Over the years, you would have heard stories from people working within the accounting industry that they had found themselves lost and drown in a sea of financial data. Probably, they even ended up in a giant mess of figures when details get misfiled or wrongly inputted. These inaccuracies and other issues cost a business too much time and money, which could have been used in a more valuable and profitable task. Hence, several accounting programs that offer convenience and great benefits to businesses were launched. However, these programs cannot resolve all the existing, alarming issues. Little did the industry know that they can still maximize the benefits of these accounting tools. No, you need not fix or change your current program. All you need to do is connect your system with a reliable accounting integration solution. Easy, right?
Integrated Accounting System Defined
An integrated accounting system is self-balancing software. It can connect all crucial features of various programs in a single platform. Likewise, it can assist you with automated account reconciliation. This cuts out the need for re-entering data and human errors, while also making sure that your records are always up to date. As a result, your business receives precise financial details faster. This can significantly help you make sound business decisions and courses of action.
Benefits of Accounting Integration to Your Business
It lessens re-keying and discrepancies.
Re-keying creates two issues. First, it wastes your time and effort that could otherwise be used for other valuable tasks. Further, it gives room to errors that require more time and effort to find and fix.
A business management system with integrated accounting reduces these issues, which gives you and your staff more time to focus on sales and opportunities.
It provides real-time, accurate information.
Apart from being behind, standalone accounting is almost always not secure as it requires manual re-entering of details from the ordering system to the accounting system. That means that this process is not real-time and invites human errors. Hence, it could not help you make an informed business decision right away.
In contrast, integrated accounting offers a full, real-time picture of the business at any time since details automatically flow into the accounting system as orders are processed.
It helps automatically perform job costing.
With an integrated accounting system, you can even handle intricate accounting processes like job costing. Postings are automatically made to accounts receivable, accounts payable, and the general ledger so that the accounting system automatically stores the details it needs to calculate job costs and complete other accounting processes.
On the contrary, standalone accounting cannot “talk to” the order management system like an integrated accounting system would. Thus, it often runs into problems.
It results in an accurate commission.
Not just an integrated accounting system can automatically perform job costing, it can also automatically calculate sales commission including split commissions. As orders are processed, the system receives the information it needs to calculate the commission.
While with non-integrated or standalone accounting, you or your staff must manually take details from the company’s ordering system and enter it into the accounting system. Again, this may cause a human error and potentially faulty business decisions.
Final Thoughts
If you are considering to adopt an accounting integration solution for your business, it is important to ensure that your staff is comfortable using these tools to perform their jobs. You must make them understand that accounting software, like accounting itself, used to be only for those with long years of training in this function. In recent years, however, integrated accounting software has become less complicated and easier to learn. Thus, adapting to these advances in procedure could help you all in achieving the company’s financial goals.
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