Cloud-based financial management and accounting solutions are the perfect fit for software, SaaS, and subscription-based companies. After all, they’re built on and deployed using the same technology as the products and services you’re offering to your customers. Automation, speed, agility, cost-savings, scalability—these are among the many benefits of using today’s web-based services, so you know first-hand there’s no reason you need to manage your financials manually using spreadsheets and outdated or on-premise software.
Let’s consider how a cloud solution can help you effectively address your top financial management and accounting challenges:
Built for Today and Tomorrow
Cloud accounting solutions deliver the right information at the right time:
the accuracy of information, speed of information, and clear metrics and forecasting your software company requires to take advantage of growth opportunities. Whether you’re pursuing expansion or preparing to go public, you need both financial and operational insights to inform next steps.
Decision-makers today want to keep track of performance while tuning into real-time business intelligence—and cloud accounting systems, like Sage Intacct, provide users with multi-dimension reporting, drillable dashboards, and anytime/anywhere access to cash and critical SaaS metrics. And thanks to automation, both day-to-day and closing period financial activities are sped up, so executives (and other stakeholders, like potential investors) aren’t waiting for insights related to performance or forecasting.
What’s more, cloud-based software can easily be customized to centralize financial management for companies with multiple entities and even accommodate multiple currencies.
Syncs Front Office With Back Office
You want your back office to keep up with your front office—or even better, work seamlessly “quote-to-cash” so you can keep up with customer demands and boost the top and bottom lines. And you need a financial technology environment that can easily scale without adding accounting department headcount or making your existing workload more complicated than it already is.
Sage Intacct’s contract-driven financial management and accounting solution is built to align your sales workflows and accounting processes—with a focus on building relationships. Thanks to bi-directional integration between Intacct and Salesforce, both your sales team and accounting team have access to the same data. And it’s data that doesn’t need to be entered multiple times; data syncs and flows for optimal, interdepartmental use, with built-in collaboration tools for added efficiency.
As a modern software company, you have to be flexible with pricing and offerings to keep customers happy for long-term. The right financial management and accounting solution will make this easy, enabling you to customize customer contracts as well as revenue and billing workflows, even for subscription-based customers.
Supports Complex Revenue and Subscription Billing Management
Change happens fast and ensuring compliance can be nothing short of a headache for your accounting team. For starters, keeping all the guidelines and standards straight, like AICPA’s Statements of Position (SOP) 81-1, 97-2 and 98-9, SEC Staff Accounting Bulletins (SAB) 101 and 104, and EITF 00-21, 08-01 and 09-03, is cumbersome—especially if you’re using spreadsheets.
Plus, revenue recognition is difficult when you sell multiple elements bundled together with varying delivery schedules. Your company may have complex contracts with complicated billing requirements that practically beg for automated processes.
Cloud accounting solutions like Sage Intacct’s enable you to easily manage revenue recognition calculations and changes as well as complex billing options. It supports multiple price lists with appropriate pricing ratios support tracking, reporting, and auditing across product lines, channels, geographies, and time spans. And when it comes to renewal revenue, Sage Intacct empowers you with tools to maximize ongoing sales opportunities and bill customers in multiple ways, from recurring and usage-based to event-based percentage of completion.
To learn more, contact us.
QuickBooks Has Crashed… Again: What it Means and What You Can Do about It
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Outgrowing QuickBooks /by rinehimerbakerContrary to popular belief, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are not always “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” For small business finance and accounting professionals, there is another phrase that strikes even more fear, anger and disdain: “QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”
“QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”
So how do you go about trying to tackle the problem? You run a clean reinstall. You download the diagnostic tool. You run a second clean reinstall. You attempt to run it without antivirus. You rename the .tlg file. You update it, you repair it, you download every tool in the book, and you still see those nine terrifying words: “QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”
It’s infuriating. It’s painful. It happens over and over and over. Those nine terrifying words are etched in your memory. Yet it’s all too common. You search the knowledge base for answers, and you see that you’re not alone. A quick Google search for the exact phrase “QuickBooks has Stopped Working” yields 959 results on the Intuit Community alone, and over 16,000 results across the web.
8 Common QuickBooks Crashes
So when is QuickBooks most likely to crash? As a company that has helped many companies outgrowing QuickBooks to make the move, we have heard many complaints about the platform.
However, it’s not only the crashes that present a problem. QuickBooks might run slowly in multi-user mode. It might run slowly if your audit trail gets too long. It might run slowly when your data file gets too big.
