Top Tasks Your Business Can Streamline with Accounting Automation

Accounting tasks are time-consuming when performed manually. Counting on spreadsheets to manage a business’s core finance operations, such as accounts payable and tax compliance, takes many hours or even days. Moreover, manual accounting is susceptible to human errors, leading to delays, additional costs, and frustration. This is where accounting automation comes to the rescue, helping businesses streamline their workflows by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) whilst minimising the risk of human errors. 

Understanding Accounting Automation 

Accounting automation is the procedure of automating the company’s manual financial tasks with logic, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and digital accounting solutions. More than 75% of accounting tasks are estimated to be automated, and 45% of accountants plan to use the technology. Thus, accounting automation is here to stay, with most CFOs recognising automation as a good investment for enhanced operational efficiency. 

Accounting Tasks a Business Must Automate Today

Every business starts its journey from a different position and embraces Accounting Process Automation (APA) at a different pace. Some firms prefer automating their processes at once, whilst others proceed systematically, automating one task at a time. Below are the accounting tasks that companies can start automating now:

1. Accounts Payable (AP)

Automating AP streamlines payment processes in this age of widespread digitisation. It facilitates accounting teams in tracking the due dates of invoices and ensures the timely payment of vendor bills. Furthermore, APA minimises the risk of fake invoices slipping by flagging those the system identifies as problematic or suspicious.

2. Accounts Receivable (AR)

Automating AR processes helps firms better manage their cash flow by improving the accuracy of invoices and reducing processing expenses. Many of the accounts receivable processes are automated, including scheduling invoice deliveries and collecting overdue payments.

3. Payroll

Manually managing payroll is one of the significant time drains for firms with limited accounting resources, mainly as the business grows and the responsibilities of their accounting professionals increase. However, automating payroll ensures that employees’ salaries are disbursed timely and that an overworked staff never misses out on filing any necessary payroll forms.

4.Month-end Monetary Close Process

The month-end financial close is a crucial task for any business, but it is also one of the stressful times for accounting teams. Accountants are pressured to meet their monthly closing requirements more quickly, leading to rushed procedures and questions about the authenticity of end-of-month outcomes. Automated bookkeeping removes the issue of processing speed and data precision, streamlining the monthly-end monetary closes. Not only this, but it also helps accountants deliver results quickly without compromising on quality.

5. Procurement

Procuring services and goods from external suppliers involves piles of paperwork that multiple stakeholders must review and process manually. By automating procurement processes such as purchase order management, firms can save significant time and costs for other demanding tasks without impacting the integrity of their procurement processes or compromising supplier relationships.

6. Expense Reports

Creating and managing expense reports takes time and effort. In many firms, accountants need to print expense reports in the form of spreadsheets, staple receipts to records manually and submit the package to accounting in person to get it approved. Thus, automating expense report processes facilitates employees to fill out forms digitally and share the reports with the team, minimising their administrative burden.

7. Sales Order Process

A transparent sales order process ensures customers’ orders are dispatched to the right place on time. AI finance and accounting solutions help firms codify each step of the sale order process, ensuring that they meet customer expectations consistently.

Reasons to Invest in the Accounting Automation Solution

1. Saves Time

Time is money; if employees spend their time on tasks that any team member can do, they save money and lose their productivity.  25% of the business owners work more than 60 hours weekly. One of the significant benefits of considering the accounting automation service as a business owner is that it saves you time and operational costs.

2. Painless Tax Filing

Preparing tax files is a challenging task for accountants when dealing with piles of data. This is true when accounting professionals must catch up on bookkeeping tasks and compensate for the losses.  However, burdensome tax filing tasks can become easier with financial accounting services. Such services help accountants file taxes and ensure that the team has all the information up-to-date. Thus, they never have to worry about missing information whilst filing taxes. 

3. Improves Productivity

Investing in automated bookkeeping solutions will help increase the accounting team’s productivity. As business owners have much on their plates, they must decide on priority-based tasks that are crucial to a company’s success. They can save time using automated systems to focus on more critical daily operations. For example, they can focus on more sales and other areas of company growth. Accountants can increase their productivity by delegating accounting responsibilities to AI finance and accounting services. 

Suggested Read: 5 Tips and Tricks to Boost Productivity with Automated Bookkeeping

4. Increased Accuracy

It is understandable that accountants make mistakes when they rush to balance the records. Although it might not sound like a big deal, errors in financial data entry can lead to significant issues, mainly when it’s time to be audit-ready. However, leveraging automated accounting services increases data accuracy. Unlike humans, machines such as automated software are less likely to make errors. Although the accounting team needs to go through the records and verify that it is done accurately by the automated system, this will take the team less time and result in fewer accounting and bookkeeping errors. 

5. Cloud Access to Data

Another benefit of the automated software is that it offers cloud access to the financial data based on the platform. A more traditional practice is that some firms still store accounting and business data on floppy disks, filing cabinets, or USB drives. Moreover, businesses often keep this data off-site, making accessing important information difficult. Cloud access to business information is convenient and will help the team save storage space and eliminate messy paper files.

6. Faster Data Retrieval

Automated financial accounting allows accountants to store data on the cloud, making data retrieval easier when needed. Instead of sifting through piles of files to get financial data, accountants can access it from nearly anywhere. Thus, automation in accounting tasks makes things easier for the employees. 

7. Safe File Storage

Accounting automation makes it easy for businesses to store confidential data safely. Bookkeeping automation programmes have systems in place that encrypt the company’s data and guard it against breaches, protecting it from heavy fines. 

How Does RecordMe Fit in the Puzzle?

RecordMe is an AI-powered financial bot that helps businesses automate their workflows. We offer robust accounting automation, capable of handling different financial tasks from invoice and billing generation to payment reimbursements, whilst ensuring a positive customer experience. Whether it is a Word Doc, PDF, or an image file, RecordMe extracts data with an accuracy rate of 99.99% and sends it to the accounting tools. We help firms scale their tasks with error-free automated accounting that saves their energy and time. 

We make sure to strike a perfect balance between human expertise and automation to achieve increased accuracy, efficiency, and productivity whilst reducing operational costs.