How Your Business Thrives With Automated Accounting Software

What is Automated Accounting Software?

Simply put, accounting software gives you the ability to record and keep track of the various finances your company uses to operate in an automated (that is, digital) environment that reduces several risk factors commonly experienced among businesses today. This can include corporate spending, payroll, and miscellaneous expenses. These systems take care of several time-consuming jobs that can free up your employees’ bandwidth for doing more dynamic tasks for your business. So whether it’s producing profit and loss statements, reconciling month-end expenses, or generating important account reports, automation is instantaneous and non-labor intensive.

Top Choices in Accounting Automation 

As you would expect, there are plenty of accounting automation systems on the market. Each one offers slightly different benefits, and it is worthwhile weighing the pros and cons, comparing the various plans available, and considering the different features on offer to help find the best fit for your company. These are among the top automated accounting software options out there:

• Intuit QuickBooks
• FreshBooks
• Oracle NetSuite
• Zoho Books
• Xero 
• ZarMoney
• Sage Business Cloud Accounting
• Melio 
• Wave 
• Kashoo

But there are several other options worth looking into as well. Do your research, make your comparisons, and select the automated accounting software that delivers the most benefit for your budget.

How the Right Automated Accounting System Can Benefit Your Business

While the extent of value produced by a given system will vary depending on your business, the software you choose, and the extent to which you put the software into use, here are some of the most beneficial and commonly-seen advantages of using accounting automation:

Accuracy in accounting 

Possibly the biggest benefit of handing the reins over to automated accounting software is eliminating human error. Human beings are excellent at a good many things, but they are also fallible. Mistakes will happen, it’s just inevitable. Even a conscientious accountant can miss a decimal point, overlook a zero, or accidentally input data into the wrong field from time to time. But when it comes to your business’ books, those are mistakes that you can’t afford to make. Automated accounting software incurs 100% data integrity all the time. Aside from saving your company from significant fines, legal issues, and compliance problems, data integrity builds a solid reputation for your business.

Alleviates a tremendous time-drain

Data entry, cross-referencing information, and processing company-wide data is an incredibly time- and labor-intensive task (that actually includes multiple subtasks). Automated software does all of these tasks automatically, yielding two benefits for your company. For one thing, there’s a faster turnaround time for reports, payroll, and other processes. Faster turnaround is always a benefit providing it doesn’t come at the expense of accuracy (see the previous point). For another, automating these tedious tasks frees up your employees to take on more relevant jobs that a computer program cannot tackle. So your staff is getting more work done without adding to your overhead or their work hours. 

These are the two most beneficial roles filled by implementing accounting automation systems. But there are several others that are equally prevalent and, for some CFOs, just as important, including:

• Better security

Automation minimizes the risk of devastating threats like data breaches and cyberattacks. Secure digital file storage can cut out a huge channel for these potential problems. It also alleviates a lot of data sharing, reducing internal fraud within your company. 

• Tax filing and compliance

Compliance issues cost businesses thousands of dollars every year. So compliance assurance is certainly one of the most valuable benefits accounting software has to offer a business of any size. 

• Reporting 

Since everything is managed within the accounting software, reports, charts, tables, and figures are easily created. For example, you can quickly generate a table, fixing the appropriate parameters to include only the relevant data for your query. And the reports are generated automatically. 

This list goes on and on. Different automated accounting software will include various features like automating invoices, tracking expenses, managing inventory, and reconciling bank statements. And that’s not even considering the cost benefit analysis. After all, how much are you paying your accountant per hour for services they’re providing?

Automated Accounting Software, Taking Your Business to the Next Level

Of course, automated accounting software is only one aspect of getting your business accounts in order. Corporate payment management, payroll tools, and tax prep software are also essential if you want to keep your business finances running smoothly, avoid inconvenient and costly vendor payment failures, and minimize unnecessary spending. With the right tools in place, your business can save, allocate, and thrive.

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