The speed of business has increased exponentially in recent times. Every entrepreneur has to cope up with striking changes in his business on a daily basis. The pandemic has broken the spinal cord of the businesses.
Introduction
Since last one year, they are struggling to stand up and with the rise of the second wave, they have been hit hard. Increased efficiencies without an increase in costs, in fact even with a decrease in costs is the need of the hour.
Traditional systems of operating the business have taken a hit in the current situation. They have to be agile in their internal business processes to cater to the customers and other stakeholders in an efficient manner.
Fortunately, this pandemic has shown new tools and options to us with them every entrepreneur can increase the efficiency level exponentially.
Why accounting systems are more important than ever
Traditionally, accountants have always been the bean counters. They do the postmortem of the transactions and play a little role in business strategy and planning.
In these times of pandemic, the importance of robust accounting systems has increased tremendously. Following are the primary reasons.
Reduced demand and increased competition among businesses.
Entrepreneurs require real-time data for minute visibility of their business.
In house data analytics has become the need of the hour
Accountants are no longer seen as just history writers but are expected to contribute in the strategic decision making of the organizations.
Collaboration between various functions of the business i.e. marketing, sales, purchases, accounts and customer service is essential for sustaining the business.
Why traditional systems do not work any more?
Traditionally, business are relying on post facto accounting for monitoring and extraction of financial information relating to their trade. But these traditional systems do not work in the current era of technology. Reasons are;
Generally traditional systems are opaque means they work only with locational boundaries.
Being offline is their biggest drawback.
These systems do not talk to other systems in the organisation i.e. marketing, sales and customer service.
As they are post facto, getting out real time information from these systems is a challenge.
Cloud Accounting Systems : The new age accounting solutions
The technology has provided us with many options through which we can streamline all the business processes. With the advent of digital tools, digital transformation of the businesses can be achieved.
What is Cloud Accounting
Cloud accounting systems are web based softwares that can perform all types of accounting processes ranging from Order to Cash and Procure to Pay.
What are the benefits of using Cloud Accounting Solutions
Cloud accounting are the new age systems with following benefits.
Online systems where so that work from anywhere
They are not bound by specific location
Can even work from your smart phone
Smart wide range of automation tools available
Collaboration between teams made easy
Source of real time information
Process based accounting rather then Accounting Journal based accounting
People with minimum accounting knowledge can work on them
Technical accounting knowledge not required.
Environment-friendly system with minimum paperwork.
Audit documentation can be kept in system only.
Amit Mundhra CA
The author is a member of ICAI and he can be reached at amit.mundhra@gmail.com