They say
“Our cycle is too long for any attribution to work.”
We say
That is the argument for doing this rather than against it. A long cycle is exactly what platform reporting cannot see, and a file reaching back eighteen months can.
For PointClickCare
The admission this quarter began as an enquiry last year.
Export billed residents, upload the enquiries that preceded them, and rank marketing on admissions rather than on tours booked.
No API key Nothing to install in PointClickCareNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a PointClickCare export of billed residents — the responsible party's phone or email, the billed revenue and the date — and matches it against the enquiries and tours that preceded the admission, often by a year or more. It answers which marketing produced residents rather than which produced enquiries, which in senior living are separated by the longest consideration cycle in this catalogue. Admissions with no traceable enquiry are reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against PointClickCare's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
A family enquires in March, tours in June, decides nothing, and moves a parent in the following February. Every reporting window you have is shorter than that.
PointClickCare sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Responsible party phone or email
On the resident's record. This is almost always an adult child rather than the resident, and they are the person who made the enquiry — which is why the responsible party is the right contact and the resident is not.
- Needed
Billed revenue
What the stay billed, monthly or in total. Private pay and insured stays behave differently enough that the distinction is worth keeping if the export carries it.
- Needed
Admission or billing date
When the resident moved in, or when the period was billed. Admission date ties most closely to the decision the marketing produced.
- Optional
Care level or payer
Independent, assisted, memory care, skilled. Channels perform very differently across them, and the revenue per resident differs by multiples.
Step by step
Getting the file out of PointClickCare.
Written for somebody with PointClickCare open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export billed residents
One row per resident with a responsible party contact detail, the billed amount and a date. Look for the billing or census export rather than a particular report name.
-
Use the responsible party's contact detail
This is the step most likely to be got wrong. The enquiry came from an adult child; matching on the resident's own details will match almost nothing and look like the marketing failed.
-
Export every enquiry source
Referral agencies, paid search, the website forms, call tracking, and the professional referrals from hospitals and physicians. Each is a source and each belongs in the file.
-
Go back at least eighteen months
This is the longest cycle in the catalogue. A file covering a quarter will attribute the emergency placements and miss every planned one, which inverts the answer.
-
Upload both
The match runs on the phone and the email of the responsible party, normalised on both sides.
What comes back
The page PointClickCare cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Senior Living page — not from a PointClickCare account.
Traced to a channel$873,50059% of $1,480,000
Sales matched8 of 13high confidence only
Average sale$118,000per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 3 | $385,000 | |
| Referral agencies | 3 | $311,000 | |
| Meta Ads | 1 | $103,500 | |
| Community events | 1 | $74,000 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 5 | $606,500 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the admission and the ad share a row.
The enquiry and the decision are a year apart, and nothing reports on that
Senior living is bought slowly and reluctantly. A family starts looking when a parent has a fall, tours several communities, decides not to decide, and returns months later when circumstances force it.
Every advertising platform reports on a window measured in days or weeks. The campaign that produced the original enquiry has long since been judged, optimised and frequently switched off by the time the family moves in.
Matching an admission back to the enquiry that started it — however long ago — is the only way to see which marketing works. In this category the correction is not a refinement, it routinely reverses the ranking.
Referral agencies are the largest line and the least examined
Placement and referral agencies charge a substantial fee per move-in, often a month's revenue or more, and they report their own performance. For many operators they are the single biggest acquisition cost.
Because the fee is contingent on a move-in, it feels self-evidently worth it. What it is rarely compared against is the cost per admission of the operator's own channels over the same long window — which is precisely the comparison a short reporting window makes impossible.
Putting agency referrals and owned channels on one axis, measured in admissions and billed revenue, is usually the most financially significant thing this report does for a senior living operator.
Care level decides what an admission is worth
Independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing differ by multiples in monthly revenue and in length of stay. An admission is not a unit of anything consistent.
A channel producing many independent living enquiries and a channel producing a few memory care placements can look identical on a lead count and differ enormously in revenue.
Where the export carries care level, the report splits on it, and that split usually explains why an apparently expensive channel was the profitable one.
Professional referrals are marketing and are not counted as such
Hospital discharge planners, physicians and rehabilitation units send a steady flow of admissions, and the relationship is maintained by staff whose time is a real cost.
Because no invoice arrives for it, it sits outside the marketing report entirely, and the paid channels are judged against a baseline that quietly excludes the largest source of residents.
Recording professional referrals as a source puts them in the same report as everything else. Operators who do this are usually surprised by the share, and it changes where the next person is hired rather than where the next pound is spent.
Fair questions
“PointClickCare already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Most admissions come through referral agencies anyway.”
We say
Then knowing what they cost per admission against your own channels is the most valuable number in the business, and nobody currently has it.
They say
“We cannot share resident information.”
We say
You are not asked to. A responsible party's contact detail, an amount and a date — no clinical record, no assessment, no care plan.
No. It reads a file you exported; no credential to your system is held.
Billed residents with a responsible party contact detail, the billed revenue and a date.
The responsible party's, almost always an adult child. They made the enquiry; the resident did not, and matching on the resident matches nothing.
Eighteen months at least. This is the longest consideration cycle in the catalogue and a short file will invert the answer.
Yes, on cost per admission and billed revenue. For most operators that is the comparison worth the whole exercise.
Yes, where the export carries it. Revenue per admission differs by multiples across levels, so the split usually changes the ranking.
If you record them as a source. Left out, they land in Direct / Unknown and make your paid channels look far worse than they are.
They are reported separately from first admissions, so a returning resident does not re-credit the original enquiry.
Yes, and it is worth keeping if the export distinguishes them. They behave differently in length of stay and in revenue.
Direct / Unknown, reported as unmatched rather than distributed across the channels.
A responsible party's contact detail, an amount and a date, plus a care level if you include one. No clinical records, no assessments, no care plans, no diagnoses. Encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated to your workspace, deleted with the import.
Admissions and billed revenue by source and by care level, the share matched, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run PointClickCare.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Senior LivingWhich channels produced move-ins, and what did they earn?
- Memory CareWhich campaigns produced memory care move-ins?
- Independent LivingWhich channels produced signed independent living leases?
- Life Plan CommunitiesWhich channels produced entrance-fee contracts?
- Senior Placement AgenciesWhich campaigns produced placements you actually got paid for?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Either file WelcomeHome Senior living operators Either file What to export Closed-sales file WellSky Personal Care Private-pay home care agencies Closed-sales file What to export Either file AxisCare Home care agencies Either file What to export
All 60 systems 
PointClickCare and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in PointClickCare, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.