In today’s fast-paced business environment, time is of the essence—especially in accounting. Accounting departments are always struggling to complete financial close faster. That usually means longer hours or added headcount, but this creates different problems like employee burnout, attrition, and inaccuracies.
In this webinar, Capitalize’s team of CPAs and finance professionals dive into real-life use cases of how tools like BlackLine, Alteryx, and UiPath can help shave days off financial close by automating key processes including:
- Month-end balance sheet reconciliations
- Accrual and prepaid account reconciliations
- Full population transaction matching for bank statements
- Accounts receivable and accounts payable aging reporting
- Fixed asset depreciation
- Automated journal entries
If you’re an accounting leader, finance manager, or accounting professional looking to modernize your financial close process, this webinar is for you.
We’ll explore how tools like Blackline, Alteryx, and UiPath can help you shave days off your financial close process.
What Is Accounting Automation?
Accounting automation involves employing software to automate routine, repetitive accounting tasks. This includes everything from data entry to complex financial reporting. By automating these tasks, businesses can reduce human error, increase efficiency, and free up valuable time for more strategic activities.
The Importance of an Efficient Financial Close Process
A timely financial close ensures that your financial statements are accurate and up-to-date, enabling better decision-making and compliance. Delays in the financial close process can lead to errors, missed deadlines, and regulatory issues. Automation tools can help mitigate these risks by streamlining workflows and ensuring accuracy.
Common Challenges in the Accounting Department
Before we dive into the solutions, it’s essential to understand the common challenges faced by accounting departments:
- Manual Data Entry: Manual data entry is time-consuming and prone to errors. Even small mistakes can have significant consequences.
- Complex Reconciliation: Reconciling accounts manually is labor-intensive and often leads to discrepancies.
- Regulatory Compliance: Staying compliant with constantly evolving regulations is challenging without automated systems.
Understanding these challenges sets the stage for why automation is not just beneficial but necessary.
Harnessing the Power of Alteryx for Data Analysis
Automated Data Preparation and Cleansing
- Problem: Preparing and cleaning data for the financial close process often involves manual and repetitive tasks like removing trailing spaces, performing VLOOKUPs, and SUMIFS in Excel.
- Alteryx Solution: Create a repeatable Alteryx workflow to automate these data preparation steps. By importing data from various sources such as Excel files, ERPs, or data lakes, and performing necessary transformations (e.g., removing spaces, matching records), the data can be prepped and cleaned efficiently.
Automated Journal Entries Creation
- Problem: Manual creation and uploading of journal entries can be time-consuming and error prone.
- Alteryx Solution: Develop a workflow in Alteryx to automate the creation of journal entry templates by integrating data from multiple sources. If the ERP supports API connections, Alteryx can directly load these entries into the ERP system. This streamlines the journal entry process, ensuring accuracy and consistency while significantly reducing manual effort.
Reconciliation and Exception Reporting
- Problem: Bank and account reconciliations often involve matching transactions manually, which is labor-intensive and prone to errors.
- Alteryx Solution: Build an Alteryx workflow to automate the reconciliation process by matching transactions based on predefined rules. The workflow can identify exceptions and generate reports for further analysis. This enhances accuracy and efficiency in reconciliations, providing accountants with quick insights into unmatched transactions and exceptions.
Data Integration and Transformation for Reporting
- Problem: Consolidating data from various systems for financial reporting often involves complex transformations and manual adjustments.
- Alteryx Solution: Use Alteryx to integrate and transform data from different sources (e.g., ERPs, CRM systems, external databases) into a consistent format for reporting. The workflow can also enrich the data with additional calculations or logic. This can automate the data consolidation process, ensuring timely and accurate financial reporting with minimal manual intervention.
Enhanced Financial Analysis and Forecasting
- Problem: Conducting detailed financial analysis and forecasting often requires manipulating large datasets and performing complex calculations.
- Alteryx Solution: Leverage Alteryx’s advanced analytics capabilities to perform predictive modeling and forecasting. For instance, calculate warranty accruals by combining historical sales data with current inventory data to predict future claims and liabilities. This provides deeper insights into financial trends and improves the accuracy of financial forecasts, aiding in better decision-making.
UiPath and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Automating Data Retrieval and Entry
- Problem: Manually entering data from multiple sources into accounting systems can be time-consuming and prone to errors.
- UiPath Solution: UiPath can automate the retrieval of data from various sources, such as downloading bank statements from websites or extracting data from emails. The bot can then input this data directly into the ERP system or accounting software, significantly reducing manual entry time and errors.
