By Oumesh Sauba
The highlighted importance of being digital has spurred the adoption of technology among Indian businesses. As customers moved to online channels, digitization has become a vital part of the new normal, resulting in a paradigm shift in how financial records are stored and maintained. Accounting, one of the most significant parts of running a business has also been transformed into a truly technologically-enabled system. The widespread adoption of tech-led accounting software has moved business’s towards automation and artificial intelligence. The tasks that earlier used to take months can now be done in minutes, all through a single click of a button. This has proven to be the most significant transformation of the business finance and accounting sector.
Eliminating device dependency
Traditionally, a business’s accounting team was surrounded by countless bank statements and numerous financial records. This required a huge physical space with big lockers to keep the hard copy of financial records safe. However, the integration of technology transformed this practice into recording accounting data into computer systems. The concise space of digital apps provided access to only specific users, confined to access information on desktops.
With the introduction of new technologies – cloud storage, accountants can secure the storage of financial records with greater flexibility. It eliminates the risk of unauthorized users peeking into desktops, mitigating the risk of loss of important data. All information can be stored in one digital app that takes no chance of misplacing files or not being in the office to access the desktop for particular information.
Cloud storage and new-age accounting platforms enable secured storage of all records and being able to have them in the palm of your hand anytime and anywhere. Many business organizations have implemented cloud-based accounting systems to consolidate data into actionable insights for improved business performance.
Data Analytics
Business organizations always included manual visualization of financial data for important business decisions. However, the practice involved chances of human errors, delayed results, making it difficult for organizations to take timely decisions. In addition, this brought great clutter with bigger chances of having too many resources and data to bottleneck the operations.
New-age accounting software with integrated data analytics to precisely measure and visualize the company’s financial records. This gives them deeper and broader insights into financial data that suits the accountants’ requirements. With precise forecasts, data analytics create value and accelerate business growth with precise audits.
Simply put, accountants can monitor data on selected parameters in real-time than it was once accessible on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Through the power of data analytics, accountants can process large amounts of data accurately in a shorter time and perform risk analysis for enhanced business performance.
Automated Accounting Tasks
No business sector or task is immune from the effects of automation. Eliminating the traditionally manual process of recording financial data provides a more streamlined approach for accountants to perform their tasks more accurately and efficiently. Despite running a business, owners and other executives performed accounting duties manually which was highly time intensive.
Having said that, accounting software has more aspects to consider. Accountants can handle finances more efficiently including tax allocation while keeping their business afloat. Instead of spending time managing day-to-day accounting tasks, finance teams can focus on other productive tasks and see the sales coming in.
Furthermore, traditional accounting has evolved from an error-prone to a highly accurate task with automation. By eliminating the role of humans to a large extent, the chances of entering wrong information can be removed. In addition, the mistakes that once took several hours to identify can now be detected in seconds, saving a huge amount of time and monetary resources for finance teams.
Ease of account compliance
Compliance management has been a stressful activity for finance teams. With economic uncertainties, guidelines and legislation are evolving at an unprecedented pace, causing accountants to ensure that their accounts run seamlessly, without compromising on accuracy and compliance. However, it is extremely challenging to maintain accuracy and be 100% compliant in the present dynamic world.
New-age accounting software ensures accuracy in financial reporting as well as compliance management. It simplifies compliance practices with reliability and timely reporting. This offers a broad comfort to accountants as well as businesses in meeting every rule and regulation to perform ethically in the market. This also increases transparency and traceability across all members of the finance team.
Bottom line
Technology has boosted the financial performance of businesses through the hassle-free and less frantic task of recording transactions. As manual and error-prone tasks are eliminated, emerging technologies are taking the charge of spearheading accounting practices. It is bound to change the conventional accounting roles, making ways for greater accuracy and efficiency.
(Oumesh Sauba is the founder of NuBooks. The views expressed are author’s own.)
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