Getting Up to Speed with Business Accounting Automation
Automating your accounting processes is one of the smartest business moves you can make. You see, 45% of business executives have started to recognize how accounting automation can motivate employees and, by extension, increase productivity, according to Deloitte.
Why Does Your Business Need Accounting Automation?
The thing is, accounting and finance teams are often under a false belief that automation may take over their roles. However, contrary to this misconception, automaton software isn’t coming for their jobs. Instead, it seeks to help them do their work better. Consider manual invoicing, for instance. The entire process is mundane, time-wasting, and incredibly laborious. Daily tasks in an organization that uses paper invoicing include:
- Manual data entry
- Back and forth between accounting teams
- Data verification
- Struggle to archive and safely store the paper invoices.
Indeed, these are low-priority tasks with zero business impact. Yes, time-consuming as they may, your accounting time is still spending massive amounts of effort and time to maintain them, This is exactly where the automation software comes in. Investing in electronic software, for instance, can do all the heavy lifting for your accounting department. The right solution will convert the laborious tasks mentioned above into single-click tasks. As a result, your finance teams can have time to spare for other high-impact business duties.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, 37% of businesses have automated at least one critical business process. Out of this, 66% are planning to automate other critical processes to suit remote work better.” – Mckinsey.
The question is – as a business owner or executive, where do you start to automate your accounting processes?
Well, the first step is to understand the importance of choosing the right automation solution. By eliminating the physical distance between your teams, automation software can help nurture better collaboration and timely task completion.
This article dives deep into everything you need to know about business accounting automation, why you need it, how you can determine which processes to automate, and what you can automate to experience a positive ROI and by extension, reap maximum productivity.
Let’s get cracking.
How Can You Identify Processes That Need to Be Automated
You can use several strategies to determine which business processes to automate. These include:
- Pick out business processes that take unnecessarily long time-spans and are labor-intensive to complete but have no business impact.
- Pinpoint business processes that your accounting and finance teams cannot accomplish remotely.
- Identify processes where managers and top-level executives lack insight and control.
- Look into processes where human intervention often leads to inaccuracy.
With a list, you now have a place to start. Besides, identifying the business process to automate also implies that you have learned to pick out broken processes. It also means that you’ve begun the journey to digitize your business fully. So, which business accounting operations can benefit from automation? That topic makes the second part of this post. Keep reading.
Accounting Process that Can Be Improved Through Automation
The processes below can benefit immensely from automation
Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR) Automation
AP and AR automation can dramatically minimize dependence on human intervention and, at the same time, free up cash flow. Automating the two processes means generating, submitting, verifying, and approving all involved within a single tool. The best part is, with a good AP and AR automation tool, your finance teams don’t have to struggle to find who they need to contact in case of pending payment since the software will readily provide the information.On top of that, managing documents becomes pretty straightforward, making audits an easy and compliant undertaking. What’s more, AR and AP automation provides secure storage, enabling your accountants to pull out any relevant information upon request. And because automation limits access to invoice approvals, you can protect your company from fraud by ensuring that only authorized people are involved in the process of release payments. Unimaze provides AP automation for small businesses, enabling your business to streamline its payment processes.
Find out how Unimaze can help with accounts payable automation.
Invoicing
Statistics show that labor costs account for more than 50% of all expenses associated with a business’s account payable systems.
Still, the benefits of automating your invoking process extend beyond that, especially if you want to keep your cash flow in check.
Further, automated invoicing can help you get paid faster.
Did you know, for instance, that most businesses are paid late, and unpaid invoices in the United States alone amount to a staggering 800+ billion? And if that’s not shocking enough, then you might want to know the average wait time to get an invoice is 72 days!
Automating your invoicing process implies that your books are always up to date. Plus, you can have real-time access to financial reporting, a handy capability if you’re always on the go.
The most effective way to automate your invoicing processes is to adopt and implement electronic invoicing.
For starters, e-invoicing supports AP automation, enabling you to streamline your workflows, including supplier portal integration, global mass payments processing, and robotic process automation (RPA) of routine tasks.
A critical element of automation through invoicing is choosing the electronic invoicing solution. Still, e-invoicing is a challenge. First of all, different trading partners and suppliers may interpret an e-invoice standard. As a result, there is no single e-invoice version to accommodate every supplier, leading to ongoing maintenance with no clear ownership when a problem occurs. And, with no end-to-end analytics or reporting, the challenge persists. Besides, data in XML has been modified since every supplier has their version, escalating the situation. Unimaze has an evolved electronic invoicing software with artificial intelligence machine learning and a user-friendly user interface to bypass these challenges.
In addition, through our solution, you can convert PDF invoices to e-invoices in simple clicks, enabling you to enjoy the benefit of e-invoicing without common pain points. That way, PDF invoices are instantly transformed and ready for payment.