Streamlining Repetitive Tasks
- Problem: Accountants often spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks, such as entering journal entries, processing invoices, and generating reports.
- UiPath Solution: UiPath can record and replicate these repetitive tasks. For example, a bot can be programmed to enter hundreds of journal entries by simulating mouse clicks and keyboard strokes. This frees up accountants to focus on more strategic tasks and reduces the risk of manual errors.
Enhancing Transaction Matching
- Problem: Matching transactions from different sources (e.g., bank statements vs. general ledger) manually can be a tedious and error-prone process.
- UiPath Solution: UiPath can automate the process of transaction matching by extracting transaction data from various systems and comparing them based on predefined rules. The bot can highlight exceptions for further review, ensuring that the bulk of the transactions are matched quickly and accurately, thereby speeding up the reconciliation process.
How Blackline Can Transform Your Financial Close
Transaction Matching Automation
- Problem: Manual transaction matching is time-consuming and prone to errors. Accountants spend significant time aligning transactions from various sources, leading to inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies.
- Blackline Solution: Blackline’s transaction matching engine automates the reconciliation process by applying predefined matching rules. It automatically matches transactions and highlights exceptions, reducing manual effort and errors. This automation accelerates the reconciliation process and allows accountants to focus on resolving discrepancies rather than routine matching tasks.
Streamlined Account Reconciliation
- Problem: Account reconciliation is a tedious and error-prone process that involves manually importing data from multiple sources, adjusting balances, and ensuring accuracy. This can lead to delays in the financial close.
- Blackline Solution: Blackline offers specialized reconciliation templates and integrates data from ERPs and bank statements, automating the reconciliation process. It ensures that balances are accurately reconciled by highlighting discrepancies and providing tools to adjust and certify balances. This streamlining of the reconciliation process reduces time spent and minimizes errors, leading to a faster and more accurate financial close.
Enhanced Visibility and Control
- Problem: Lack of real-time visibility and control over the financial close process can result in missed deadlines, inefficient task management, and difficulties in ensuring compliance and audit readiness.
- Blackline Solution: Blackline provides comprehensive dashboards and task management features that offer real-time visibility into the financial close process. Accountants can track the status of reconciliations, manage dependencies, and ensure timely completion of tasks. Additionally, Blackline’s access control allows internal and external auditors to view relevant data, facilitating audits and ensuring compliance. This enhanced visibility and control lead to a more efficient and transparent close process.
Benefits of Accounting Automation
- Improved Accuracy: Automation reduces human error, ensuring more accurate financial data.
- Time Savings: By automating routine tasks, you can significantly reduce the time spent on the financial close process.
- Enhanced Compliance: Automation tools come with built-in compliance features, helping you stay up-to-date with regulations.
Steps to Implement Accounting Automation
- Identify Pain Points: Start by identifying the pain points in your current financial close process. This will help you determine which tasks are most suitable for automation.
- Choose the Right Tools: Select the tools that best meet your needs. Whether it’s Blackline for reconciliation, Alteryx for data analysis, or UiPath for RPA, choose tools that integrate well with your existing systems.
- Train Your Team: Ensure that your team is adequately trained to use the new tools. This will help them adapt quickly and make the most of the automation features.
- Monitor and Optimize: Regularly monitor the performance of your automated systems and make adjustments as needed. This will help you continually improve your financial close process
Future Trends in Accounting Automation
- AI and Machine Learning: AI and machine learning are set to play a more significant role in accounting automation, providing even more advanced analytics and predictive capabilities.
- Increased Integration: Future automation tools will offer increased integration capabilities, making it easier to connect different systems and data sources.
Expert Tips for Successful Implementation
- Start With Why: Begin with automating a few high-impact tasks before scaling up. This will help you manage the transition more effectively.
- Involve Stakeholders: Ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved in the implementation process. This will help you gain buy-in and ensure a smoother rollout.
- Measure ROI: Track the ROI of your automation efforts to demonstrate their value and secure ongoing support for your initiatives
Conclusion
Accounting automation is not just a trend; it’s a necessity for modern businesses. By leveraging tools like Blackline, Alteryx, and UiPath, you can shave days off your financial close process, improve accuracy, and enhance compliance. Don’t wait—start exploring these tools today and modernize your accounting operations. For more insights and personalized advice, consider booking a consultation with our experts. Together, we can help you transform your financial close process and stay ahead in the competitive business landscape.