Reasons QuickBooks Crashes
There are many reasons for this. Some of the most commonly referenced ones on the Intuit Community:
For a software that’s been around as long as QuickBooks has, there’s certainly a lot that can go wrong.
Two Reasons the Problem Isn’t Going Away
QuickBooks users around the world face the same struggles—especially as it pertains to the software crashing. Unfortunately, there are two reasons that you will continue to face problems.
QuickBooks was Built to be a Desktop Application
QuickBooks was built as a desktop application, which is why most of the reasons above revolve around computer and file-based issues. This is something that isn’t going to change. Anything from a change in operating system to the use of an anti-virus software can derail the entire QuickBooks desktop experience, causing crashes and other poor experiences.
It was initially thought that QuickBooks would address this when it introduced QuickBooks Online, but customers quickly found that it didn’t hold up to customer expectations. QuickBooks wasn’t built to be an online application, so when Intuit tried to rebuild QuickBooks for the web, it ended up putting up a web application that is lacking, according to G2Crowd reviews.
You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks
QuickBooks’ other fatal flaw—at least as it pertains to growing businesses, is that you’re asking it to do too much. Just as QuickBooks was designed to be a desktop software (i.e. run on a personal computer), QuickBooks was designed to make life easier for the small business owner. Again, we’ve said it on our blog before—QuickBooks is great for small businesses. It’s the larger businesses that push the software to (and past) its limitations.
While not always why the software crashes, a large file size is one of the main reasons that the software runs slowly. Also, as the file size grows, so does the risk and impact of the file being corrupted.
Barring an unfortunate turn of events, the latter of these two isn’t going to change—once you’ve outgrown QuickBooks, there’s no looking back.
Looking Forward: Moving Past QuickBooks
When your business was just starting up, adopting QuickBooks was almost a rite of passage. It was a welcome sign of your company’s growth and the accounting system met your needs for a time. But your business has kept growing, and now you’re seeing the limitations of the system you once depended on. QuickBooks simply doesn’t offer all the capabilities you need today—or tomorrow. The time has come, once again, for a change.
We invite you to learn more about additional warning signs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement from downloading our guide for companies outgrowing QuickBooks, which you can preview below.
How SMBs Are Meeting Today’s Top Accounting Challenges
/0 Comments/in Intacct /by rinehimerbakerYour company may have twenty employees—or have a twenty-person finance and accounting department. Either way, your team likely grapples with processes or systems that no longer serve you. Business growth leads to any number of challenges, but aren’t they just opportunities to improve and work smarter? Read more
Nonprofits: Choosing or Changing Your Fiscal Year-End
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Nonprofits /by rinehimerbakerRunning a successful nonprofit requires a lot of hard work and timely decision making, often without the prestige or paycheck that comes with doing so for a comparably sized for-profit organization. With all this in mind, we would today like to explore one tactic that could improve your visibility, help you better time your expenditures, and simplify your budgeting. This tactic, changing your nonprofit organization’s year-end, has both costs and benefits associated with it, but often can improve outcomes for the organization and its constituents.
Calendar Year vs. Fiscal Year
The IRS allows nonprofits to file using one of two methods: calendar year and fiscal year, offering the following definitions:
Problems with “Traditional” Calendar Years
For some nonprofits, there is nothing wrong with a traditional December 31 year-end—or even a commonly-used June 30 fiscal year-end. For others, these dates pose inconvenience and uncertainty.
Moving away from a traditional calendar year for tax purposes could help you get more clarity into your revenue streams, as well as better control of your budgeting. For many nonprofits, changing your year-end can help you handle fluctuations in revenue (i.e. large amounts of donations coming in the last quarter of the calendar year), and adjust your budgets accordingly.
In addition to this, moving to a fiscal year can help you stay on the good side of employees, who may not want to spend their holidays closing the books, or who don’t want to immediately transition from filing their own income taxes in April to preparing their company’s Form 990 by May.
Why You May Want to Change Your Year-End
So, why would a nonprofit want to adopt a different fiscal year? Many reasons exist, but most commonly, a nonprofit would change its year end to match the ebb and flow of the revenue cycle common in not-for-profit organizations. As mentioned above, using a calendar year creates blind spots in budgeting, as it’s hard to plan an entire year around a highly volatile Q4.
