5 TIPS TO TRANSITION TO AUTOMATED ACCOUNTING MORE SMOOTHLY

Posted by Joseph Himy
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NEW YORK, N.Y. – (November 4th, 2021) One of the projects for which we are most often engaged at CFO Squad is to automate our client’s accounting. This is certainly a robust trend across many industries. Indeed, many of our firm’s engagements over the past few years have stemmed from referrals by clients for whom we facilitated, coordinated and expedited the path to an automated accounting system.

In fact, a recent study from management consulting firm Robert Half found that finance professionals across North America believe automation is one of the top three technologies that will disrupt the workplace over the next five years. Furthermore, it found that accounting and finance businesses have expanded their use of automation across all processes tracked over the past year.

These days, it’s easier than ever to gain the benefits of new process-automating tools—such as increased overall efficiency and productivity for such essential tasks like invoicing, data collection and entry, documentation management and records reconciliation.

Unfortunately, some of our clients have suffered from the unexpected and painful effects of trying to transition to automated accounting independently, or with a less than well qualified consultant. If I could offer you one word of advice, it would be: don’t!

What should you do? By following these five tips, you will be far more likely to hit the ground running and avoid some common pitfalls:

  • Leverage data governance tools. Protecting the integrity of your organization’s data must be a top priority, yet internal and external factors like outdated numbers and policies make it difficult to ensure complete accuracy. By leveraging data governance tools like Segment, you can automate processes such as data validation to create a single source of truth for customer data while also protecting your data integrity.
  • Consolidate your ERP and accounting systems. It’s more common for financial service providers to offer direct connectivity with ERP and accounting systems. Integrating these systems allows you to manage all of your primary business processes from one place, using your own platform. Cloud-based bookkeeping systems like Xero have achieved widespread acceptance for their bundle of benefits, making it easy to access your business finances at any time, protect your data and to understand your real-time cash position.
  • Adopt AI for internal audits. Vendors like ai provide internal audit platforms driven by a combination of humans and advanced machines. Through its Artificial Intelligence engine maps, AuditMap.ai consolidates and analyses your files against business structures and taxonomies to increase audit coverage and eliminate tedious tasks throughout the audit process.
  • Optimize accounts receivable operations.More banks and fintechs are using AI-powered platforms that work seamlessly with existing systems to automate the receivables process and eliminate friction. P. Morgan Integrated Receivables, for example, claims it can increase efficiency with scalable, vertically integrated payment processing.
  • Implement account reconciliation software. Many financial institutions are starting to use automation tools to improve the efficiency of rule-based tasks. In our view, that is only going halfway—because these same rules can also be applied to automate bank reconciliations throughout the duration of the entire period until close. For example, some small businesses have begun to adopt solutions like HighRadius to automate accounts receivable and treasury processes.

One 2018 study forecast that the financial services industry could potentially gain approximately $512 billion in global revenue by 2020 with the use of intelligent automation. And yet, only 10% of companies have implemented intelligent automation across all geographies and processes. Cloud software industry leader Oracle reports that by 2030 AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy.

With $6.6 trillion of that figure likely to come from increased productivity alone, automation can increase your company’s efficiency while giving your accountant more time to focus on meaningful tasks.

CFO Squad provides its clients with access to financial reporting experts at an affordable price and is aligned with today’s trend of reducing or averting the cost burden of having a large internal back-office accounting department. In addition to financial oversight and meeting their regulatory requirements, clients rely on CFO Squad to help them through the capital raising process, support complex business transactions such as mergers or acquisitions (M&A), navigate initial public offering (IPO) and SEC filings, or uplisting from the OTC markets to Tier 1 exchanges like the Nasdaq.

ABOUT THE CFO SQUAD

The CFO Squad is an accounting consulting firm that specializes in financial reporting, technical accounting research and CFO advisory services for companies of various sizes and industries. From complex technical accounting transactions to periodic financial reporting, our professionals can offer an organization the specialized expertise and multilayered skill sets to ensure their accounting projects are completed timely and accurately. The CFO Squad provides tax compliance & advisory services for its clients and can provide a full suite of Outsourced Accounting Services. To learn more, please visit: https://www.cfosquad.com or call us at 845-613-3394.

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Joseph Himy, CPA
Managing Director & Founder
info@cfosquad.com
845-613-3394