Clever ways to reduce bookkeeping in your business
We are always looking for ways to help business owners to improve the efficiency of the running of their business and to save time and costs. Working on business processes day in day out, we’ve come across some great tools that can help your finance people reduce the time they spend on repetitive and routine tasks. This will give them the space they need to upskill, and enable them to deliver more meaningful financial data and analysis. It’s a win-win for any growing business.
My top three tips for getting rid of those time consuming tasks that probably cost you more than you think are:
- Invoice Scanning
There are many software providers (Datamolino, Concur, AutoEntry etc.) that provide a low cost and reliable method of converting paper and PDFs invoices into a digital format, that link directly with most mainstream accounting software providers. The software creates a draft posting for you to review and post into your accounting software, eliminating manual entry and reducing the risk of errors or inaccuracies.
- Digital Expense Claim Submissions
No longer should the finance department be receiving copies of a myriad range of paper receipts. Use of solutions such as Xero Expenses and Concur allows the non-finance employee to submit expenses electronically by taking photos of receipts, data from which is then pulled to generate a draft posting.
- Digital Repository
Use of a document management system such as DropBox or Microsoft Sharepoint allows the business to store the required business records electronically, reducing cost and the physical space required for storage. Alternatively, some accounting software has the ability to store the relevant documents attached to the accounting entry.
The time your people will save by utilising these methods frees up time for work on higher value and more rewarding tasks such as financial analysis and management reporting. Not only does this mean that the business will be able to make intuitive business decisions based on current data, it manes your people will be open to new challenges and the opportunity to learn.
I’m always looking out for what’s on the market to help business processes, and there are many innovations that I haven’t touched on here. If you’d like to know more about what’s available to help your business finance function run smarter, please get in touch for a chat.