The Top 5 Problems Faced in Accounting

Ever wondered what the top 5 accounting issues are? Are they the same headaches you’re dealing with every day? We’re willing to bet that they are.

Based on our work within the accounting industry, we’ve gathered the top 5 problems encountered in accounting. Today, we’re going to walk you through them and point out some of the solutions that automation might be able to provide.

By the time you’re done reading this post, we hope you’ll have some ideas for how you can remedy some of your accounting headaches!

Time Management

This one is big! And it’s an issue for everyone – not just accountants. You’ve got a ton of tasks to juggle, including collecting and filing documents, entering data, and making payments. Sometimes the menial tasks, like keying in data, can take over the bulk of your day, eating away at the time you were supposed to spend on more important work!

Document management and process automation can help with this by making filing easy, by assisting with repetitive tasks, and by automating your processes. Approvals can be automatically routed. The system can send reminders and notifications for you. Data can be read through OCR (optical character recognition) technology and pushed to your other systems.

Basically, with accounting automation, you can get more accomplished while doing less manual work. Think this might help you manage your time better?

Errors

Accuracy is a critical component to running a successful business, and it’s especially important within the Accounting department. All of the data entered into your systems must be correct, consistent, and up to date.

DocuPhase’s electronic data capture uses OCR technology not only to convert documents into business-ready data, but also to validate the paperwork against other data that’s already stored in your system. Accurate? Check! Consistent? Check! Up to date? Check!

Lost Documents

Did you know that typical employees spend about 30-40% of their time looking for information in email and filing cabinets? It’s true! And for every misfiled document, you lose about $125. For lost documents, it costs you more like $350-$700 per document.

Time and money spent can really add up over time, but a good document management solution can stop the bleeding.

Once a document is entered into the system, it’s pretty simple to find it. And, as an added bonus, our system can actually pull documents up without you even having to leave your accounting system. With the click of a button, you can pull up documents related to the record you’re currently viewing within your ERP.

Missed Due Dates & Late Payments

It can be difficult to keep track of payment due dates and to get everything in on time, especially when you’re juggling so many other accounts payable processes at the same time. Manual processes can be slow and tedious, which means they increase the chance that you’ll miss due dates. Your outdated processes can cause your organization to end up owing late payment fees. Doesn’t that stress you out? Yeah? Us too. Not only that, but you could be missing out on any potential early payment discounts.

How can accounting automation help? Well, as we’ve shown you already, automation amps up your productivity, even with you doing the same amount of work, or less. That’s because the software can do a lot of the tasks for you. Automated workflows can help you keep track of important tasks and due dates, so that nothing slips through the cracks. You can even set up business rules to control automated approvals. And just like that, you can make sure that your payments are made on time, eliminating those pesky late payment penalties.

Audits

We’ve saved the best for last – the dreaded AUDIT!

Or maybe not so dreaded. Let’s talk about how you can be prepared in the event of an audit. You don’t even have to do anything special. Just by using DocuPhase, you’re in better shape when it comes to audits.

Auditors can log in to a view-only user account, which gives them full visibility into records and audit trails for each document. Think of the dramatic amount of time that is saved when all you have to do is create a new user account for your auditors, rather than retrieving, copying, and refiling thousands of documents.

So, there you have it! Those are the top 5 problems encountered in accounting – the things that creep into your brain and keep you up at night. If you’re ready to get some relief from these headaches, contact us for a free custom demo of our accounting automation solution.