CTMS for Your Site’s Financial

Activities

Introduction:- Accurately tracking and managing financials is important for your site's successful conducting of a trial, as well as the site's general success in the long-run.

- There are 2 possible outcomes by not taking proper care of your site's financial activities, either you're losing unaccounted money or you're spending a lot of unnecessary time and effort to make sure you're not missing anything.

- Sites nowadays use electronic systems for financial management such as a CTMS (clinical trial management system).

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In the beginning, while your site is still young and new, you might start using traditional methods of financial management, such as paper-based documents.

However, once your site's study pipeline starts to grow it becomes more and more difficult to manage your financial activities with such methods.

For this reason, sites nowadays use electronic systems for financial management such as a CTMS

Problems of Using Traditional Methods of Financial Management

● When you're tracking and accounting your financial activities, you need to cover all bases: sponsors, vendors, investigators, and subjects.

● The most common traditional methods of managing your site's financial activities are:

- Paper-based spreadsheets (hard-copy); and

- Accounting Software;

● Paper-based documents and spreadsheets lack many advantages when compared to electronic forms of financial management.

- First of all, there's always the possibility of human error.

- Second, it's extremely easy to damage or lose such paper documents.

- And third, there's no possibility of multiple staff members accessing these documents at the same time.

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Problems of Using Traditional Methods of Financial Management

● Accounting software can be great for tracking your site's cash flow, but it lacks...

- integration

- merging with other site activities;

● As a consequence, the person responsible for financial activities will have to enter all this missing data manually, thus creating more risk for human error.

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Problems of Using Traditional Methods of Financial Management

● A CTMS can help clinical research sites in the following areas:

- Financial Management;

- Patient Recruitment;

- Subject Visits;

- Business Development;

A CTMS for Financial Management

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A CTMS is a clinical trial management system meant for managing all the data involved in conducting a clinical trial.

The biggest advantage of using a CTMS instead of traditional financial management methods is the merging of all trial data into one organizational structure.

A CTMS will provide the following financial perks for your clinical research site:

- Generating Invoices and Reconciliation

- Budgeting and Anticipated Revenue

- Managing Payments

- Generating Reports

A CTMS for Financial Management

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Benefits that you'll get by implementing a CTMS:

- Quick invoicing process;- Avoid missed/skipped invoices;- Avoid delays of payments;

- Receive everything that the sponsor owes you;

A CTMS will reconcile payments against invoices, in order to make sure that there aren't any missed patients or visits that your site still didn't get reimbursed for.

Sites should try to issue invoices to sponsors as soon as possible after every completed visit. Using a CTMS on your site will give you exactly this – a quick invoicing process.

Due to its automatized properties, data entered after a visit merges into the financials of the system. Based on information that's entered in the system previously, a CTMS will generate prompt and accurate invoices.

Generating Invoices and Reconciliation

- By using a CTMS, you'll have all the necessary tools that will help you plan and allocate your budget better. A CTMS will merge the financial data of all procedures, patients, visits, etc. in order to calculate your site's costs as accurately as possible.

- Once you have a clear budget, you will have the base to be able to forecast your anticipated revenue. A CTMS can give you daily, weekly, or monthly forecast reports, so that you always know the real situation of your expected income.

Benefits that you'll get by implementing a CTMS:

- Know all your costs;- Find out if you have any hidden costs;- Calculate your costs of doing business (overhead);- Sum up your true costs for the trial;- Be able to negotiate a better budget with sponsors by showing them real and supported numbers;- Consistency across budgets, procedures, and protocols;- Get revenue forecast reports;

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Budgeting and Anticipated Revenue

Your industry partners that you will have to make payments to are the investigators, vendors, and subjects. Paying these 3 groups promptly and accurately will strengthen your relationship with them.

A CTMS will gather all the information and make sure that you never miss a payment to vendors, investigators or patients (subjects).

Benefits that you'll get by implementing a CTMS:

- Accuracy and promptness;- Consistent payments;- Reduce calculation errors;- Avoid missing payments;- Decrease staff time and efforts

spent on calculating;

Managing Payments

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Generating Reports

With the help of a CTMS, you'll be able to generate any sort of financial (and other) report at any given time. These reports will always be current, in-depth, accurate, and in real-time. Doing this will give you full visibility into your site's financial activities.

A CTMS will generate your reports by gathering previously entered data, and merging it to form an accurate report. Every CTMS has the option of customizing reports

Types of reports that can be generated with a CTMS:

- Pending invoices;- Milestones that haven't been invoiced yet;- Pending investigator payments;- Pending reimbursements of subjects;- Separate study invoices and receipts; - and a lot more!

✓ A CTMS will help you generate invoices for quick and accurate reimbursement from your sponsor;

✓ Using a CTMS will help you with reconciliation of invoices against receivables, so that your sponsors don't skip a payment;

✓ Planning your budget for conducting a trial will be much easier with the help of a CTMS;

✓ A CTMS can also help you with anticipating and forecasting your site's revenue (income);

✓ Using a CTMS will help you with prompt payments to your investigators, vendors, and subjects, so that you always maintain a good relationship with them;

✓ And finally, with the help of a CTMS, you'll always be able to generate any type of financial report customized to your needs;

Checklist

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A CTMS for your clinical research site is nowadays not optional, but considered to be a crucial necessity. Without the help of a clinical trial management system, it's almost impossible to manage not only your financial, but also every other aspect of conducting a successful trial.

Your site will greatly benefit from the organizational features that a CTMS offers, and you'll notice an immediate improvement in the efficiency and efficacy of your working.

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Conclusion