From streamlining tedious tasks to providing real-time insights, automation is revolutionizing the way accounting operates. However, amidst this transformation, the role of financial accountants is not becoming obsolete. Rather, it's evolving.
The implementation of accounting automation represents a paradigm shift in the way organizations approach financial management. With automation tools at their disposal, CPA firms can bid farewell to tedious data entry tasks and other similarly laborious processes. Instead, they can harness the power of automation to streamline workflows while ensuring greater accuracy in reporting - and more.
No longer constrained by the limitations of manual processes, organizations can leverage automation technology to drive efficiency, optimize productivity, and unlock new levels of accuracy in financial analyses. Let's explore the potential of accounting automation and its significance to the industry.
Accounting automation refers to the use of technology to streamline and automate traditional accounting processes. It involves the implementation of software and systems to handle tasks such as data entry, reconciliation, and reporting. This shift represents a departure from the era of paper ledgers and calculations and from inefficiently using digital tools for manual input, marking a new era of efficiency and accuracy in financial management.
Automation through APIs and workflows allows firms to use technology to accomplish traditional accounting goals. By leveraging sophisticated software and advanced systems, organizations can automate tasks while minimizing the need for manual intervention and significantly reducing incidences of error. Indeed, there are numerous benefits associated with automating accounting systems.
The benefits of automating accounting tasks become clear once automation is implemented and systematized. The fact that it's straightforward and efficient makes automation so desirable to today's CPA firms.
The most obvious benefit of automation is reducing net time spent on virtually any task. When a workflow or an API handles input or retrieval tasks, for example, that an employee normally would do on their own, it frees up time to do more and different things.
Tracking expenses is simplified, only requiring a team member to enter the information in the system along with any receipts. The expense tracking is essentially complete at this point. This is one example out of many of how time is saved through automation.
When closing out a fiscal period, as long as a team has input everything correctly, reconciliation should be done as the data is checked and copied automatically.
Export the data to accounting and reporting applications, and what used to take days or weeks now takes mere minutes.
Digitized processes work better by allowing applications to integrate with one another and work in tandem in real time. A payroll software integrates with CCH or a firm's preferred accounting platform with a mutual exchange of data, and so on.
Gone are the days of manually copying between platforms, even if a firm keeps a great Excel document as that middleman.
This is where a cloud-based practice management tool proves most useful. Unifying multiple accounting and linked financial processes, team members, networks, and systems can stay updated and in communication, all in one place.
There's a lot of talk about automating certain careers, whether through AI or otherwise. This is especially true for jobs with many manual and repetitive tasks expected of them - such as accounting.
This prospect may instill fear into the heart of a dedicated career CPA, but it actually spells for professional development opportunities. While it may feel like this is the golden era of machine learning, automated systems still need smart people in the driving seat to make them work.
Properly administered accounting automation should allow for greater expression of judgment by (human) accountants and hopefully mitigate some of the more laborious crucibles associated with the profession. Firms can focus more on strategizing, management, and good old-fashioned person-to-person communication with clients.
The modern CPA should be excited to use automation tools that allow them to become not just an expert accountant but also an accounting software expert.
You're not still storing paper records in file cabinets, right?
Fortunately, regulators and government tax offices are moving toward digital storage across the board so that firms don't have to keep overflowing boxes on site for the foreseeable future.
Even if a firm is digitized, there is always the challenge of ensuring proper, regulation-abiding storage of documents for years to come. There isn't necessarily one "correct" platform or method.
Regardless of the particulars of how an agency stores its documents for the long term, automating the storage process makes it easier and more accurate than ever. Entering data into a ledger can be automated to store proof of purchase in an associated folder, for example.
The documents are then readily accessible from anywhere if they're stored in the cloud. No need to rummage through the Documents folder in hopes of finding the right file to sort, much less the boxes in the storage room.
Because of optimized record storage, accounting automation makes it easy to find almost any file in a matter of seconds.
New tools, especially good practice management software, are built to do this even better than more general applications alone. Excel is useful, but simply storing spreadsheets locally rather than with cloud-based automation makes it harder to quickly locate critical details across a vast number of documents because it isn't centralized.
Whether it's itemized totals or individual data points, automated systems are just better when it comes to pinpointing, analyzing, and organizing them.
Ancillary to time savings is greater productivity - the ability to do more in a day comes naturally with more available time.
It may be unnerving to have fewer billable hours, but automating some of the tedium of accounting means more professional growth. Importantly, accountants can spend more time building relationships with clients and help maximize their financial well-being. Being able to do this more often also means being able to do it for more clients, facilitating growth.
Even the most fastidious accountants will eventually make mistakes.
The good news is that automated machines rarely make mistakes. So infrequently, in fact, that a properly configured automation can be trusted to be mostly accurate with data. Most anomalies will be from human error.
This isn't to say that automation is infallible, nor that a firm shouldn't be taking good care to verify data. The real benefit of automation, though, is that it reduces the opportunities for humans to inevitably err in the course of doing tedious manual processes with large amounts of data.
This will reduce time spent on fixing errors because a reliable automated process will have a very low risk of mishandling data along the way.
Savvy firms looking to automate are increasingly moving to the cloud because it is revolutionary when compared with the past regimes of USB sticks, on-site servers, and being forced to drive to the office just to make a simple change to a document.
Cloud computing has many benefits, and having access to accounting tools, processes, and files from anywhere there is an internet connection is incredibly powerful and convenient. It enables automation to be more effective than ever before.
Say goodbye to manual processes and move to effortless cloud-based accounting management with Cetrom. Simplify your accounting operation and take your business to the next level with integrated automation across a unified cloud infrastructure.
Discover how by connecting with Cetrom today.