Crown prosecutor Sam McMullan said it was "absurd" that a business would agree to pay an employee's power bill.
The man and his wife were responsible for the day-to-day running of the aged care facility from 2001 to 2012.
"We'd take the box to the rest home and play it for the residents to watch," he said when asked about the Sky TV bill.
"And the rest home would pay for your power?" McMullan asked.
"Yes, for our entire house," he said.
The prosecution questioned the man over the rest home's financial records in painstaking detail, arguing that his method of coding company cheques concealed exactly who and where the money went to.
The man disputed this, but when pressed conceded that his coding did not identify every single amount.
McMullan argued the man spread personal costs across multiple codes in his record-keeping so no particular item would look out of place year on year.
"If you had recorded them accurately, what you were doing would have come to light pretty quickly," he said.
But the man maintained the money he's accused of stealing was for legitimate reimbursements for payments he made on behalf of the rest home, or cash flow for business operations.
"What I was doing was agreed," he said.
"You're just making this up as you go along?" the prosecutor said several times during the hearing.
"No, I'm not," the man said.
Prosecution went over extensive lines of expenditure from 2009 - at supermarkets, cafes, Mitre 10, the Warehouse - and asked him whether each item was personal or business spending.
"I don't know, I can't recall," he said to most of them. Some were personal and some for the rest home, he said, and they were from more than 10 years ago.
Asked about a $300 Lotto bill, he said he would buy tickets for rest home residents who could not go out to get it themselves, but enjoyed having them and watching the draw on television.
The man faces 49 charges of dishonesty for allegedly using almost 1100 cheques to siphon cash from the business over seven years, to pay contractors working on the couple's sprawling lifestyle property.
He is also accused of overpaying his and his wife's salaries and falsifying records to cover his tracks.
He denied using twink, or correction fluid, to doctor his employment documents.
McMullan said the alleged offending began in 2005 but ramped up in later years as the couple's new home was being built.
"We've got this money being taken at the time he needs it most," McMullan told the jury at the start of the two-week trial.
He said the man's accounting was "shambolic", which made it difficult for investigators to trace whether the money went toward his personal spending or legitimate rest home expenses.
This was deliberate to conceal what exactly was going on, the prosecutor said.
The man's lawyer Fletcher Pilditch, QC, argued that it was not a crime to get behind on bills or have messy record-keeping.
"You're not concerned about that. What you're concerned about is whether he is guilty of a crime," Pilditch told the jury.
The trial continues tomorrow.
