How Accounting Automation Can Save You Time

In our modern lives, there’s very little that automation hasn’t touched – and that includes accounting.

Humans aren’t made to stare at numbers all day. Not only are manual accounting tasks mundane, but they’re also prone to human error. In a fast-paced business environment, time spent on manual tasks can quickly add up and mistakes could lead to compliance issues, financial loss or time-consuming fixes further down the line.

Luckily, accounting automation software can help speed up many routine processes. One solution that offers automation is Sage Intacct. In this article, we’ll explore a few of the automation features in Sage Intacct and the benefits of accounting automation.

Sage Intacct

Matching and Creation Rules

When you have matching rules set up, Sage Intacct can automatically match transactions from a bank feed or import file based on a set of criteria which you determine. Additionally, Creation Rules automatically create draft journal entries based on data from your bank feeds or import file, which automatically match once you’ve approved them. These rules are valuable to speed up your reconciliation process and save time.

Inter-Entity Transactions

If your company has multiple entities, you’ll know the extra work involved in processing transactions between your entities. With Sage Intacct, you can set up inter-entity account mapping relationships, which enable you to define which payable and receivable accounts you want to use for inter-entity transactions, so the books automatically balance. The system also has other multi-entity features which can help save time, especially at month end.

Smart Events

In Sage Intacct, you can set up smart events which are triggered when a given event occurs, and certain conditions are met. The system will automatically send communications or post to a web application when your smart event has triggered. For example, Sage Intacct can automatically send the CEO an email when an AP Purchase Invoice is entered into the system for a certain supplier.

Reporting

Sage Intacct can integrate with your external systems to automatically pull information from across your organisation into one place. You can also schedule your reports to run automatically and deliver to select colleagues or a specified cloud storage location. The reports will be generated based on a specific schedule, using the filters and settings you set up. As a result, you don’t have to regularly spend time building and sending reports.

Approval Workflows

Approval workflows can be set up based on factors such as transaction amount, type and frequency. Not only does this ensure that no unauthorised transactions slip through, but the finance team can also gain full visibility of what is awaiting approval, approved and rejected.

GL Outlier Detection

As another step to prevent mistakes, GL Outlier Detection uses historical transaction patterns to flag unusual transactions, triggering notifications for the approver. The system learns from your responses to these notifications to further strengthen patterns and improve accuracy going forward.

Benefits of Automating Your Accounting Processes

When manual processes take up so much time, there’s often not much time left to spend on activities that add value to the business and contribute to strategic goals. Take month end for example, Sage’s research found that finance leaders who embrace automation cut their closing time by 29%, that’s 2 days every month and 24 days per year.

The time that you save through automation can be spent on more valuable and enriching tasks, such as reviewing and improving processes, identifying and mitigating risks, professional and team development, analysing data to spot trends and opportunity for growth, and much more.

We specialise in providing and supporting Sage Intacct and Sage 200 for small to medium businesses. If you’re interested in using automation to gain more time back for your business, get in touch with your friendly team of experts. We’ll take the time to review your processes and find ways that your accounting software can save you time.

If you’d like more information, please complete the enquiry form on this page and we’ll be in touch.