Considerations on Choosing Your Nonprofit’s Fiscal Year-End
Laurie De Armond of BDO and Lee Byrd of Langdon CPAs explored the premise of changing your year end, finding that some of the most important considerations include:
Paperwork for Changing Year-End
Nonprofits looking to change their year-end need to file Form 1128, Application to Adopt, Change, or Retain a Tax Year, with instructions available here. Form 1128 is used by corporations, Individuals, trusts, and any other entity that needs to change its accounting period with the IRS.
Filing a Short-Year Form 990
If the organization changes its accounting period, it must file a Form 990 for the short period resulting from the change and write “Change of Accounting Period” at the top of this short-period return.
Timing Your Change in Fiscal Year
According to the Cullinane Law Group, a law firm in Austin, Texas serving nonprofits and social enterprises, “If the nonprofit wants to change its fiscal year, it must file IRS Form 1128 by the 15th day of the 5th month following the close of the new fiscal year. Example: Current fiscal year runs from January 1 to December 31; new fiscal year to run from October 1 to September 30. Form 1128 is due on February 15th of the following year.”
Learn More: Running a Successful Nonprofit
At rinehimerbaker, we are committed to helping you succeed. This is why we have written a series of helpful articles on running the finances at a nonprofit organization. We invite you to learn more by reading our articles on Outcome measures, improving reporting, and increasing efficiency. Learn even more by reading these two nonprofit success stories from our friends at Sage Intacct, and contact us for more details.
Aligning Finance, Sales, and Customer Service at the Modern Organization
/0 Comments/in Intacct /by rinehimerbakerWith the speed of business faster than it’s ever been, missed opportunities are costlier, customers have higher expectations, and any hiccups, tensions or failures in communication could be the difference between growth and failure. Today, we would like to discuss one consideration in communications that is often overlooked—the relationship between sales and finance—that is a key factor in the modern organization.
Why You Need to Keep Accounting and Finance “In the Loop”
While your sales and customer service people may not think that they need to “have finance on speed dial,” there are many occasions when a situation arises in which finance needs to respond immediately. This could include any non-routine transactions—clarifying policies, gathering missing information, resolving exceptions—which require finance’s input and expertise.
Now, imagine the current process in which one of these non-routine transactions takes place. Such a process would commonly start with an email from the salesperson to finance. The finance person would then need to go into the accounting software, dig through the information, and make the decision, jumping from application to application to get context and respond. The process is clumsy, laborious, and time-consuming, and occurs at a time when speed is the name of the game.
This is why we would like to discuss with you an easy way to connect finance with the rest of your organization, bringing them closer to the rest of the company and allowing them to approve, clarify, and make decisions within the ERP/accounting software.
How Sage Intacct Collaborate Bridges Organizational Communication Gaps
One of the biggest initiatives by Sage Intacct (then just Intacct) over the last decade was to find a new way to connect finance with the rest of the organization. In 2014, the company introduced Collaborate, a function built on Salesforce Chatter to create a secure social layer across all finance processes and across devices through the Salesforce1 Mobile App.
For Finance, Sales, and Services employees, this means they can now work collaboratively to keep processes efficient even in the face of snags due to requested exceptions, ambiguous data, or changing policies. For many organizations, this has not only led to product and service improvements, it has also led to shorter order-to-cash (O2C) times, reduced reliance on email to accomplish tasks, and faster flow of information.
Learn More
Sage Intacct Collaborate is just one of the many features of Sage Intacct that empowers finance to work smarter, not harder. Learn more about the Collaborate platform here, read about the benefits on the Sage Intacct Blog, and contact us to learn more.
How Cloud Accounting Drives Higher ROI for Software and SaaS Companies
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Software and SaaS /by rinehimerbakerCloud-based financial management and accounting solutions are the perfect fit for software, SaaS, and subscription-based companies. After all, they’re built on and deployed using the same technology as the products and services you’re offering to your customers. Automation, speed, agility, cost-savings, scalability—these are among the many benefits of using today’s web-based services, so you know first-hand there’s no reason you need to manage your financials manually using spreadsheets and outdated or on-premise software.
Let’s consider how a cloud solution can help you effectively address your top financial management and accounting challenges:
Built for Today and Tomorrow
Cloud accounting solutions deliver the right information at the right time:
the accuracy of information, speed of information, and clear metrics and forecasting your software company requires to take advantage of growth opportunities. Whether you’re pursuing expansion or preparing to go public, you need both financial and operational insights to inform next steps.
