How Cloud Accounting Delivers the Hidden Value of Wasting Time

Getting more done in less time and finishing a task early. Doesn’t it sound fabulous? Also too good to be true, perhaps, because there’s always something we can do to with that extra time to be even more productive. But why not take a counter-intuitive approach: use that extra time to do anything but work. You just might get more done in the log-run.

Wasting Time Boosts Your Productivity

Many hard working professionals wear “busy-ness” as a badge of honor. There are important things to do and if you don’t focus on what needs to get done, you’ll never accomplish your goals. No argument there. But there’s a point at which enough is enough—productivity starts to wane and what you need more than a cup of coffee or another all-nighter is a brisk walk or a good night’s rest.

The time you spend not working can and should be leveraged to boost your performance while you’re on (and off) the job. According to psychologist Michael Guttridge in a Quartz Media article exploring the workforce “culture of relentless productivity,” instead of sitting at our desks and checking-out by surfing the internet and telling yourself you’re multitasking, you’re better off taking time for yourself.

Disconnect for a while and become unavailable to everyone but yourself—get your blood pumping and let some fresh air flow through your body. Take a walk, flip through a magazine, watch a few episodes of a favorite TV show, listen to an amusing podcast, or just sit down and breathe. These are the seemingly unproductive activities that allow our brains and bodies to de-clutter, re-set, and recharge—so that, believe it or not, you can be even more productive when you get back to work.

Need more opportunities to waste time? Adopt Cloud Accounting.

You can make your work-life more conducive to down time by implementing technology. Cloud-based finance and accounting systems streamline your operations, resulting in significant time-savings. Here’s how:

Automates workflows—handling more transactions, faster.

First and foremost, cloud accounting automates many of your key accounting processes so your team can spend time focused on other things. By clearing your company’s paper-filled pipeline, managers can replace manual invoice and expense approvals, for example, with (quick) digital approvals. And instead of keying-in, downloading and uploading spreadsheet-based data in order to run a report, your team can crunch data with a few clicks and send it off to the decision-maker in literally seconds.

Improves team collaboration—for faster problem-solving.

Cloud accounting systems make it easy for cross-functional teams to share timely information. One reason is that users can work from anywhere, anytime, and on any device—so no one has to skip a beat. But what’s more, Intacct’s solution features a social layer called Intacct Collaborate allowing your team to access conversations at-a-glance and communicate right inside of Intacct.

Take a closer look at cloud-based productivity in What Does it Mean to Have Anytime, Anywhere Accounting Access?

Integrates your systems—so no double, triple, or quadruple entries!

In the manual, pre-cloud-accounting world, accounting teams shifted between several systems in the course of any given day. Logging into one here, opening up another there, accessing yet another ten minutes later…such cross-referencing was time-consuming. Today, disparate systems can be integrated so data flows between them and you can skip the data entry redundancies.

Get more insights in The 3 Top Reasons Your Accounting Team Wants to Upgrade to Intacct.