7 Reports You Should Automate With Accounting Software

Financial reporting can be a tedious and time-consuming task when done manually. The good news is, you can easily automate many kinds of reports, allowing you to streamline the creation and organization of reports, status monitoring, and more. The best automation software can handle account reconciliation, data entry, and the distribution of results—helping to increase organizational transparency while minimizing errors.

Automating and scaling financial operations will also allow your finance team to become more efficient. They’ll be able to make purchasing decisions without the danger of overspending, and to easily implement solutions that complement pre-existing processes. Here are a few types of reports that every company should automate.

1. Accounts Payable Reports

Accounts payable is part of the general ledger where amounts owed to suppliers, vendors, and other entities are recorded. It generally involves receiving, reviewing, approving, and paying invoices. Accounts payable reporting refers to the process of tracking all business expenses and payments in order to make sure they’re correct.

This type of report is relatively straightforward, but it can take a huge amount of time when done by hand. Automating accounts payable reduces the time your finance department has to spend on things like inputting data or matching invoices to orders. Another benefit of AP automation is that it greatly reduces the likelihood of errors, which are otherwise easy to make with this kind of repetitive work.

2. Annual Financial Statements

The annual financial report is typically presented to shareholders and other stakeholders, who use it to analyze the business’s financial performance and make investment decisions. Financial statements provide an overview of a company’s financial health, including information about its performance, operations, and cash flow.

When you automate annual financial statements, you’re able to instantly aggregate data and generate a comprehensive report. Your team doesn’t need to spend valuable time sifting through the past year’s data to discover trends or identify progress. Automation also allows them to easily compare your liabilities and assets, pinpoint areas for improvement, and focus on strategic planning for the future.

3. Audit Reports

The purpose of an audit report is to ensure that a company’s financial statements are entirely accurate and free from mistakes. Auditing is essentially an unbiased assessment of your organization that provides accountability and assurance that its reports reflect its actual status.

Automating audit reports removes the elements of human error and unconscious bias that could otherwise affect their results. This can greatly increase credibility and trust in the process. Auditing automation also helps you to identify errors or potential problems more quickly, so that you can easily correct or prevent them.

4. Consolidated Reports

Consolidated reports combine a parent company and its subsidiaries into one economic entity. They include all assets, revenue, expenses, and other financial data from each individual company, and present it in a cohesive way. In other words, consolidated reporting puts all the company’s relevant information in one place.

This type of report is already designed to increase efficiency, productivity, and collaboration—but automating it increases these benefits even further. Every involved party can easily access critical data without having to consult multiple reports, and see how each subsidiary’s data fits into the larger picture of the company as a whole. Automation software can generate these highly valuable reports both quickly and accurately so that teams can start implementing the insights gained from them immediately.

5. Management Reports

The purpose of management reports is to inform managers about essential aspects of the organization, allowing them to make better business decisions. These reports combine data from different parts of the company, including key performance indicators in a variety of areas, and present it in a clear and actionable format.

Without automation, someone on the finance team has to compile these reports for the manager. This waste of resources can easily be eliminated by automating management reports, so that every team member can focus on more strategic priorities rather than creating reports for someone else to review. Automated management reports are also completely unbiased, so the manager gets a truly accurate picture of the company’s status.

6. Quarterly Financial Statements

Every three months, a quarterly financial statement is issued to summarize the company’s recent performance and financial situation. These statements are essential for effective decision-making, as they provide regular updates at relatively close intervals. They’re also highly important for attracting investors, who can use them to assess the company’s current status and future potential by comparing them over time.

The main benefit of quarterly financial statements is their regularity—but this can also be a disadvantage in the absence of automation. Four times a year, your finance team will have to painstakingly compile and analyze data in order to create a useful report. But accounting automation software can accomplish the same outcome just as effectively and much more efficiently, freeing up a huge chunk of your team’s schedule every quarter.

7. Year-End Close Reports

A year-end close report is an annual summary of the company’s accounting records, which allows the finance team to check and adjust those records as necessary. It should be completed at the end of each fiscal year, and is a crucial part of the overall reporting process. Year-end close reports can identify outstanding balances or deficits that will need to be carried over into the next year, and provide a clear picture of annual spending.

Just like with all the reports mentioned above, accounting software can help you streamline and speed up the process of creating year-end close reports. The less time it takes to prepare them, the more time your team will have to review the data—and make informed decisions about the coming year’s budget and financial goals.

Unlock Your Company’s Potential With Automated Reporting

There are countless benefits of accounting automation, especially when it comes to financial reporting. Creating reports is an unavoidable and essential part of running a successful business. It holds the company accountable, identifies potential issues, and allows the whole team to work more efficiently and collaboratively to accomplish their goals.

Automating financial reports eliminates the tedious and error-prone process of creating these reports by hand, freeing up your finance department to focus on higher-level tasks. By implementing an accounting automation solution like Mesh, you can enable employees to put their skills to good use—with detailed and practical reports to assist them along the way, of course.

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Mesh Content Team