6 Steps to a Time Saving Cloud Accounting Solution

Any accounting solution is the backbone of any successful organization--one that can take many man hours to maintain each and every month.  As businesses continue to try and lower their costs in an effort to be competitive, one area that seems to be overlooked is the companies own accounting solution.  Cloud accounting has many advantages, one being its accessible anywhere; however, moving to an online solution is only part of the big picture.  Each and every step of an organization’s workflow should be considered to truly take advantage of a cloud accounting solution.

Cloud Accounting

Cloud accounting platform such as QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage50, or others are the backbone of any Cloud based business. These are all accounting platforms that are accessed anywhere you have internet connection.  Bank level security and full backups are provided to help keep your mind at ease.  All three of these platforms have similar features to their desktop-only counterparts, however, the biggest advantage is these platforms all have third-party apps that can connect to your books and help you do things for you.  While some of these third-party apps have their specific industry niche, some of the more popular apps can be used to reduce time-consuming tasks.

Document Management

One of the most time consuming tasks is handling bills and expenses, especially if the number of bills that are processed are hundreds or even thousands a week.  Everything from receiving to approval to entering to paying then finally to filing can all be handled with a few third party apps.  Software such as Hubdoc can be a central location to send all the bills, receipts and expenses for the business.  Hubdoc can even be set up to log into certain banks, utilities and others to fetch the bill or statement for you.  

Using OCR technology, Hubdoc will then fill in the necessary information like vendor name, date and amount for you.  Each vendor can be set up individually such as which account to put the expense into or what bank account it was paid from.  Hubdoc will then publish this information for you to your accounting platform saving countless hours of data entry.

Other document management software that is available includes Expensify, Receipt Box, and Ledgerdocs.  While each accomplishes similar tasks in their own way, currently Hubdoc has the most destination choices for your documents including multiple accounting platforms and multiple could storage solutions.

Payables

Every company needs to send money out to pay their bills.  Printing, signing and mailing checks can be time consuming, especially if there is a lengthy approval process.  Online banking can help save you in postage, but usually requires even more data entry.  There is even a third party app that can help here too called Bill.com.  You can use Bill.com in conjunction with Hubdoc or by itself.  Hubdoc can publish all your bills to Bill.com.  Bill.com will route your bills to certain individuals within your organization for approval.  Once approved, each bill can be set up to be paid with the click of a button.  No more mailing checks or entering data again on your banks website.  Even better yet, Bill.com will mark the bill paid in your accounting platform.  With these two third party apps combined, payables processing time can be reduced by multiple hours a week.  

Cloud Storage

Try to picture your office without file cabinets everywhere.  That’s what will happen when you move to a cloud storage solution such as SmartVault, FileShare, Dropbox, or something similar.  Organizing and filing your documents will be easier than ever, and if you use Hubdoc, it’ll be even easier! Hubdoc will even save your files to your cloud storage solution for you taking all the time spent filing off your desk.  Cloud Storage solutions such as SmartVault offer bank level encryption, document version histories, and the ability to gather signatures from others electronically.

Workflow Management

A cloud workflow management solution will help you manage, organize and assign tasks to your employees.  Being able to monitor and control your projects and who does them will take hours off your plate.  A solution like ActiveCollab can help you stay organized when you outgrow email.  Tasks that need completion won’t get lost in a person’s too big to organize inbox.  You’ll know when projects are due and who is to complete them—even if you are lying on the beach!

Find a Cloud Accounting Bookkeeper

While all these cloud solutions can help transform your business, a trusted bookkeeper that specializes in Cloud Accounting can help set up and manage your platform to ensure everything works as expected all while taking even more time off your hands with continual maintenance and data management. Could you imagine freeing up an extra 5 hours per week?  What about 10 or even your time and your employees time? What kind of impact would that have on your bottom line?  

Combining these six solutions together can help manage the time consuming tasks of your business saving countless hours. Being able to manage your business on the go is becoming more and more important for business owners, and could become a reality for you and your business.