How can we make life easier for our accounting team while asking more of them?

It’s about automating and streamlining – and takes people, processes, and technology.

Let’s take a look!

Technology

• Set up bank feeds
• Record processes using a tool like Screencast-O-Matic and post the screencasts to a place that the team can access. This helps to get the most value from your top-level finance people instead of having them spend their time on more repetitive financial tasks
• Record task checklists in a workflow tool like Asana, Monday, or Wrike. Start with recurring tasks and include decision-making trees.
• Implement tools to automate tasks which don’t require human judgment, and to batch/streamline tasks which do. For example: memorized transactions, recurring transactions, transaction templates, Batch Enter, Find & Recode.
• Don’t use spreadsheets or other separate stand-alone files if the main technology that you have can do the trick. Learn more about what it’s capable of. Unnecessary separate systems will cause wasted time. If a separate spreadsheet is necessary, design it to be an easily-updatable template.

PROCESSES:

• Encourage electronic transactions and not use paper checks
• Have vendors e-mail their invoices to a Bill.com address or Hubdoc address. Hubdoc will employ OCR and handle some of the data entry for you
• Use a simple, standardized Chart of Accounts. Make sure it’s meaningful to the organization but don’t let it explode with details which don’t contribute to a decision-making process.

PEOPLE:

• Control the quality of the information stream, so make sure that only well-trained, process-oriented people are sending information to the Accounting team.
• Authorize new apps and processes such as the ones listed above. If the invoicing process can be streamlined by using TSheets for example, authorize a training and work with service providers to get the team trained on it.
• Make sure everyone is on board for streamlining and if someone is resistant, decide whether you are going to provide coaching or engage in a different course of action. Someone resistant to process will kill a company.