Manual processes that practices still rely on
1. Project planning
Currently, a majority of accounting practices use Excel spreadsheets to track jobs and employee capacity. Not only does this take a fair amount of employee time entering and searching data, but it’s also prone to errors from typos and out-of-date information. It’s not very efficient to spend time putting out admin fires on tasks that could have been automated in the first place. An automated planner avoids that, while increasing employee capacity and cutting WIP time, so you can bill faster.
2. Debtor management
This is another area where manual systems are undermining productivity goals – endless phone calls and emails to debtors don’t just suck time from the day, they can also lower the morale of your employees without actually bringing in any payments. Building automation into your debtor management smooths cash flow and puts valuable employee time onto more important things.
3. Receipt payments
If you’re manually logging payments into different systems, you have the opportunity for a huge efficiency win. Automation and working in one central system are key here – you’ll streamline processes, dramatically reduce time spent and ensure no payments get lost.
4. Lead-tracking
Using an Excel spreadsheet to track and convert leads to new clients is rife with potential flaws. What if the spreadsheet isn’t updated? Are you sure the information has been logged correctly? Having an automated system with one source of ‘truth’ for lead data that syncs automatically between teammates is a much quicker, more painless way to manage your current and future clients.
5. Recurring billing
If you’re raising recurring billing one by one, you’re wasting time and opening the door to potential payment errors, especially if your clients have differing fee structures. With an integrated system, all the info will get sucked in from timesheets and the invoices sent automatically. You could be out the door by 5 pm every night.
6. Maintaining security
Many practices keep clients' confidential information outside of their existing system because it doesn’t offer the security they need. This creates disparate systems that mean yet more double-handling of data and doesn’t necessarily add much to the security. A better idea is to choose one system with all the security features you need.
7. Reporting
Making important decisions from up-to-date, accurate business insights can be the difference between success and failure. If your team is generating reports by manually extracting the latest data from multiple systems and importing it to Excel for interpretation, you probably won’t end up with anything very useable. The reports generated this way are more likely to hinder rather than help management – data may be weeks or months out of date, and almost certainly missing crucial info or riddled with errors.
