Top 3 Accountings Trends to Follow in 2020

Three main 2020 accounting trends will change the landscape of finance departments in companies of all sizes: automation & artificial intelligence, cloud accounting solutions, and outsourced accounting functions. What do all of the trends have in common? They all focus around eliminate time spent on unnecessary manual work in order to spend more time growing your business.

• Automation and Artificial Intelligence

According to Firm for the Future, 86% of current accounting tasks can be automated. With that in mind, finance executives are looking at how advanced artificial intelligence can automate their company’s current manual accounting processes. By removing hours of manual work team members can refocus energy on being strategic leaders and streamlining processes.

How can you take this trend to your company? Look at all of your current solutions, not only for finance, but HR, sales, and marketing. Do they work together? Does your team export report to manipulate data? Are they spending hours typing data into multiple systems? Do any of the solutions have an open API to connect them? Assess your answers to these questions and then evaluate which systems don’t have the capability to automate workflows.

• Cloud Accounting Solutions

Accounting Today reports that cloud accounting solutions currently account for 45% of small businesses, 57% medium-sized businesses, and 58% of large-sized businesses’ accounting solutions. This number will continue to grow as companies become more fluid and dispersed across the country and internationally. Moreover, 67% of accountants think cloud-based solutions make their job easier.  Ease of access, connectivity with solutions from other departments to eliminate duplicate work, and less reliance on IT are pushing droves of accountants to evaluate cloud ERP solutions.

What can you do to adopt this trend? If you don’t already have a cloud-based ERP, make it a point to evaluate what your current on-premise solutions do well and where there are automation gaps. Then start to look at cloud solutions that fill the automation gap specific to your industry. Lastly, prepare your 2020 budget to accommodate for implementation of a new cloud solution.

• Outsourcing Accounting Functions

For small to medium-sized businesses, outsourced accounting functions have become a popular option and will continue to gain popularity as companies want to remain streamlined.  Using an outsourced accounting partner gives companies top accountants to manage their finances while using their limited resources to focus on increasing profitability and grow their passion, which for most is not accounting.

How can you adopt this trend? Look at the time you and your employees are spending on accounting functions. Are you staying up late to make sure the accounting is being completed? Do you have limited insight into financial data? Is someone on your team taking away time from their actual job to make sure that invoices are being sent out and getting paid timely? If you don’t have a strategic finance team in place, we urge you to weigh the costs of adding an additional staff member vs. hiring a highly regarded outsourced accounting company vs. the cost of doing nothing about your financial pains.

rinehimerbaker is an outsourced cloud accounting company that can do it all. We offer consultation and implementation of cloud-based ERP solutions, outsourced accounting, and more.  Contact our team at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com to find out more about how we can help you keep up with 2020’s biggest accounting trends.