Grow your organization with a modern accounting system
As your organization grows, so will your accounting needs. The larger the organization, the wider the range of data that has to be processed and analyzed.
If you’re still relying on older software and manual processes, you risk draining productivity and inhibiting your potential. The world is only getting more digital and data driven. It’s more important than ever to modernize.
What are modern accounting systems?
Modern accounting systems allow you to automate and streamline key accounting functions. But beyond that, the real benefit is that they allow you to gain insight into your financial data.
With these systems, you can unify data from different books, ledgers and locations. And you can use the flexible reporting functions to analyze that data more effectively. This increased control and access to your data gives you insights into your organization’s strengths and weaknesses, empowering you to make proactive decisions.
Your organization needs the right support and tools to help it grow. Here are some key advantages of modern accounting systems:
Automation
Modern systems save you time and energy on complex things like revenue recognition and management, by automating certain day-to-day tasks.
You can automate many essential processes:
- Managing accounts receivable and accounts payable
- Financial close
- Time and expense capture
- Fund accounting
- Project accounting
The automated revenue and expense relocation function can simplify revenue management. And you can configure expense amortization terms to match or differ those for revenue recognition to suit your organization’s needs.
These functionalities save your organization time and effort.
Better reporting
Modern accounting systems change the way that you generate reports by changing the way that you organize your data.
They allow you to maintain multiple ledgers for things such as accounts receivable, accounts payable and order management, without interfering with your general ledger’s performance. You can also categorize each transaction by customer, product, location, department and other tags for a more simplified ledger.
They can even create a statistical book to incorporate data not captured in a standard ledger, such as headcount, locations and square footage.
From that data, it’s easier to generate reports that are tailored to the needs of your organization.
With these systems, you can customize dashboards and reporting without needing external reporting tools or having to modify your chart of accounts.
They automatically combine operating dimensions with real-time financial data so that you can analyze results for each operating unit, location, project, customer and more. You can also customize your dashboards and create self-service reports, which helps you reduce ad hoc stakeholder reporting.
This increased control gives you greater visibility into your organization’s performance. You can easily go from looking at broad, high-level summaries to more deeply drilling down into individual transactions. You can even take a more holistic approach, incorporating other data outside of typical financial information.
And since the automated data updates in real time, you can quickly capitalize on new opportunities or take corrective action.
Easier compliance
Monitoring compliance is a challenging process with high stakes for your business. Modern accounting systems can help you manage compliance more efficiently and accurately.
In addition to automating regular compliance-related tasks, these systems come equipped with templates to help you manage the standards set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act and more. They also have dual treatment and reporting to help you eliminate uncertainty about changing requirements and regulations.
Flexibility
Modern accounting systems give you more flexibility on where and how you can access your data.
With these systems, you can set up custom workflows and system access. You determine the different levels in your organization’s hierarchy and create various ownership structures. That way, you can change access based on separation of duties. From an information security standpoint, it’s critical to provide access to only the data people need for their roles.
For example, you can provide read-only access to different stakeholders, such as executives and auditors. It’s also easier to generate separate reports for different stakeholders based on their particular needs and preferences.
And because they are cloud based, you can access your information anywhere, anytime and from any device.
Reduced costs
Another benefit of cloud-based accounting systems is that it saves your organization money.
Older systems, such as suites, tend to focus only on integrating systems within the suite, making them a far more limited option.
Modern options allow you to prioritize integration with other leading software solutions. They work together with other systems that you need to support your business across multiple areas.
By making integration simple, modern systems can reduce your software and hardware costs. It also helps reduce your IT department’s time and expense for updates and support.
Modern systems offer point-and-click integration with commonly used applications to help with many things:
- Sales
- Human resources
- Inventory and fixed assets
- Project management
- Payment processing
- Payroll and automated clearing house
They also offer quarterly, automatic updates so that you can remain current with the latest accounting standards and software features.
How Wipfli can help
At Wipfli, our implementation partners have the knowledge and experience you need to help your organization get more from a modern accounting system. We’ll walk you through implementation so that you can have the functionality your organization needs, and continue to help you with optimization.
Contact us today to find out more on the benefits of modern accounting systems.
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