How to Save Time and Cut Costs With Automation for Your Accounting Business

You know all those repetitive accounting tasks that you would love to delegate to someone, only everyone else is busy, too? What if you could have them automated so well that they weren’t just done but more efficient?

With accounting automation, manual tasks that involve entering data by hand, analyzing spreadsheets, and dealing with paper documentation are replaced with organized programs. Automation lets your team put their energy where it is needed most: growing and scaling your business.

In this blog, we’ll explain how automation can help you save time and cut costs associated with your accounting business.

1. Recognize Your Pain Points

Today’s accounting automation platforms go well beyond the basics of integrating credits and debits into the right accounts and keeping track of invoices. Now, your software can show you where you can make changes to save money, improve client relationships, and monitor key metrics in real-time.

The first step in making automation work for you is to recognize your main pain points and find accounting automation software that addresses those issues. This article by Accelo detailing a list of the best CRMs for accountants is a great place to start, but you need to know what features to look for that are specific to your business’s challenges.

In most accounting firms, the repetition begins with the use of paper documents. The information on these files must be entered into the program by hand, then scanned and saved in the client’s file. These tasks waste time and resources and can even impact your accounts receivable if a paper invoice hasn’t been entered in a timely or was incorrectly recorded.

Other common pain points that impact accounting accuracy and cost-effectiveness include:

●       Human data entry errors (one misplaced decimal point makes a massive difference!)

●       Not enough time to audit or track finances for accuracy and transparency

●       The desire to grow but lack of employees or funds to add more clients or services

As with all successful businesses, there’s simply too much to do and not enough resources to do it all. But when automation enters the scene, your options increase while expenses stay the same or, optimally, go down.

2. Evaluate Your Daily Processes

Where in your daily processes can you save time by automating tasks? Manual wor, crunching numbers and evaluating reports is time-consuming, but the results are crucial to your overall progress. Using automation saves time while giving you accurate information.

From data entry to reports, your accounting team can expedite the results while decreasing manual work. One simple example is invoicing and payments.

With automated invoicing and payment entry, the project is opened, the costs are delineated, and the invoice is sent (usually via email). The payment options and the expected terms and fees for late payment are included in the invoice. The transaction is immediately processed through their financial institution of choice when the client pays the invoice. An approved payment is recorded in the client’s file and then added to your business’s bank accounting software as a credit.

This simple process makes reconciliation more streamlined. It avoids the extra time your team spends tracking a client down when their payment doesn’t go through and expedites all transactions with a cross-check and post as necessary.

3. Reduce the Human Entry Steps

The personal touch is an essential component in business. It’s often what separates one competitor from another, and it’s what fosters client loyalty. But it isn’t necessary in every aspect of your accounting business.

Automating repetitive tasks can improve efficiency and accuracy — simultaneously boosting client relationships as your customers develop trust in your work. Manually entering data and waiting for various receipts and documents to be approved is time-consuming, relying on your team to be healthy and never take vacations to avoid backlogs, which isn’t realistic.

However, automation uses formulas to process data entry, match line items, approve expense reports, and cross-reference any pre-approved steps to complete them without delays. This elimination of delay comes in handy and is appreciated by your employees who file expenses and want to be reimbursed timely.

And, since the program execution steps are designed by you to eliminate the common areas of delay, they are wholly within your control to set the parameters of approval. The more human interaction you reduce, the lower your operating expenses become.

4. Set Your Security Goals

When you’ve determined your pain points and established automation processes that improve them, you can move on to things that matter, such as growing your business. But this part of scaling includes enhancing your security. Accounting businesses are, by nature, repositories of sensitive data, and your security measures can’t be haphazard.

Using automated systems is one way to boost your security. Because the program has complete visibility in real-time, catching red flags happens faster than it would if you were relying on human detection. Through tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence, your security measures are enhanced to monitor every transaction and guard against threats like malware and fraud.

Suspicious transactions are halted until someone with the right authority evaluates them and approves or denies the record. This extra step of security not only protects you from breaches, but it ensures you are following ever-changing regulations regarding cybercrime and business protective measures.

5. Assign Access As Needed

Automation also aids you in creating audit trails and limiting unauthorized access. While paper charts are visible to anyone who sees them, automated accounting data is only accessible to those who have the proper permissions. Access is designated on an individual basis, so you can determine how much or little information a user is permitted to view, edit, delete, or add.

Once accesses, the data can be sorted, viewed, and edited from any secure location connected to the platform. Should you have questions about who made a change, simply follow the login credentials back to the origin point.

Through permissions and a defined work process, your team knows that the data is fully transparent. Inter-department collaboration in real-time is easier, and decisions can be made and acted upon quickly. All of these enhancements bring us full circle to the most crucial component of a successful business: client satisfaction.

Conclusion

As a business owner or manager, you know the necessity of growth to stay successful. Yet, it can be challenging to get your employees to do the basics of their job, much less dig into the deeper work required to scale. With automation, you free your team up to put their resources and energy where it matters most, boosting their morale and enhancing your business’s reputation with your clients.