How LionStone Care Built an Accurate and Resilient Payroll Process With Celery

About LionStone Care

LionStone Care is a leading operator of Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing communities across the United States.
With more than 40 care communities, nearly 5000 employees, and thousands of weekly shifts. The finance and payroll teams work under constant pressure to keep every payroll cycle accurate, compliant, and on time.

$3M+ weekly payroll

100,000+ average weekly hours

4,500+ employees

The Challenge

Despite having a strong payroll team, LionStone’s leadership knew one thing: you cannot fix what you cannot see.

As LionStone expanded, maintaining consistent visibility across all separate payrolls became increasingly difficult. Even skilled facility teams could miss issues in the traditional manual process. Rate mismatches, missed termination dates, back-dated changes, and high overtime patterns were often buried deep inside the data and not always caught during the review window.

Before Celery, the Corporate Payroll Supervisor simply did not have the bandwidth to individually verify every facility’s review. Barbara, LionStones’ Payroll Supervisor, explained it clearly:

“Somebody could say, yes, I reviewed the payroll, everything looks great. But unless I dug in myself, which I cannot do with 40 separate payrolls, I just had to trust it. Celery gives us confidence because I can see exactly what is being caught.”

Leadership realized they needed more than manual reviews. They needed clear visibility across all communities, a way for facility teams to catch issues earlier, automated auditing that flagged anomalies before payroll was processed, and a partner that could support their team without disrupting existing workflows.That led them to Celery.

That led them to Celery.

Fast Adoption, Strong Support, Immediate Value

From the very first cycle, LionStone saw real value.

Celery delivered clear, actionable flags that made reviews faster and more structured. By making comments mandatory for each issue, LionStone created stronger accountability across both corporate and facility teams. Payroll issues and scheduling problems that had been hidden in the data finally became visible.

Barbara described the impact:

“The reporting, especially with mandatory comments, is holding people accountable. We can have intelligent conversations about scheduling, overtime, and issues at specific buildings.”

From the very start, Celery highlighted overtime patterns that had gone unnoticed for months. One smaller facility, which had struggled with overtime for almost a year, finally understood the issue after seeing the Celery report.

Throughout onboarding, Celery’s support team became an extension of LionStone’s payroll department. “Everyone at Celery is wonderful. The support is amazing and very responsive.”

The Turning Point: A $15,000 Error Caught in One Review Step

Right before Celery went live, LionStone experienced a $12,000 payroll error that slipped through. In the very next cycle, now with Celery in place, the platform flagged a $15,000 overpayment that should have been corrected but was missed. This discovery changed everything.

“Celery caught a fifteen thousand dollar error before payroll was processed. That alone made it clear how much hidden risk we had.”

– Barbara Bowers, Corporate Payroll Supervisor, LionStone Care

This moment validated what the team already suspected. Even well-trained teams have blind spots. Without automated auditing, errors can slip through because no one can review every cycle with the same level of attention.

For LionStone, this single catch demonstrated the financial and operational value of Celery and gave leadership full confidence in the platform.

Creating a More Confident and Accurate Payroll Process

Celery delivered the automated layer of protection LionStone needed. The platform scanned every data point, surfaced discrepancies, and removed the burden of manually digging through thousands of lines of payroll data. As Celery rolled out across the organization, the impact was immediate.

Stronger visibility at both the facility and corporate levels
A shared understanding of what needed attention
Reduced time spent on manual reviews
Higher accountability through mandatory explanations
More productive conversations between payroll, HR, and facilities

Barbara summarized the value clearly:

“Celery gives us peace of mind. We are confident the data is being reviewed correctly and that errors will be caught before payroll is processed.”

Flexibility That Fits Their Workflow

Celery also brought flexibility that LionStone had been missing.

“If we want to add a new rule, it is so easy. The flexibility is incredible, and Celery keeps making it even easier.”

This allowed LionStone to refine overtime policies, enforce scheduling discipline, and build a standardized audit process that works for all 40-plus communities.

The results

Improved accountability across all teams

Faster and clearer payroll reviews

Complete visibility across communities

$15,000 error caught in the first Celery cycle

A clear and immediate ROI

Recurring overtime issues surfaced and resolved

Higher confidence for both facility and corporate teams

LionStone did not adopt Celery because they had a payroll problem. They adopted it because they wanted a stronger, automated, and scalable process that improves accountability, strengthens operational visibility, and protects margins across all locations.

Celery now reviews every cycle, giving LionStone the accuracy, confidence, and resilience they need for the future.