Almost around 60% of the businesses are unhappy about how their accounting and finance processes work, as quoted by National. Do you want to get an accounting solution that makes your employees say the same? When technology brings much to benefit from, why follow the age-old accounting procedures only to end up with a higher tendency of frauds, errors, and misappropriations?
Yes, you wouldn’t want that.
7 Key Accounting solution
1. It should have a friendly User interface
Generally speaking, accounting and finance software is designed to be used by all kinds of users who have been given access. But it’s still important to ensure the one you choose is nothing less than being user-friendly, intuitive, and can be used by anyone on your team — even those who aren’t accountants or technically proficient.
In addition, your choice should also be flexible and highly functional. We recommend options that offer multidimensional reporting features, which means your team can develop reports tailored to your company’s needs and goals.
2. It should be Cloud-based
Cloud-based accounting software for your small business can help in faster growth, enhancing the financial health of your business. It is remotely accessible, keeps the data safe, reduces frauds and errors, and has quite a lot of space to store data that does not take a lot of time to be accessed. Cloud-based software does not require you to shift from one platform to another if you need any evaluations, reports, or even periodic stats for comparisons.
As reported by Forbes, other accounting tasks like tax preparation and payroll management would also be automated by 2022.
Cloud-based solutions are highly centralized, so even if your company is being operated from different parts of the world, you can rest assured that all accounting and finance data is parked in one avenue. Not to mention, they are also scalable; thus, with your organization growing, you do not need to arrange for additional systems to back up and store the data.
3. It should be equipped with all core accounting modules
By core accounting modules, we are aiming to establish that the software should support everything from the accounts to the preparation of financial statements and related reports. It should be able to generate and create purchase orders, credit sales orders, and return invoices. It should support auto-generation of general ledger entries and treat account receivables and payables accurately and sovereignly.
As reported by Tipalti, accounting automation makes you save around $16 per invoice.
4. It should ensure data security
Financial figures are sensitive data and should never fall into the wrong hands. Choose accounting software that provides comprehensive and reliable security features. Buying from reputable sellers should also be a top priority for you. Look for user-based login features, as this is always a good security precaution. This means that only the people on your accounting, business and finance team can access the software with authorization. Furthermore, their access is limited to their duties. In other words, the person assigned to payroll management will only have access to data related to payroll needs.
58% of the big organizations already use cloud-based accounting solution, as reported by Accounting Today. When would you set foot to join the league?
5. Billing and inventory management
Accounting systems will have various basic functions, and nearly all of them offer basic billing and inventory management. However, if you have them all integrated into one system, you will be able to reduce a significant amount of time when transferring or to migrate data from one system to another. There are many benefits to having this integration. Such accounting solutions can bring accuracy and efficiency to your organization. This means that errors can be minimized if they are not eliminated.
Why wouldn’t it, however? Only 14% of the invoices are input into the system when being dealt with manually. (Source: Tipalti)
6. It should be able to prepare tax accounting statements
We cannot emphasize this enough. While it is important to keep profits and revenues in check and control, it is also important to prepare taxes side by side. A full-time tax accountant can prepare your taxes for you, but why not automate it when you can and reduce errors and misappropriations?
Where 52% of the businesses feel like they pay too much taxes (source: Accounting Today)
So why be one of those?
As much as customer relationship management software is important, so are all those that streamline the internal processes of your small and medium-sized businesses.
7. It should have customer support that can actually provide support
For any new product or service, especially one that can significantly impact your business, it’s important to know if there’s customer support. You may have a question about a feature, have trouble linking your bank account and other applications, or want to find a tutorial. Regardless, you want to know in advance that there is some support you may need (before you run into an issue that disrupts your workflow).
No matter how technically proficient you are, learning a new program can be challenging. Now and then, you can need customer support; thus, you should be sure that the chosen software would provide you with that.
Bottom Line
Accounting solution or software should essentially make your accounting tasks easier, save time, and increase the department’s overall productivity. Even after hiring in-house employees, the shift towards remote work practices has itself called for a centralized system where all related task managers can collaborate and streamline processes. Why do we only include small and medium-sized businesses? Because a business cannot become “big” unless they follow a systematic approach.