Key Features And Benefits Of Using Accounting Software For Business

Accounting helps small businesses by giving valuable insight into the overall financial health of businesses. Furthermore, they offer an insight into your cash flow, demonstrating business risks and opportunities. This is why Small Business Accountants are important for your business. 

But as your business grows, you will find that your accountant is having a problem tracking your business expenses. From administrative stress to data errors, supply chain leaks, and cash flow issues, countless businesses have fixed obstacles to business efficiency by adopting accounting software in the UK. 

You’re probably wondering how accounting software is supposed to have such far-reaching effects, and the answer is: through greater organizational efficiency. Accounting software impacts almost every department in an organization because every department either earns or spends company capital. That means that they report on the said earnings or expenditure and can therefore achieve greater productivity and efficiency with a tool like accounting software in their hands. 

So how does accounting software enable greater productivity and efficiency? Let’s take a closer look at what accounting software in UK does, to understand how it is beneficial

Reduces admin stress and increases efficiency through receipt scanning 

Manual data entry is a huge contributor to aim anxiety as is filing and categorizing data. The tedious and time-consuming nature of these mundane tasks can be minimized through accounting software because of its receipt scanning feature. 

Using optical recognition technology, the accounting software system is able to extract all relevant data from photos, scans, or PDFs of bills, receipts, and invoices uploaded to it. It completes the extraction within seconds and generates a digital text entry that can be copied and pasted to spreadsheets, or email, or wherever necessary. 

The system also sorts and categorizes all the entries made by type and date. Users can also set up a more sophisticated filing system because the software will follow any pre-set rules. 

You can also link your business bank account to your accounting software for data to flow seamlessly to your books. This eliminates any human error and frees your accountant up for more complex accounting functions. 

Dashboard promotes helps managers make better decisions 

Accounting software in the UK typically comes with a customizable dashboard. This dashboard gives company decision-makers an at-a-glance view of key performance indicators related to their business. These KPIs or metrics could be related to anything from inventory movement to cash flow, giving decision-makers everything that they need to make fully informed decisions. 

Moreover, most of the best accounting software in the UK comes with a partner app downloadable on the user’s smartphone, that allows them to access the company’s financial data on the go. 

Invoicing support and supply chain efficiency enable improved cash flow

Forgotten invoices, delayed invoices, and incorrect invoices – that need to be regenerated and resubmitted – are a cash flow nightmare that plagues organizations at all stages of the business life cycle. Accounting software can help streamline an organization’s invoicing processes by providing alerts when invoice deadlines are close and helping them automate, templatize, and therefore speed up the invoicing process.  In addition, the system is capable of notifying users when their clients view or pay invoices and alerting them when invoices become overdue. 

Cash flow and perhaps even profitability can be drastically improved thanks to spontaneous insights generated by the software. A lot of businesses have used accounting software to identify, track and plug supply chain leaks and to measure and prioritize clients based on billable work versus input. 

More professional processes through various tools

When it comes to corporations, the big fish have certain defining characteristics that make them more professional and therefore more profitable in the long run. They are able to retain better talent, keep their talent motivated, and create better relationships with clients and suppliers. Accounting software might just be able to help you get a handful of these finer details right. 

• Expense approval

Add expense approvers to ease and quicken the invoice approval process and empower worthy employees.  Moreover, at-a-click approvals make the process far simpler.  

• Error-free data

Automation ensures error-free data at all data entry points. Moreover, the system retains a copy of all source documents for all the entries that it generates from photos, scans, and PDFs. Best of all, all duplicates are purged from the system and any anomalies in the data are flagged up for your bookkeeper or accountant. 

• Tax

Accounting software in the UK is able to provide UK tax support when generating invoices or extracting data from bills, receipts, and invoices. The intelligent system also gives users a heads-up on how any upcoming or changing tax laws will affect their profitability. This gives the business a chance to dialogue with their clients about any pricing changes, or to take any other measures to maintain profitability.  

• Payroll

Automation of payroll can ensure timely delivery of salaries and professionally managed salary slips. 

• Historical data

Data is secured for 7 years as per UK norms when you use accounting software in the UK. Moreover, you’ll have all your data available in one single place where you can search for data by keyword and locate it easily, thanks to a search box feature. 

• Data security

Accounting software is an incredibly cost-effective way to secure your data – some solutions providers secure your data in the cloud using double firewall protection.