Accounting is one of the most under-the-gun teams within an organization. Rarely are deadlines more black and white than accounting deadlines. Month-end will happen, invoices must be sent, and executives/boards/SEC/shareholders must get their financial reports.
Within accounting, there is almost no room for error. Invoices, paychecks, taxes, regulatory reporting, expenses, and everything else must be perfectly accurate. In many cases, the ramifications for inaccuracy are unhappy clients, employees, managers, shareholders, and possibly government entities. Penalties for bad accounting are staggering.
With the need for high accuracy under excruciatingly strict deadlines, how are so many accounting teams living in Excel? In many cases, accounting uses multiple systems that don’t work together and systems that don’t meet all of the accounting needs of the organization. The teams are then left to build “off-system” processes to “tick and tie,” reconcile systems, consolidate entities, and cobble together reports that tell the entire financial story of an organization.
The accounting team works crazy hours at month/quarter/year-end because the processes are brutal, and the consequences of inaccuracy are severe. No technology will ever replace accountants, but many technologies can automate the mundane aspects of the job. Manual reconciliations, consolidations, reporting processes, and data inputs can almost always be automated. If you’re in accounting and consistently spend more than 25 minutes doing tasks in Excel, please reach out and let’s find ways to help you streamline your processes using technology you can learn and control.