01 Jul, 2020 | Blogs
Finance and accounting can be extremely stressful due to the nature of the job. Handling copious data and manually transferring values from one spreadsheet to another can drain even the best of accountants. Tasks like managing daily flow of expenses, processing invoices, and generating monthly reports require a lot of process knowledge, pressure-handling capabilities and at least 13-14 hours long commitment at work. Despite all this, there is no guarantee of fool-proof work, and one small mistake can cost dearly to an organization. To avoid these scenarios and stay on top of evolving international financial standards, businesses are relying on finance automation to handle complicated bookkeeping and other financial responsibilities.
Before we explain finance automation, let us agree that accountants today are under huge pressure to perform their tasks while using multiple spreadsheets that are controlled by several stakeholders. This causes confusion and chaos. To take the chaos out of the accounting and finance departments, finance automation can be a great helping hand!
Did you know finance automation is different from the automation of Excel macros and scripts? Read here to know the difference.
What is Finance Automation?
Finance automation or finance process automation is the automation of key high-volume repetitive tasks with the help of a software bot. Some of the tasks that can be automated include accounts reconciliation, journal entries, and generating financial statements. With minimal human intervention, finance automation streamlines processes and ensures things run smoothly without any errors and minimal human intervention.
Role of Automation in Finance and Accounting
Finance automation is not here to replace human accountants with robots, but to work alongside them. It is a great way to increase efficiency and productivity of the team. While it is true that bots will be deployed to handle most of the manual work, it will also make the accountant’s role more strategic. Some of these manual yet key tasks that robots will be expected to execute are:
- Pre-populate financial forms by pulling out information from a common database.
- Transfer data and set up other mundane tasks with system integrations.
- Create workflows for finance business processes so that tasks are automatically routed to the next person without any human intervention or reminder.
- Free up finance executives to focus on tasks that require human intervention, decision-making abilities, and intuition.
- Finance automation ensures error-free data and eliminates manual errors and the reliance on error-prone spreadsheets.
Benefits of Finance Automation
To tackle the clunky finance and accounting processes, let finance automation do the heavy lifting for you. Some of the benefits of automating these processes are:
- Data Integrity
When you use bots to automate processes, you eliminate the scope of errors and ensure data integrity. Automation ensures there are no manual errors, which can often creep in despite having the best of the finance teams.
- Enhance Efficiency
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) streamlines the accounting and finance functions with minimum or no human intervention. It replaces the high-volume repetitive work with reliable and automated processes, ensuring your team focuses on more decision-making tasks.
- Expedite Approvals
Finance and accounting teams are always swamped with budget approvals or reimbursement claims. When these activities are done by bots, it can save your team a lot of time and remove unwieldy email threads that are often referenced to check the status of each approval.
- Provide Complete Visibility
Finance automation gives you a 360-degree visibility into the financials of your company. It helps you understand the reason behind your financial status, which in return allows you to make smarter and informed business decisions.
What is the problem with existing, traditional approach?
As the world wakes up to the new reality, traditional accounting is falling short of the quality that is expected from companies since it usually works on the Record to Report model. These systems are inept at creating the perfect balance sheets. Each line denotes multiple transactions that are recorded on spreadsheets by accounting professionals. Add to it, these executives are under massive pressure to close things within tight deadlines even though the bulk of such work only begins towards the end of the month.
The result: data plagued with manual errors, haywire calculations, and misfiled reports.
Here’s How Nuummite Consulting Can Introduce Finance to RPA
According to a study by the Economist, 91% of the surveyed companies are using various automation technologies to streamline processes. Companies like Nuummite Consulting can help automate your finance process such as Purchase Orders, Purchase Requisitions, Reconciliations, Invoice Approval, and Budget Approvals.
To see how RPA is streamlining account reconciliations, read our blog.
If you are interested in starting your automation journey, simply book a free consultation. Our RPA experts will get in touch with you, understand your business model and do a proof of concept to see how RPA will work in your business environment. If you have more RPA related questions, then contact us to find out about this change-enabling technology.