Top ways to reduce accounting task time-sinks

Time is one of the most valuable assets in any business and especially so for retailers.

Ecommerce presents a host of complexities, all of which create challenges for accountants and book-keepers. Manual data entry, data analysis, tracking invoices and bills, inventory management, reconciling pay-outs in multiple currencies from a dizzying list of payment gateways or marketplace fees for sites and platforms like Amazon, Shopify and Etsy. It’s vast and it’s complex. If your business does not have efficient management of these tasks, crucial time is lost counting your costs, not growing your top-line.

There is a faster, more efficient way to handle the books; integrated, cloud-based accounting software.

The right move

Accountants using cloud-based software spend less than an hour on manual processes a day; and spend less time chasing up tasks that could be automated. Across the week this can amount to up to 15 hours saved which could be spent on other activities important to your business. Processing bills with online payment systems could cut down time spent on these tasks by 73% compared to traditional paper methods. Both the time and money saved by moving to cloud-based accounting are too much to ignore.

Using the right tools

Embracing cloud-based accounting tools gives you access to an arsenal of options to efficiently manage accounting tasks. A2X and Dext are two such tools, these world-class platforms automate your ecommerce accounting, syncing information to your accounting software. Tools like these turn hours into minutes.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Top ways to reduce accounting task time-sinks

1. Automate sales tax

The added reach of ecommerce leads to the challenge of traversing sales taxes. If your business operates in multiple regions, products sold and services provided may require different rates depending on location. It can start to get stressful - manually calculating and generating reports, then managing deadlines for each jurisdiction. Introducing solutions such as TaxJar into your business to automate the sales tax cycles from start to finish can remove the pain. You’ll have no more manual calculations, you can quickly generate comprehensive reporting and avoid any mistakes.

2. Connect your bank to your ecommerce platform

Connecting live bank feeds to your accounts with Xero or QuickBooks is a massive time saving. Both systems connect to thousands of banks across the globe so they can import your bank transactions in real time, saving hours of exports and imports. Revenue by channel and expenditure information is kept up-to-date and the bank reconciliation processes are quick and easy to perform. You’ll have simple, seamless synchronisation and reconciliation with minimal effort.

3. Automate accounts payable

Services such as Bill.com provide substantial time-saving tools for your accounts payable process allowing automatic synchronisation to your accounting package. This streamlines payments, approvals and syncs data both ways. The fully customisable process means you have full visibility and control of your payables process.

4. Automate payroll

Payroll can be a headache but tools like QuickBooks Online can keep on top of it for you. Save time by automating tax submissions, employee pay and pension contributions. Additionally, payslips are generated and are held on a secure self-service employee portal freeing up more time for your accounting teams to do the work that matters.

Making the move towards well-known systems, like the ones mentioned above, standardises and simplifies your workflow. Using recognised world class software, your next step could then be outsourcing these standardised processes to save you even more time.

5. Integrate

Each piece of software will automate and improve specific accounting tasks. With multiple systems all working independently, the tasks can become once again complicated. To ensure your workflow stays efficient and dynamic, your systems need to be integrated. b.solution’s expert knowledge and guidance of comprehensive system integration will provide your with the best performance and most benefit from the systems that make up your tech stack.

Take the time?

Making sure that the behind the scenes is taken care of with expert accounting systems, allows you to really focus on the numbers that need it. To find out more, visit b.solutions and find out which of your systems can be seamlessly integrated to skyrocket your business potential.

Written by Joe Morgan