Advancing Automation in Accounting: Why Now Is the Right Time

The accounting industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S, with the revenue reaching $145.5 billion this year. Although this exponential growth showcases a bright future for accounting professionals, it also means handling more clients. Hence, accounting firms need a solution to handle the excessive workload and cut down time on manual tasks like data entry and reconciliation. Enter automation!

Automation in accounting is adopting new-age tools to eliminate manual tasks with pre-defined workflows. It gives accountants more time to focus on critical tasks and evolve into roles like advisors. 

Let’s check out the role of automation in the accounting industry. 

Accounting Areas That Can Utilize Accounting Automation

1. Accounts Payable 

The accounting tools can create automated workflows to streamline the accounts payable process. To reduce time and errors, you can automate bill generation, invoice matching, data entry, and payment scheduling.   

2. Accounts Receivable

With AR automation, you can send automated reminders to customers, process and record payments, and generate invoices. Moreover, you can also send invoices to customers on a pre-set date.   

3. Auditing

Accounting automation ensures consistent record-keeping and audit trails, which are invaluable during audits and other financial review processes. Accounting tools provide you with complete transparency, reducing stress and potential liabilities.

4. Payroll

Payroll automation enables businesses to automate payslip generation, tax calculation, and deductions. It improves operational efficiency and reduces human errors.  

5. Tax Compliance

Accounting automation tools like Avalara automatically comply with state and federal tax regulations. It helps firms prevent legal issues and penalties. Moreover, automation helps in areas like fraud detection and verification.   

6. Reporting

Generating manual reports can be a tedious process. The new-age accounting tools, such as QuickBooks, enable automated generation of reports from diverse and large data sets. Moreover, these tools can also consolidate multiple reports to offer actionable insights for your accounting firm.  

7. Expense Management

Accounting tools help automate expense management and tracking. The software can automatically extract essential data from physical receipts uploaded by employees. Moreover, automated reminders can be sent to employees for faster reimbursements.  

The Benefits of Accounting Automation

1. Time Saving

Accounting automation helps accountants save time by automating most manual tasks. When tasks like invoicing, data entry, payment reminders, and accounts receivable are automated, accountants can utilize their time on more critical matters like financial strategies and client satisfaction.  

2. Improved Accuracy

According to Gartner, one-third of accountants make financial errors weekly. Introducing automation in accounting ensures minimal human intervention, reducing manual errors. Moreover, automated workflows ensure no delays in payment and invoice processing.

3. Data Security and Compliance Assurance

The accounting software tools deploy advanced security protocols like encryption, multi-factor authentication, backup, and role-based access to ensure complete data protection. Moreover, the tools also help accounting firms comply with data regulations by detecting fraud, errors, and non-compliant activities. 

4. Employee Satisfaction

Automation in accounting reduces menial tasks, giving accountants more time to focus on skill development. It also improves their work-life balance, reducing mental stress, and enables them to get involved in higher-value processes.  

Choosing the Right Accounting Automation Tool

Choosing the right accounting tools ensures accounting process automation and an integrated workflow. Therefore, you must evaluate the following parameters before choosing the right provider for your accounting firm.  

1. Vendor Reputation

You must check a vendor’s credibility before shortlisting its accounting solution. Look for online community forums and genuine software review sites like G2 for customer ratings and testimonials. 

2. Automation Features

Analyze if the accounting tools you shortlist automate the necessary and daily tasks. You can look for features like automated expense tracking, invoicing, payment reminders, reconciliations, and reporting. Moreover, you must also check if the accounting software integrates with other third-party applications for a real-time data sync.  

3. Reporting

Reporting is a vital requirement for accounting firms. Hence, the accounting solution you choose must offer diverse reports, like cash flow analysis, budgeting, P&L, General Ledger, and more. Moreover, the accounting software must also have custom reporting capabilities. 

4. Customer Support

Technical issues can occur at any time. Therefore, the accounting software you choose must offer 24/7 customer support. Moreover, the vendor must have an online repository of training videos, tutorials, and documentation, so you can easily resolve common issues. 

5. Data Security and Compliance

Data security is critical to the accounting firm. Therefore, you must ensure that accounting software has advanced security measures like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, and granular access controls. Moreover, the vendor must be compliant with necessary regulations like PCI DSS.  

6. Scalability

As your business grows, your requirements for additional users and data storage increase. Therefore, selecting an accounting software that scales with your business is essential. In addition, you can also opt for cloud hosting services to get unlimited storage for your accounting data.  

Getting Started with Automation in Accounting 

1. Assess your Business Requirements

The first step to automate your accounting process is identifying the key pain points in your current accounting process. You must also pinpoint all the tasks that need automation as a priority. Moreover, you must create a roadmap of the future requirements, which will help you evaluate the level of scalability you are looking for.  

2. Evaluate the Current IT Setup

Assess your accounting firm’s current IT setup and make an inventory of all the tools used. It will enable you to evaluate the tools that need to be upgraded, retained, or upgraded. You must also look for silos in the digital workflow and integration issues that need automation. Also, check whether the shortlisted automation tools are compatible with the current IT technology stack.    

3. Conduct Proper Training 

Comprehensive employee training sessions ensure faster adoption of the accounting automation tools. Therefore, you must create an employee training program with Q&A sessions, webinars, and demos to ensure faster onboarding of the automation tools and prevent productivity issues. Moreover, you must also take employee feedback after each session to improve the adoption process.  

4. Test the Performance

Accounting automation is a continuous process. Therefore, you must evaluate the accounting workflows and the performance and ROI of the tools deployed. You must keep running tests and iterate to identify bottlenecks. 

Conclusion

Integrating automation in the accounting process helps firms save costs, optimize productivity, and improve accuracy. However, you must follow some steps to ensure a swift transition to automation tools. These steps help you reduce the adoption time and select the best tools for your accounting firm.  If you want to introduce automation in the accounting process, the right time is now. 

To introduce automation in the accounting process, you need a scalable solution like cloud computing to process large data sets and integrate all the tools on one platform.

Ace Cloud Hosting is a cloud service provider that offers accounting-specific hosting services with unlimited add-on integrations, 24/7 customer support, and high-performance computing servers. 

To know more, connect with our Experts now.