Thomas Edison’s famous quote “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”, will resonate with many finance teams.
That’s because those proportions regularly reflect the heavy manual effort required to pull together the required reporting.
Accountancy often holds a reputation for requiring long working hours which, in many cases, is down to antiquated processes and approaches failing to keep up with business growth.
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Is accounting automation a solution?
“Taking existing client processes into the 21st century can revolutionise a finance department and flip those proportions on their head – allowing teams to spend the majority of their time performing more meaningful analysis, and better decision making can result,” insists Ally Mitchell, senior specialist with Hutcheon Mearns.
Ally, who was recognised as a ‘Top 100 Young CA’ by ICAS back in 2020, added: “The latest technologies, such as Microsoft’s Power Platform, provide significant opportunities to simplify and automate many recurring tasks, and allow employees to win back not only time, but enjoyment of their job,” he says. “However, this is only possible if businesses take the plunge to investigate the potential, and invest in their future.”
Can technology reduce stress in finance teams?
The senior specialist is also aware of the negative effects of stress on a busy workforce, explaining that stressed employees exhibit 60% higher absenteeism and are significantly less effective when they’re at work.
“Researchers claim that presenteeism – when employees come to work suffering from conditions that cause them to underperform – can cut an employee’s productivity by up to 77 percent,” he explains.
“Throughout my accounting career to date, I’ve consistently taken an interest in identifying weak and inefficient accounting processes and developing new ways of working – often with the aim of making people’s lives easier. This is particularly true for Excel-based accounting processes, which still play a significant role in the finance function of most businesses – even those using large ERP systems such as SAP or Oracle.”
How one firm is using automation in accounting, finance and auditing
Now, as part of an expanded offering, Hutcheon Mearns can also transform clients’ existing finance departments by utilising modern techniques and technologies to simplify, standardise, and automate their underlying processes.
HM’s new service line called ‘Elevate’ will initially focus on financial process improvement, automation, and data modelling/business intelligence (BI).
“I’d describe our latest service offering as game-changing in its ability to improve efficiency, data integrity, and even employee wellbeing,” says Ally.
The benefits of accounting automation
Here, Ally discusses a recent example where a client was following a time intensive and manual invoicing process, before switching to automation in accounting, finance and auditing:
This client was taking almost an entire month to issue invoices for the previous month’s work. Not only did it involve a huge amount of time and effort, but it was leading to a backlog of invoicing. As they struggled to keep up, human error was creeping in, and the resulting customer queries exacerbated delays in receiving payment.
“After reviewing the existing process, we were able to automate a large proportion of the invoice preparation, reducing the time taken to draft invoices to a single day. Not only that, but with much less human intervention required, the volume of customer queries reduced dramatically.”
If you wish to speak to the experts at Hutcheon Mearns about ways of working smarter, automation or assistance with other areas of auditing and accounting, visit the website.
More about Hutcheon Mearns….
Hutcheon Mearns’ specialist team are practice-trained and industry qualified accountants who support companies with interim finance cover and finance project support.
The team are employees of Hutcheon Mearns and can be contracted to a client on a completely flexible basis from one day a month to an entire year.
Claire Clark, Head of Specialists, says: “This service gives our clients assurance that: the person utilised is sufficiently qualified; they will stay for the term of the project; and they can hit the ground running having undertaken many similar roles”.
Their service offering to date has consisted of:
- Interim: the provision of one or more qualified accountants to offer short- or long-term support for companies when they are resource constrained, e.g. maternity leave cover, year-end audit support or technical accounting
- Agile: the provision of an outsourced accounting function for companies who don’t have the time or resources to undertake this in-house. This includes monthly management accounts, bookkeeping and financial statement preparation.
Now, a third strand has been launched in the shape of:
- Elevate: using innovation and business intelligence (BI) to help clients improve their financial processes, increase efficiency of reporting and improve data integrity.
