Almost 30 years ago, the Excel spreadsheet emerged as the go-to tool for managing company finances. However, we have now moved into a digital world and businesses better systems to help manage their finances and allow collaboration as Excel spreadsheets and manual processes cannot.
Being a business in an online digital world requires an appropriate system to manage its expenses. The move to digital has accelerated the pace of business life and increased productivity expectations. Businesses need digital tools that allow more to be done in less time by automating manual and time-consuming tasks.
In the case of bookkeeping, with the correct system in place, you can leverage the automation of repeating invoices, automatic bank feeds, and even automate collecting payments through Direct Debits.
Here are the characteristics that businesses should look for in a modern accounting system:
1.Cloud-based
Nowadays, employees are mobile and their systems need to be mobile too. Employees might work from home or a flexible office space and businesses need a mobile system that allows them to create invoices or enter expenses anytime and anywhere.
A modern accounting system is securely stored on a cloud server, allowing the software and data to be accessed from wherever the user has an online connection.
With a cloud-based system, spreadsheets and email attachments are all replaced with a single centralised repository for all the data and documents.
2.Real-time
With real-time monitoring, managers no longer need to request sales and profit reports manually to performance, because they can view it in the system automatically in real time.
And because the system is cloud based, these reports can be accessed from anywhere so the travelling manager always has up to date data whilst visiting clients or suppliers.
3.User-friendly
Besides being powerful, a good system needs to be easy to use. A system that is too time-consuming to use won’t be able to keep up with the accelerating pace of business change. This is why most cloud based accounting systems are intuitive, and even the least technical oriented employees can use them with a minimal amount of training.
There are a number of cloud based accounting systems available, such as Xero, KashFlow, Quickbooks, Clearbooks and Sage One. We recommend Xero for the majority of our clients, but are competent working with all these systems.