Automation Across Finance: Benefits, Tips & Examples

Across every industry, automation tools are helping streamline processes, improve productivity, and reduce mistakes. Finance departments stand to gain significantly from the implementation of automation across finance due to the nature of their functions - data-heavy, time sensitive, and heavily regulated. 

Finance automation tools like SolveXia aid in streamlining processes, collecting and connecting data, and supporting informed decision-making. We’re going to dive in how and why this is the case. 

Coming Up

What is Finance Automation?

Who Benefits from Finance Automation?

Which Finance Processes Should be Automated?

How to Set Up Finance Automation?

What are the Benefits of Finance Automation?

What are the Risks of Finance Automation?

How to Overcome Challenges of Finance Automation?

Final Thoughts

What is Finance Automation?

Finance automation refers to the use of technology, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, to execute processes and complete tasks with little to no human intervention. 

Financial automation helps teams free up their time as they no longer have to be bogged down by completely data-heavy and tedious, manual tasks. Instead, the finance automation software handles the minutia so that highly-skilled professionals can focus on value-add and strategic processes to help drive the business forward. 

Who Benefits from Finance Automation?

Automation has been supporting finance teams for years, and given technological advancement, more people and teams continue to benefit from the best automated accounting software and financial close automation software. 

Automation across finance helps internal teams stay connected, managers retain internal control, and customers to receive the adequate attention they deserve. From CFOs to stakeholders, and everyone in between, the upsides are extensive. 

For example, you can see the impact of automation tools in:

Banking

Banks can leverage finance automation software and robotic process automation software to manage everything from records to accounting. 

Accounting 

Accounting teams rely on accurate data. Finance automation ensures data is up-to-date and accessible to aid in completing key functions, including: reconciliation, expense analytics, rebate management, regulatory reporting, and more. 

Which Finance Processes Should be Automated?

Since finance processes tend to require data and utmost accuracy, there are many processes that are well-suited for automation. 

Let’s take a look at a few of the most commonly automated finance processes: 

1. Expense Management 

Ask anyone in your finance team - managing expenses, expense reporting, and expense analytics is time-consuming and often frustrating. Since employees are part of the equation, all data has to be supplied in a timely manner and the approval process can cause delays. 

With integrated expense management and automation, you can ensure that everyone gets paid what they are owed at the right time. 

For stakeholders and CFOs, having a firm understanding of the business’ expenses is necessary to manage costs. Automation software like SolveXia automatically ingests, validates, and manipulates data to produce the necessary reports. 

2. Accounts Payable

Getting paid what you are owed is integral to maintaining proper cash flow and keeping the business running. Invoice processing, follow-ups, and collection can become painstaking without automation. 

Automation software standardizes the process and helps to make sure the business gets paid on time and that nothing slips through the cracks. 

3. Reconciliation 

Businesses need to reconcile accounts to ensure accuracy and complete the month end close process. As your transaction volume grows and the use of multiple payment processors expands, this key process takes more and more time. 

Manual data entry and transaction matching is a waste of your team’s time. Instead, you can use tools like SolveXia to expedite and streamline the entire process so you can keep moving to meet your deadlines. 

4. Regulatory Reporting

You can submit regulatory reports up to 10x faster with the aid of finance automation solutions. In turn, your business gains peace of mind and total control over the processes, so you can have total transparency from start-to-finish. There’s no need to waste time on manual data entry anymore. 

How to Set Up Finance Automation?

Are you looking to implement finance automation but are unsure of where to begin? Here’s our best recommendation of steps to follow to get the most benefit from your chosen solution:

1. Assess Current Processes 

Take stock of your current accounting and finance processes to identify where room for improvement resides. Look for processes that are: repetitive, data-heavy, tedious, and time-consuming. 

Don’t expect to automate everything at once. Instead, look for processes that impact surrounding processes and begin there. 

2. Review Your Setup

List all the existing technologies and systems that your company currently relies on using. The best automation across finance will come from systems that can integrate with your existing tech stack (such as SolveXia). 

