Allocation by Department | No | Yes |
| Usage Optimization | No | Yes |
| Lifecycle Tracking | Limited | Yes |
| HIPAA Audit Reporting | Partial | Yes |
Why DMS Is Critical for Healthcare Organizations
The modern healthcare landscape is a minefield of operational, financial, and compliance risks. A robust DMS is the first line of defense.
The Device Sprawl Reality: Healthcare mobility has exploded beyond corporate smartphones.
Clinical environments now manage:
- Clinical communication devices
- Point-of-care tablets
- Wearable monitors
- IoMT endpoints (connected infusion pumps)
- Home health kits
- Administrative mobility devices
Each category carries distinct security profiles, carrier relationships, and cost structures. Without centralized DMS oversight, assets fragment into departmental silos with invisible spend.
HIPAA and Compliance Considerations: The HIPAA Security Rule mandates administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for ePHI. A 2024 HHS report identified a 239% increase in hacking-related breaches between 2018 and 2023. Lost or stolen devices represent 65% of large-scale incidents.
Cost Leakage from Unmanaged Devices: Uncontrolled mobility spend follows predictable patterns:
- Ghost Devices: Active lines billing monthly for hardware sitting in storage.
- Plan Misalignment: Premium unlimited plans assigned to low-usage devices.
- Departmental Opacity: Finance receives consolidated carrier invoices with no ability to allocate costs to cost centers.
Organizations implementing comprehensive DMS with integrated telecom expense management report average savings of $1.4 million annually versus $860,000 for organizations with fragmented device policies.
Core Components of an Effective Healthcare DMS
An effective DMS for healthcare is built on three pillars that provide a unified view of the mobile environment.
- Device Inventory and Visibility: Centralized inventory eliminates Excel spreadsheets and manual sign-out sheets. Effective DMS capabilities include real-time asset tracking, check-in/check-out workflows, and automated discovery of new devices.
- Usage and Cost Monitoring: Carrier invoices rarely reveal whether data plans match actual consumption. DMS with integrated TEM analyzes usage against plan allowances, roaming charges, and overage patterns.
- Lifecycle Management: Streamlined deployment reduces IT burden through pre-configuration, staging workflows, and automated enrollment. Proper retirement prevents data breaches and ongoing billing.
How DMS Connects to Expense Management
Device visibility without financial integration is incomplete. A DMS might show a tablet accessed clinical systems 847 times. Without expense management, you cannot determine if the $120 monthly plan matches consumption or if billing goes to the correct cost center.
Healthcare DMS integrated with TEM enables three-way reconciliation. Inventory shows what devices you should pay for. MDM shows what is actively managed. Carrier invoices show what you are actually billed. Discrepancies signal breakdowns.
How RadiusPoint Supports DMS in Healthcare
RadiusPoint for Healthcare extends device management with integrated telecom expense management for health systems.
- Centralized Visibility: Consolidates inventory, carrier billing, and usage analytics. Multi-carrier integration normalizes invoices from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and regional carriers.
- Cost Optimization: Analyzes 12+ months of usage to identify devices on unlimited plans consuming under 2GB and zero-usage lines for suspension. Healthcare implementations recover 8-15% of mobility spend in year one through ghost device elimination.
- Audit-Ready Reporting: Generates HIPAA-compliant reports: device access logs, encryption verification, security patch alerts, and audit trails.
Healthcare organizations managing hundreds or thousands of devices face a choice. Continue absorbing six-figure losses from ghost devices and compliance risk. Or implement DMS as strategic infrastructure delivering efficiency and cost recovery.
Ready to eliminate device chaos?
Explore RadiusPoint for healthcare and discover how integrated device, telecom, and mobility expense management for healthcare recovers budget and ensures compliance.