Technology is driving change with businesses introducing new software, processes and roles to keep pace with the competition.
Software is no longer for tech companies: technology is ubiquitous and a new wave of entrepreneurs is approaching with software ready to help people come together, work dynamically and stay at the top of their game. With consumers expecting more from products and services than ever, businesses must adapt to a changing market or risk falling behind. Cloud software is now the norm and its forcing slow-to-change businesses to take action. Cloud is driving the future of accountancy and how businesses conduct their financial administration tasks. Its value is found in its scalability, responsiveness and automation of processes, which in turn enable an improved experience for both the business and consumers.
The immediate, tangible advantages of moving to the cloud are best measured against the intangible benefits they facilitate.
One of the most obvious advantages of cloud accounting is the ability to access it anytime and anywhere. Flexible access to your data facilitates informed business decisions, increased agility and responsiveness. The number of possible third-party integrations is in the thousands; with a dashboard to summarise your ecosystem of apps, you need not feel daunted by all the array of data and analytics available.
The consumer wants everything faster and cloud accounting is no different. For most businesses working in real-time is an expectation rather than a preference. Cloud accounting permits this with its immediate access to all financial data, which can be drilled down into, organised and collated into reports. This also extends to real-time updates, which enable you to track information, purchases and integrations as they happen.
Gone are the days of upfront costs and capital expenditure: with cloud accounting, you pay as you go for the features you need. Monthly payments fit more easily into your cash flow forecasts and scale up as your business grows. In fact, scalability is a benefit itself. Working with cloud systems often permits you to select the feature you need, reducing expenditure on features you do not benefit from.
The ability to take photos of receipts, directly upload and code them within the software enables greater accuracy with regards to the data itself and means you’re always working with the most recent figures. Direct bank feeds ensure that all transactions are correctly recorded, improving efficiency of process and reducing the possibility of manual errors.
With this increased technological capability, it is important not to lose the human element of your business. The intangible benefits of cloud accounting can be found in the opportunity to refocus the time saved and give greater attention to improving collaboration between the company’s departments, customer service and developing agility.