3. Involve Stakeholders

Bring your team into the conversation, including stakeholders. Make sure to communicate how and why you wish to make adjustments, and where they stand to gain from using automation software. This way, when you implement a new technology, everyone will be on board. 

4. Design and Test Workflows

With your chosen solution, build out your ideal process and test it out before deploying it on a broad scale. It’s best to look for software that is easy-to-use and low-code, so you won’t have to rely on a dedicated IT team to deploy or make adjustments on the fly. A finance automation tool like SolveXia fits this bill.

What are the Benefits of Finance Automation?

Imagine removing the pain-staking parts out of your processes- what do you think you stand to gain? 

Well, it’s definitely a lot! Take a look at some of the most outstanding and highly documented outcomes of implementing finance automation tools: 

1. Time Savings

Manual processes are slow and inefficient, not to mention error-prone. With finance automation tools, you no longer have to worry about executing processes by hand, across spreadsheets, or on paper. 

As a result, your team has more time to focus on the responsibilities that truly require human thought and initiative. 

2. Cost Savings 

With greater productivity and less mistakes comes lower costs. You can save by putting your data to better use (improved analytics and forecasting) for better decision making, reduced redundant work, and requiring less people to complete a key task. 

At the same time, you get to remove key person dependencies, so you never have to worry when someone is out sick or on vacation as your finance functions will still be taken care of. 

3. Reduced Errors

Regardless of employing detail-oriented people, mistakes are inevitable, especially when it comes to processing massive amounts of data, performing data entry, and generating reports. 

One study found that 80% of spreadsheets have major errors, which can be detrimental to your business! 

4. Less Likelihood of Fraud

No matter how much you trust your employees, fraud can be a major issue for businesses. 

Whether it’s from overlooked suspicious behavior on behalf of customers or highly tempted employees, the use of automation software mitigates the chance of fraud as you have secured and standardized finance processes. Plus all data is stored in the cloud with bank grade security.

5. Improved Analytics

Finance automation software can not only support your data collection and accuracy, but it helps to put your data to use through advanced analytics. By leveraging analysis, you can rely on real-time access to data and be able to identify issues before they spiral out of control. 

You’ll also be able to take advantage of greater insights for improved decision making, leading to opportunities that can maximize revenue and reducing costs.

What are the Risks of Finance Automation?

You know what they say, “No risk, no reward.” However, if you’re aware of the challenges of automation software from the get-go you can greatly mitigate (and even avoid) some of the risks that may come with it. 

1. Change Management 

Your team may feel reluctant to happily adopt finance automation out of fear. They may think that the tool is going to replace their purpose or the company’s need to employ them. This can be remedied by enacting adequate change management. 

When you clearly communicate the game plan, involve your team early on, and showcase the various benefits of automation software, they are more likely to use it with joy, as opposed to fearing it. 

2. Technology

When you deploy an automation tool, you want to ensure that your team can use it without struggle. To do so, select a software that has an intuitive interface and adequate support resources. 

A finance tool like SolveXia provides drag-and-drop functionality, a visual interface, and customizable reports so anyone, regardless of their technical acumen, can become quickly familiar with and customize its array of solutions and all without IT.

How to Overcome Challenges of Finance Automation?

To further elaborate on the best practices mentioned above to overcome such hurdles, it’s advisable to: 

• Openly communicate automation’s benefits 
• Involve employees in the selection and implementation journey early on 
• Assess a potential solution’s compatibility with your existing systems 
• Execute regular audits 
• Monitor a solution’s impact consistently 

No matter how many hurdles you may face along your finance automation journey, the truth of the matter is that you have more to gain than lose by utilizing automation software. 

Regardless of the size of your business or industry in which you operate, finance departments handle countless processes that are perfectly fit for automation. 

Final Thoughts

Automation across finance is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have to remain competitive and compliant. A reliance on spreadsheets and use of disconnected systems leads to data inaccuracies, delays, and issues. 

With finance automation, you can complete processes 85x quicker with 98% less errors, improve internal control, and satisfy both customers and employees alike. 

Ready to accomplish more with less? Check out how SolveXia can help by requesting a demo.