Decision-makers today want to keep track of performance while tuning into real-time business intelligence—and cloud accounting systems, like Sage Intacct, provide users with multi-dimension reporting, drillable dashboards, and anytime/anywhere access to cash and critical SaaS metrics. And thanks to automation, both day-to-day and closing period financial activities are sped up, so executives (and other stakeholders, like potential investors) aren’t waiting for insights related to performance or forecasting.
What’s more, cloud-based software can easily be customized to centralize financial management for companies with multiple entities and even accommodate multiple currencies.
Syncs Front Office With Back Office
You want your back office to keep up with your front office—or even better, work seamlessly “quote-to-cash” so you can keep up with customer demands and boost the top and bottom lines. And you need a financial technology environment that can easily scale without adding accounting department headcount or making your existing workload more complicated than it already is.
Sage Intacct’s contract-driven financial management and accounting solution is built to align your sales workflows and accounting processes—with a focus on building relationships. Thanks to bi-directional integration between Intacct and Salesforce, both your sales team and accounting team have access to the same data. And it’s data that doesn’t need to be entered multiple times; data syncs and flows for optimal, interdepartmental use, with built-in collaboration tools for added efficiency.
As a modern software company, you have to be flexible with pricing and offerings to keep customers happy for long-term. The right financial management and accounting solution will make this easy, enabling you to customize customer contracts as well as revenue and billing workflows, even for subscription-based customers.
Supports Complex Revenue and Subscription Billing Management
Change happens fast and ensuring compliance can be nothing short of a headache for your accounting team. For starters, keeping all the guidelines and standards straight, like AICPA’s Statements of Position (SOP) 81-1, 97-2 and 98-9, SEC Staff Accounting Bulletins (SAB) 101 and 104, and EITF 00-21, 08-01 and 09-03, is cumbersome—especially if you’re using spreadsheets.
Plus, revenue recognition is difficult when you sell multiple elements bundled together with varying delivery schedules. Your company may have complex contracts with complicated billing requirements that practically beg for automated processes.
Cloud accounting solutions like Sage Intacct’s enable you to easily manage revenue recognition calculations and changes as well as complex billing options. It supports multiple price lists with appropriate pricing ratios support tracking, reporting, and auditing across product lines, channels, geographies, and time spans. And when it comes to renewal revenue, Sage Intacct empowers you with tools to maximize ongoing sales opportunities and bill customers in multiple ways, from recurring and usage-based to event-based percentage of completion.
To learn more, contact us.
Three Tips for Making the Most of the Cloud’s Cybersecurity
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerIt has been well documented that cloud providers work hard to protect your data, and generally offer more security, innovation, and data protection than you could justify spending—it’s just what happens when a company is managing more data than an average enterprise handles, and would go out of business if it was ever discovered that they were lax in security.
However, you can’t just put all of your data up in the cloud and call it safe. Recently, the Small Business Center of Excellence held a webcast on small business cybersecurity strategies, inviting a leader in the cybersecurity arena, Jerry Irvine, CIO of Prescient Solutions, to speak on important strategies for embracing cybersecurity. While he spoke of many things, one thing that resonated with us was this: While cloud providers do great work to lock down your data from their end, many businesses are still getting some of the most basic user-side security practices incorrect.
Three Tips for Locking Down the End-User Side of the Cloud Security Equation
Using one example, Mr. Irvine explained that just because a cloud provider has enterprise-level security, they also allow you to make poor security decisions such as declining multi-factor authentication, giving some people more access than they need, or failing to monitor logins. In this, many businesses still run the risk of user-side weaknesses in the event of business email compromise/phishing/spear phishing, business process compromise, and more.
Multi-Factor Authentication
In something that is surprisingly an option for many cloud vendors—as opposed to a standard feature—offer multi-factor authentication as an option. While one may think that this is a convenience issue, failing to enforce 2FA or MFA is a security issue.
What Is Multi-Factor Authentication?
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of computer access control in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting several separate pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism – typically at least two of the following categories: knowledge (something they know), possession (something they have), and inherence (something they are).
How to Embrace This
Most cloud providers will require two- or multi-factor authentication. However, if they are leaving it as an option, you as a business leader need to enforce it. We recommend developing a policy within your organization to require any employee with access to company data—especially when it’s in the cloud—to use this to protect data.
Smarter Permissions Management
It’s a fact: Not everyone needs access to everything. One of the biggest weak points that could occur is when someone has access to something that they shouldn’t. IT departments often give non-technical executives (e.g. VP of Sales, CEOs, CFOs, etc.) broad privilege inside corporate applications, figuring it is better to give too much freedom to upper management than get yelled at when someone can’t create a report.
Many of the most avoidable breaches occur when someone with more access than they should falls for a phishing email, logs into the fake login page, and passes their information off to a hacker.
How to Address This
This one is a relatively simple fix: Only give broad permission to the ones that need it most. The fewer people who can fall for a scam or have their information (and the company’s information) compromised, the better.
Smarter Access
Public Wi-Fi is not secure. Hackers can get access to the Wi-Fi server relatively easily, look for logins, and in turn use them as their own. In addition to this, those who are trying to get into your data are usually coming from a less-than-credible IP address.
How to Address This
If employees are working remotely, one of the first steps you need to take is to make them use a VPN, denying access to cloud applications if they are using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. In addition to this, it’s vital to manage the IP addresses from which someone can log into an application. For instance, you can prevent certain ranges of IP addresses from accessing an application at all, and flag those which may be unsafe or untrusted.
Conclusion
Businesses are leveraging the cloud for its easy access, speed, and security, but sometimes, it pays to take a step back and make sure that you’re doing the basics right. From forcing strong passwords to the tips listed above, know that there is value in security. If you’re looking to move your applications to the cloud, we’d love to help. Learn more about rinehimerbaker and our services, and contact us today.
The Biggest Benefit of Accounts Payable Automation
/0 Comments/in Accounts Payable /by rinehimerbakerThere are so many reasons to automate your accounts payable processes. By streamlining and standardizing your AP functions, you’ll quickly experience the benefits that come from a more efficient workflow and enhanced and more accurate data. You’ll save time and money, strengthen your vendor relationships, and increase productivity. But what you really gain—the benefit that’s driving the widespread adoption of cloud-based AP automation technology—is strategic value for your finance and accounting organization.
Accounting’s New Strategic Paradigm
As we recently explored in two blog posts, Meet the Tech Savvy CFO of 2017 and The Rising Value of the Strategic CFO, the role of today’s finance and accounting teams is changing. We can thank technology for simplifying many of their daily numbers-crunching activities—for freeing up their time and energy to focus on activities, like deep-dive data analysis and reporting, that push the business forward, not simply account for inputs and outputs.
With the right AP automation technology in place, finance and accounting departments are more agile and data-driven. They become part of the strategic conversation, the holders of invaluable insights that guide the business’s next steps and shape the future. But what does the “right” AP technology do for a growing company?
Building a Strong AP Foundation
Ardent Partners’ research report, The State of ePayables 2017, says that strategy-minded AP teams will be pursuing technology-enabled transformation in cash management, supplier management, and business intelligence—three key areas linked directly to AP processes. Taking this a step further, consider the core AP capabilities demonstrated by “Best-in-Class” AP teams vs. all others:
Prioritizing these foundational AP capabilities, says Ardent Partners, “enables access to innovation and an ability to make a greater impact.” This is exactly why organizations are replacing their legacy systems and manual processes with more innovative solutions that automate—and add value to—core accounting functions. Traditional spreadsheets and yesterday’s technology are simply holding them back from making progress as a strategic business entity.
The Cloud Accounting Solution: A Strategic Investment
One of the fastest routes for a growing organization to achieve AP automation—and strategic prowess—is through a cloud accounting software solution. By way of automating once-manual processes, companies standardize transactions and workflows, increase accuracy and timeliness of payments, and have the tools to measure and even increase productivity. What’s more, they are also able to strengthen financial controls, increase visibility (even in real-time), and attain compliance and auditability—with access to user-friendly tools and data around-the-clock.
Learn more in How Cloud Accounting Lets Users Take Control of Process.
Sage Intacct offers the industry-leading and AICPA-preferred accounts payable software. Here are some of the AP tasks can you automate with Sage Intacct’s solution:
And when you integrate the cloud-based solution with your other systems, you can gain even more workflow efficiencies (e.g. less transaction re-keying) and insights over your data. As your capabilities expand by making the most of your technology ecosystem—with AP software at the center—your team will be able to uncover more opportunities and deliver richer, more actionable decision-support to the C-Suite.
So if you’re ready to stop managing payments manually—and you’d appreciate the strategic freedom afforded by a fully automated, digital AP process—contact us to get started.
Find out How Upgrading to the Cloud Lets You Hit the Ground Running.
Why It Pays to Embrace Outcome Metrics in Nonprofit Accounting
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Nonprofits /by rinehimerbakerIn nonprofits, it’s all about the mission. As a CFO, Controller, or Accounting Professional at a nonprofit, it’s likely that you joined the firm because of this mission. While an honorable choice of career and employer, you’re probably working on a shoestring budget with a smaller staff than you should have, and are already burning the midnight oil to close the books or build a report.
Nonetheless, in order to fuel the growth of your nonprofit, you’re probably going to have to do even more reporting. Today, we would like to discuss the importance of outcome measures—key performance indicators that you should use to communicate your nonprofit’s effectiveness to donors, regulators, and stakeholders. Read more
Celebrating National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the Cloud
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerAmong other things, October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a month designated by the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies as a month to teach individuals and businesses about the importance of cybersecurity and discuss opportunities to prevent breaches of personal and business devices. Today, we would like to talk about the month and discuss one very specific way organizations can improve their cybersecurity. Learn more below. Read more
The Game-Changing Impact of Accounts Payable Automation at Growing Businesses
/0 Comments/in Accounts Payable /by rinehimerbakerWhether an individual or an entire team handles your company’s accounting functions, implementing a cloud-based solution to automate their accounts payable process is the ticket to greater employee productivity, departmental efficiency, and strategic growth. That’s because AP is so fundamental to a company’s cash flow position. It’s central to your organization’s financial health, reputation with vendors and creditors, and, ultimately, your ability to increase market share.
Let’s take a look at the advantages of replacing an outdated, manual AP process with a digital solution—and why it’s critical to your company’s future.
Cloud Accounting Brings AP Automation to SMBs
First, it’s important to understand why now is the time to embrace up-to-date AP technology: it’s finally within reach of small and medium-sized businesses. Not too long ago, only larger firms with the financial and IT resources to build on-premise financial management and accounting systems were able to reap the benefits of an automated AP process.
It’s for this reason that the supply management research and advisory experts from Ardent Partners place “a more automated accounts payable process” as the first among their accounts payables predictions. They credit the rise of cloud-based solutions that make the game-changing technology (finally) accessible to SMBs who need the enhanced functionality to compete and grow.
So what AP tasks can be automated with a cloud accounting solution?
For more details, take a few minutes to look at Sage Intacct’s accounts payable software features. The key takeaway is that you can configure your cloud-based accounting solution to work within your company’s existing controls and administrative operations in order to get to the next level—however you define your growth goals. And you can do so affordably. Your new automated AP system will enable your accounting team to:
Eliminate Process Bottlenecks—And Boost Productivity
The AP process is filled with potential time- and energy-suckers. Waiting on invoice approvals, searching stacks of paperwork for vendor contracts, and even mailing out paper check payments—these are among the many inconveniences of a manual (non-automated) workflow. And consider the limitations of your boxed software and spreadsheet-based system: rekeying transactions, manually pulling data from multiple sources, and stumbling over any number of process workarounds. A cloud-based, automated AP software solution digitizes everything, clearing the pipes to makes every task smoother, easier, and faster.
Love the idea of greater efficiency? Get inspired by reading How Cloud Accounting Delivers the Hidden Value of Wasting Time.
Reduce Organizational Costs—And Take Advantage of Opportunities
Lowering costs and maximizing cash flow are primary concerns for growing companies. Unfortunately, manual processes that depend on entry-level accounting systems result in higher than necessary labor costs, human-error related costs, and per-invoice processing costs. A more streamlined, automated AP process, on the other hand, actually saves time while guaranteeing data accuracy, resulting in your ability to lower departmental costs and maximize your human resources, without adding headcount.
In addition, you’ll be able to pursue financial opportunities you couldn’t before, such as early payment discounts and putting your employees on value-added—not simply administrative—projects that actually drive growth. Explore more insights in How Intacct’s Cloud-Based Financial Software Supports Growing Businesses with Automation.
Focus On Strategic Activities—And Support Business Growth
Automating back-office AP functions bring your accounting team up-front-and center, where they’re needed to support business expansion. “No longer a simple back-office function,” says Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer of Ardent Partners in their 2016-2017 ePayables Tech and Innovation Outlook Report, “AP groups are now well-positioned to become true ‘hubs’ of visibility and intelligence, extending the value created within AP more broadly across both the enterprise and supply chain.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!
Contact us to learn more about automating your AP process with today’s best-in-class cloud accounting software solutions.