How automation can help preserve cashflow
During recent months, preserving cash flow has become one of the main priorities for finance departments in businesses across almost every sector. They have the job of reducing costs where possible but also fuelling growth at the same time. A tricky balancing act to get right, meaning a consistent cash flow is critical.
There’s no other way of looking at it – cash flow is the foundation of any business. However, the most important thing to remember is that every business of every size faces some type of cash flow management challenge. Reviewing your current processes is vital to ensure that the money coming in and the money going out is controlled in the most efficient way.
For example, chasing debt and outstanding payments have always been an important function for a finance team, but during times of economic hardship, it's even more vital that invoices are paid. Yet if finance teams are bogged down in manual processes, it means putting the hours in to chase payment can take far too long.
Accounting automation is certainly one way to remove long winded and time-draining processes, by making following up invoices quicker and helping finance teams to focus on other areas.
Saving time saves money
The main objective of streamlining any process is about saving time and that’s certainly the case with accounting automation. Streamlining both accounts payable and receivable should save time for your business, allowing your team to focus on other strategic business areas.
It will provide consistency in terms of issuing and chasing invoices, which can both be automated, resulting in a much more stable cash flow.
Automation also helps to eliminate errors that can prove costly in the long run. Issues such as duplicate payments take time and resources to resolve and can also result in distorted cash flow figures.
Real time cash flow viability
Accounting automation helps to increase overall cash flow visibility. Finance teams and business owners have access to real time data instantly.
Enhanced visibility and tracking of AP and AR means issues can be spotted quickly and dealt with before they become a major problem. It also allows for more in-depth and accurate cash flow forecasting, rather than relying on data that, in some instances may be a few weeks or more out of date.
All of this creates a greater sense of informed decision making for business owners at a time when every choice they make has the potential to have a huge impact on the company’s bottom line.
Improved client services
Automation brings efficiency and consistency to invoicing, which is beneficial to your customers. The option of paying online or setting up auto-payments for example, offers them an extra level of convenience, as well as further regularity to your cash flow.
Finance teams then have the ability to take a step back and delve deeper into customers’ buying patterns – information that will be invaluable to sales and customer service teams as we all look for better ways to engage with our customer base in increasingly tricky trading climates.
Controlling your own payments
Accounting automation is not just about getting better control of the payments you receive, it’s also beneficial for improving the way your business makes payments too.
We all know it’s important to make payments in full and to terms but manual processing can take time, sometimes resulting in late payment fees, which does little for the overall cash flow. Automation will allow you to control exactly when that money leaves your business to ensure payment terms are met each and every time.
With payments under control, there’s also the potential to negotiate early payment discounts with suppliers.
Again, the visibility that automation offers is hugely beneficial here allowing you to track things like carried over balances and average payable periods.
Reconciliation simplified
Automation often means that all the reports and records you need are already up-to-date and available at the click of a button, showing you everything you need to know about the money that’s been exchanged between your business, your clients and your suppliers.
Most people working in finance will tell you that anything that can simplify processes at month or year end, will be very well received. And, of course, finance teams in non-automated firms are often so focused on reconciliation at this point, that keeping on top of invoicing, maintaining cash flow and focusing on other key areas of the business, can often become secondary.
You can find out more automating and integrating your finance processes here.
