Automate your practice: A guide for accountants and bookkeepers

Delivering more value to clients should be high up on the agenda for any accounting or bookkeeping practice. But the need to collate, organize, and process large amounts of data as part of your daily workflow can easily get in the way. To help you tackle this challenge, it’s worth turning to technology. By automating the processes that are slowing you down – such as data entry for your bookkeeping  – you can focus more on advising your clients. The Automate your practice guide explores the benefits of eliminating manual processes and provides tips for ensuring a smooth transition to automation. Automate your practice covers the following topics:

• • Automation in practice
  • The foundations of automation
  • Where to automate
  • The benefits of automation

• Automate your practice
• Start your automation journey with Sage

An excerpt from Automate your practice

Business is shifting to a near-live environment, so financial processes need to match the speed at which decisions are made. Access to real-time data enables a transition to more proactive and informed decision-making. This opens up opportunities to change how you work with your clients. Producing accurate and meaningful management accounts quickly, as well as completing year-end returns and tax information helps improve the visibility of business performance and cash outflows. Automation is about creating the right controls and processes to manage the flow of information around revenue and costs. In turn, it helps to reduce the amount of time required to manually process and manipulate data. An agile service is a better service and forms the foundations of your future success.

Bridging the skills gap with clients

Many small businesses still rely on paper-based records and aren’t aware of the benefits of a digitization. This can create problems when it comes to timely reporting under an increased burden of regulation, as well as a the ability to remain competitive. For some, automation could simply mean taking pictures of receipts on their phone, or forwarding invoices by email can save considerable time and speed up bookkeeping. Such simple changes can have a direct impact on cash flow, including automated invoice credit control to help reduce aged debts and boost bank balance.