Gaining Financial Control: Start streamlining with simple accounting automations

Implementing simple automations within your accounting systems can have many potential business benefits for SMEs, including significant improvements in efficiencies, reduced inaccuracies and of course cost savings.

The prospect of selecting the right technology and understanding which accounting automations can bring the biggest benefit to your business can be daunting. Our recommendation is to start first with some simple accounting automations – small changes can make a big difference. You’ll then be able to build on these automations.

And of course, don’t forget there is always support available. A good Financial Controller will be able to help guide you through the benefits of each accounting platform and will have the insight to know which system will be best suited to your business. They’ll also be able to provide a roadmap for how to implement accounting automations effectively.

Many accountants will be tied into a particular software provider and will steer you in this direction, so be mindful to explore every option available and get some impartial advice.

Simple automations to gain financial control

When considering accounting automation, the one thing you can be sure about is that there are some simple wins that, when chosen carefully and implemented properly (this is the important bit), will definitely deliver some great efficiencies and cost savings.

Data entry is the easiest place to start, and there are lots of ways you can opt to get those little artificial intelligence (AI) robots helping out with your bookkeeping – by automatically integrating supplier invoices and expenses with your accounting package, for starters.

The key apps you should be looking at here are Dext, Hubdoc and AutoEntry – but did you know this functionality is already built-in within Xero?

To compare the functionality and pricing of each app, we can recommend taking a look at a useful guide provided by the YRH Finance Team’s Guide to Accounting Automations, which provides handy comparisons.

Evaluating simple automations

Before you get started there are a few key things to consider including:

• Which accounting system you’re using – the different AI works more effectively with some systems than others.
• How the pricing varies – some base their pricing on volumes, others on numbers of users
• Unique functionality – what updates are coming?
• Have a plan for implementing the system – consider whether it’s better to be implemented at month-end, or after the VAT return has been filed for the quarter.
• Make sure you walk your team through how to use it properly
• Get someone who has implemented the system before to advise on which one best suits your needs and to implement this properly for you
• If you haven’t yet got automatic bank feeds working, then that’s an easy win – but again, get help implementing this, as it’s easy for initial transactions to be duplicated or missed.

We hope this has given you food for thought about how some simple tweaks can make a real difference to the efficiency of your accounting systems.

If you are looking to take ‘proper financial control’ of your growing business then we strongly recommend taking professional advice.  Don’t try to deal with the essential aspect of your business alone – you need specific skills and knowledge to get things right!

Advice on taking financial control of your business from Yorkshire Powerhouse

Have you any questions?

Here at Yorkshire Powerhouse, we’re happy to help as much as possible – is there anything else we can do to help you, do you have any further questions or can we help introduce you to an expert – please let us know: