Automate and Streamline your Accounting

Have you ever thought that there might be a better way to do some of the day-to-day accounting in your business? If you haven’t started using some of the many tools available to automate accounting, then there definitely IS an easier way. The tools available for automating these days are tried and true, vetted solutions that have become integral to many businesses.

For example, one of the more basic ways you can automate your process is to use the bank feeds in Quickbooks Online with properly set up “bank rules.” You can very quickly change a manual process of entering each date, payee and payment account –for hundreds of transactions, by hand – into an automated process where they auto-populate. Once automated, bank rules will dictate both the correct account and where transactions should be classified.

Benefits of Automating

• Fewer costly errors: Whoops, Janet missed one keystroke and coded a big expense to a balance sheet account. A big deduction is now missed for taxes. Or: Darn, one of the cells in our monthly budget sheet lost the formula and was hard-entered. The forecasted income now looks much better than it should and we missed an opportunity to react. With good accounting, both of those mistakes would eventually get caught. However, you could have avoided the extra work needed to correct them, if you simple automated it instead. In the meantime, you are managing with bad numbers.
• Better controls and security: Many businesses have staff doing manual work and sharing tasks that could otherwise be separated for security. It is difficult to document, track and review manual work and who performs which tasks on a regular basis. It is important to get tools that can create an easily-to-review audit trail and separate duties.
• Data visibility: Only seeing your results well after the close of the period makes it difficult to manage effectively. The more data you can get in real-time, the faster you will close the period.
• Better records: Paper filing is a huge hole in many business operations, but sometimes you don’t feel it until an audit happens. The pain is also felt when a supplier wants to know when their bill was paid and with which check number, or when you want to see the receipt behind a questionable credit card purchase. Your system should be set up to access that information with the click of a button.
• Future-ready: It is fast-becoming the norm for businesses to adopt automation tools. The tools are improving and changing and it is important to get familiar with adopting them in your business not only to benefit your operations, but to be able to communicate with other businesses and compete in the current marketplace.

What to Automate Immediately

• Accounts payable
• Payroll
• Data entry
• Business credit card receipts and coding
• Staff expense and mileage reporting
• Custom reports

Steps to Take Now to Automate

1. Map out your current processes
2. Identify and match up your processes to the best tools to automate
3. Identify who will monitor the processes
4. Train and document the new workflows
5. Test the workflows

This is where Mahoney CPAs and advisors can help. We can help you complete the assessment and implement the processes you choose. We can either work with you to train your staff or we can run the processes for you. To find out more about why you might benefit from outsourcing your accounting, click here.

Automation can feel intimidating to think about. There are a lot of “automation” terms and jargon getting thrown around the internet: robotic processing automation, artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, etc.

The reality of the accounting tools available now is that, like the internet and smartphones, the tools that just work and make sense for everyday users become useful parts of our lives. The sooner you can get familiar with them, the better. The goal is to change the focus of your workforce from manually entering data, to engaging with results and ultimately growing your business.

Mahoney CPAs and advisors have a deep knowledge of the most successful tools on the market and we test the most promising new tools as they become available. We do the legwork to vet which tools will work the best for you and can help you to start using them quickly and efficiently. Contact us today to assess your current system and create a plan.

For additional considerations, please reach out to Ruth Lott, CPA, Associate Director, or contact our Accounting Services Team at Mahoney to be of help to you in any way.