It’s a new year and time to focus on 2023 and beyond. It’s time to plan for something new, create new goals and reset your business for what’s to come.
Now may be the time to automate your practice more. But maybe you have some fear and anxiety around doing that. Fear that implementing more automation will eventually replace you. Fear of moving from Quickbooks Desktop to Online. Listen, you are not alone in thinking that. Accountants everywhere have been feeling the pressures of modern-day working life with the increasing advancements in technology, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI).
But contrary to the fears you may be experiencing and what some people are saying, automation is not here to replace your job as an accountant. When used correctly, automation and AI can actually make life easier for accountants.
Reduce Time with Data Entry
Automation promises the ability to streamline processes, enhance accuracy and reliability, improve productivity and even boost employee morale. In particular, automation and AI can help reduce the time it takes for data entry, audits, and expense management, allowing you to focus your attention on matters that are higher level and require more human input. This will allow you to be more efficient and effective, which in turn positions you to provide better service for your clients.
Using bank rules and recurring transactions inside of Quickbooks Online has been the key way I have created efficiency within my practice. Bank rules have allowed me to automatically record expense transactions that occur every month, regardless of what account or card they are processed on. You can use recurring transactions to create monthly invoices and sales receipts so that you never forget to invoice a client. You can also use the sales receipts in conjunction with QB Payments to process the payments for those recurring sales receipts on the same day each month. This not only helps with your cash flow projections, but it also helps your clients.
You can use this same process with the bookkeeping clients you support which will allow you and your team to support more clients than you could if you were inputting and processing them all manually. With rules in place, there are fewer errors in the financials because you can customize every rule to ensure transactions are posted properly.
Faster Problem Resolution
Automation and AI can also be used by accountants to identify and solve problems more quickly, leading to faster problem resolution. This can help to significantly reduce the amount of time spent on manual data analysis, and in turn save time and money for businesses. Using Quickbooks Online can help with this as well.
When there are issues with bank accounts that are preventing transactions from automatically downloading into Quickbooks Online, I receive an almost instant email notification stating that the bank connection is no longer working. As a result, we can reach out to the affected clients immediately to get the issue resolved. Without these notifications, it can be a week or two before this is realized for some clients.
Create Time and Opportunity
As a result of having more time available from automated bookkeeping, your schedule will open up and provide space for you to take advantage of new business opportunities with current clients as well as prospective clients. These opportunities can include additional services such as capacity planning, workflow automation, cash flow management or budgeting. This is just a small list of the types of advisory services your clients may be looking for. Services that give more insight into their businesses and provide more ways for you to help them grow.
Automation can create opportunities for your team to show up differently. It allows them to increase their capacity and can also provide space for them to hone their skills. A stronger skill set increases their confidence and their morale which will invigorate them to be their best and do their best. Having happy employees who don’t feel overwhelmed and stressed and love what they do will lead to happy clients who feel they are being served well.
Automation assists in the improvement of existing processes by either automating tasks or automating workflows. With these types of improvements, you can reduce errors, improve accuracy and decrease operational costs. Particularly if you are migrating from desktop to online. When using QBO, you will able to communicate more easily with your team, thereby creating a better work environment, you will reduce your software costs, even if you are currently hosting because all ProAdvisors receive QBO at no cost.
In summary, we are not just accountants. We are business owners too. And automation is a valuable tool. Finding ways to create more time for our practices and firms should be a priority. It’s a new year and those goals for growth and sustainability can’t happen without change. Automation may very well be the change you need.
This post is part of a paid partnership with Intuit.
