7 Means A Well Set Accounting Software Helps Your Business To Grow

Manually performing accounting operations day-in, day-out for your small business can prove to be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Not to mention, manual labour is prone to errors, which can not just increase your business costs but also hang you out to dry during the tax season.

With time as you scale your business, your accounting responsibilities will grow and become more complicated. You will find yourself spending a huge chunk of your time creating more invoices, making greater data entries, tracking expenses, and creating financial statements for multiple accounts.

In the current digital age, accounting software is key to remaining competitive in the UK and sustainably increasing profitability. With UK accounting software automating your accounting and bookkeeping cycle, you can free up resources to work on core business process require your attention. In addition to that, they improve accounts accuracy, provide access to real-time insights, simplify invoicing & billing, and cut down overall costs.

Accounting apps allow you to automate your payment reminders. You can set up reminders based on invoice due dates or expected payment dates and the software will send them to your customers automatically. With an accounting app, you can track all your unpaid invoices, remind customers to make sure they pay on time, and prevent accidental missing payments.

With cloud accounting software, one of the main advantages is that everyone gets access to real-time accounting and financial data. So all your employees have to do is log-in to the platform, and do what they need to do.

Multiple users can work on the same accounting data in real-time, without ever getting in each-other’s way. No bottlenecks, no time wasted.

Here’s exploring the advantages of having a well-established accounting software solution for long-term growth and scalability.

1. Access accounts any time, anywhere

The most obvious advantage that cloud accounting software has over any traditional accounting system is that computerized accounting software lets you access your data whenever you want, and from whichever device you want.

You can use online accounting software from your PC, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. All you need is a device that’s connected to the internet and a browser (or mobile app).

For businesses of any size, this has a ton of upsides. For example, you can create and send invoices on the go directly from your mobile.

Or you can generate, view, and download financial statements and reports with just a few clicks.

No need to ask your accountant to prepare it three days ahead. Just log on the platform, navigate to your Financial Reports section, and download the financial statement you need.

2. Allows real-time expense tracking

Tracking expenses is vital for getting a grip on your cash flow. Accounting software helps you keep tabs on your expenses and categorize them to get a clear picture of where your money is going. You can also use accounting software to upload expense receipts, scan them, and record information from the scanned receipts automatically. This removes the need to store paper receipts and the risk of losing them. Accounting apps make it easier to bill customers for the expenses you incur on their behalf.

3. Easily collaborate with accounting teams and clients

Cloud accounting software makes collaboration exceedingly easier than is imaginable on an on-premise software.

Remember the times when you had to make changes to a spreadsheet, save it on a USB drive and then give it to your colleagues so that they could also have the most up-to-date version of the financial statements?

Well, those times are long gone. Additionally, online accounting software allows you to give different access levels to different users. This way you can tailor permissions based on the set of accounting or bookkeeping functions that a user needs to carry out. If you want to Invoice your customers in seconds then businesses like Zintego make it so easy.

4. Streamlines invoicing and billing

Invoicing and billing are indispensable business functions and the main source of cash flowing into your business. Managing invoices on paper is tedious, time-consuming and error-prone. When you have recurring orders, it is not feasible to create physical invoices for each time your client buys from you. It is also difficult to track invoices and remind customers of pending payments without automated software.

Accounting software addresses these issues effectively, and provides you with features that make invoicing easy. You can create recurring profiles for regular customer orders and schedule invoices to be sent out automatically every time that order is placed. You can also include payment terms and conditions to your invoices to give your customers a heads-up regarding payments. 

5. Simplifies online payments

The next step after invoicing your clients is getting paid. Collecting payments can be overwhelming if clients are not offered a proper system for making them.

You can integrate your accounting system with various online payment gateways that offer clients a swift and secure means of paying you. Payment gateways make records of payments you receive and update them under the corresponding invoice in your accounting system automatically. They also offer clients various methods of payments like credit and debit cards, and online bank transfers.

With clients around the globe, your business must be ready to handle all kinds of currencies. Online payment gateways connected to your accounting app can support multiple currencies and let you accept payments in your customers’ currency while still doing your accounting in your own currency. This removes discrepancies and extra calculations when it comes to foreign transactions.

6. Improves bookkeeping accuracy

With online accounting software, you can say goodbye to most of the typical accounting errors.

Online accounting software will make sure that your accounting records are organized in a proper and accurate manner, every single time.

Remember the times when you’d waste 5 hours trying to find why the balance sheet did not balance?

When using cloud accounting software, if newly created journal entries don’t balance, the system will notify you immediately and highlight the potential error. This way, you’ll be alerted of the error before even committing to it (i.e: clicking submit).

Bank reconciliation is the core accounting feature of a business, and accounting software streamlines it. Connecting your bank account to accounting software directly lets you fetch statements from bank feeds automatically into your accounts. You can set up custom criteria and bank rules in your accounting software to categorize and match imported bank transactions automatically. 

Once your transactions are matched, you just need to verify and confirm them to reconcile your accounts. With simplified bank reconciliation, accounting software helps keep your business audit-ready throughout the year.

7. Generates on-the-go reports

Real-time tracking and reporting is likely one of the top advantages of accounting software.

To track your accounting data in real-time, all you have to do is integrate your online accounting software with your business bank accounts and you’ll be able to track things like expenses, sales, and inventory in real-time.

Accounting software provides you with a dedicated dashboard (like the one in the screenshot below) that allows you to track all the accounts and metrics that you want to keep track of.

Accounting is an indispensable aspect of your business, and a trusted, top-grade best accounting software like Dext is key to securing success in the long term.

Author:

Mark Boardman is a notable British entertainment writer, journalist, media commentator and brand expert who is a regular on the red carpet, a guest judge at music competitions, to helping businesses and people grow their brand.