While there are an infinite number of ways to alleviate these pains, streamlining accounting is one of the best. Armed with the right tools, SMBs save time and money, gain actionable insights into the company and move the business forward. The best tool to streamline your accounting is cloud-based financial accounting software.
Here are seven great ways that such tools help your company overcome these day-to-day struggles and succeed:
- Reduce Your Manual Tasks
Financial accounting software streamlines business accounting by avoiding multiple data entry. A survey of accounts payable (AP) professionals reports that less than 17 percent of businesses embrace fully automated systems. The more your accounting software is able to automate repetitive tasks, the fewer the manual tasks your employees need to complete. This cuts down on billing errors, mistakes and overpayments. - Boost Disaster Recovery Efforts
Using spreadsheets or QuickBooks is dangerous in the event of a disaster. However, if your financial accounting software is cloud based, it’s backed up at least once a day. Remember, even if your on-premises system is programmed for backups, the data is still located in the same place as your office, which presents an issue if your building gets flooded or burns down. - Reduce Silos
It’s common for SMBs to struggle with siloed information. As the business grows, the company buys new systems to solve problems. Unfortunately, many of these systems were not built to work together or easily share information. These silos become problematic because the ability for a company to work off one set of numbers — rather than a set of numbers from one department and another set of numbers from another department — gives managers the confidence to make sound decisions. In other words, they won’t have to worry that they’re working off the wrong set of numbers. Financial accounting software is powerful enough to work with all systems to improve efficiencies, reduce errors and streamline processes. - Integrate With Your Other Programs
Integration is how financial accounting software is able to reduce silos. Integration also saves the company time because accountants don’t have to work long hours maintaining the integrity of several different financial systems. They update one figure in one location and all systems are updated in that moment. This provides one source of data for all business uses. - Eliminate IT Worries
SMBs have limited IT staff. When those few people — or that single person — spend precious time keeping the lights on rather than figuring out ways to make the company more revenue, the company loses. However, cloud-based financial accounting software is already maintained by the vendor’s IT staff. In other words, service pack applications and patches, virus protection, data management and application upgrades are all included in your cloud subscription costs. That means that employees focus more on the core competency of the business rather than stressing about the next software upgrade. - Ensure Proper Audit Trails
Tracking changes was never so easy. When someone changes information anywhere in the system, the software tracks it. If something harmful happens, it’s simple to restore an earlier version of a document or determine how the mistake happened. - Run Great Reports
Using high-quality reporting tools is one of the best ways that financial software helps businesses move forward. Armed with business intelligence and actionable data, SMBs have the power to know where the company stands at all times. It’s simple to make course corrections immediately and plan for the future.
If your company is working off multiple data sets, you’re losing time, money and the necessary confidence to make remarkable decisions. It’s time to alleviate your pain points with an automated and integrated financial accounting software system.
Ready to streamline your business accounting? Discover how to upgrade to cloud based software in 5 easy steps in our new infographic, Move to a True Cloud Subscription in 5 Easy Steps.
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