Automation is having a huge impact on workplaces around the globe. Naturally, because you can automate pretty much everything – sales, marketing, finance, cyber security, social media, manufacturing, IT, HR, etc. A 2020 McKinsey & Co. global survey of business leaders from a wide variety of industries found that 66% were piloting solutions to automate at least one business process, up from 57% two years earlier. The reasons to automate are extensive. Automation boosts accuracy, is resource-efficient, heightens productivity, lowers operating costs, and enhances both flexibility and adaptability. When all is said and done, if you’re not automating, or planning to soon, you’ll be obsolete. An easy way for companies to automate is through their ERP solution and cloud-based options lead the way.
Enhanced Intercompany Transactions
Sage Intacct’s automation services reduce manual work and errors by simplifying complex intercompany transactions. With the tier system, users can post in the original company (level 1) and Sage Intacct detects if the account is from the destination company, then automatically books due to/due from to fill the absent. This automation is a big improvement from solutions like QuickBooks, where users need to log in to each company individually and book the journals separately. As you can see from Table A and Table B below, Sage Intacct takes one entry, whereas QuickBooks requires three separate entries.
Table A
ICT entry, using Company A as the originator, is as follows:
| Transaction entered in the ICT Company | DR | Expense (selected account in Company C) | $100.00 | |
| CR | Bank (selected account in Company A) | $100.00 |
Table B
When this entry is posted in ICT, the following entries are created in the individual companies:
| Transaction in Company A | DR | Loan Account Company C | $100.00 | |
| CR | Bank | $100.00 | ||
| Transaction in Company B | DR | Loan Account Company B | $100.00 | |
| CR | Loan Account Company A | $100.00 | ||
| Transaction in Company C | DR | Expense | $100.00 | |
| CR | Loan Account Company C | $100.00 |
Simplified Multi-Destination
Sage Intacct also allows multi-destination entries where you book one journal entry in the original company, and then allocate it to two different connection corporations by a different route set up. This cuts down on manual data entry and replaces it with a more precise system calculation. This minimizes the chance the account balance is not matched due to error entry. Imagine the time saved, and fewer headaches you’ll have, by not having to go through ledgers individually to find & fix discrepancies.
For multi-destination entries A–>B–>C, if A processed a payment including both B and C, such as a payment processing from A that contains expenses for B and C, you only need to book one entry in A by debit expense accounts for B and C and credit cash. Sage Intacct then automatically books the journal in both B and C for debit expense and credit due to A account.
The benefit is the same as with intercompany transactions, where manual work is reduced, saving time and reducing human error. The time saved can be quite significant, especially in reconciliation, where we need to backtrack what happened and go back & forth in multiple corporations. Sage Intacct reduces all that time & effort while improving accuracy.
Optimized Business Processes
Repetitive manual tasks have much more risk for errors and often involve longer processing times for approvals and sign-offs. Over 40% of workers surveyed spend at least a quarter of their workweek on manual, repetitive tasks, with email, data collection, and data entry occupying the most time. You can imagine the errors that fall through the cracks and come out of a quarter of a person’s job. All of this, when coupled with decreased productivity, impacts the bottom line. Employing workflow automation software in your business cuts these wasted resources down considerably so your staff focuses their attention on strategic priorities and KPI goals – what actually matters!
Meaningful Work is Pivotal to Engaged Employees
Seamlessly integrating automation into your business processes doesn’t just increase profitability, it also improves staff performance and engagement. Freeing up staff’s time spent on boring repetitive processes, helps staff feel more empowered and productive in tasks they may find challenging, yet also rewarding and enjoyable. You want your staff to be enthusiastic and feel satisfied coming to work every day. Motivated and happy employees contribute to higher business growth and longevity, lower turnover, and an overall healthier work environment. What we’re saying here is that automation affects more than just processes and numbers, as much as our team of accountants likes the benefits to the numbers as well. Automation clearly has a tangible impact on your people – the DNA of your business and the key driver to any organization’s success.
Improved Data Analytics
Data to an organization is like the nucleus to an atom. There is so much data everywhere. On average, corporate data grows at 40% per year, while approximately 20% of it is dirty. Every decision and every activity is based on data. That’s why having high-quality and complete data is paramount for effective decision-making. When staff is forced to enter data or compile reports manually from multiple systems there is no way to 100% ensure or sustain the information’s accuracy. This leads companies to base important strategic business decisions on flawed data, leading to severe consequences.
Every year, poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million. Solutions like Sage Intacct that increase automation fight poor data quality by minimizing the manual processes and errors associated with gathering and entering data. When it comes to data, the less human intervention the better. Of course, you need people to analyze and interpret the numbers, but that’s where Sage Intacct’s dashboards come into play (more on that in other blogs). Sage Intacct’s automation software and built-in tools do the labor-intensive fundamentals while delivering fewer errors and better results.
Moving away from manual processes, like intercompany transactions, is a huge undertaking that also comes with huge results. Not only does it reduce the risk for errors and empowers you to make effective data-driven decisions, but it drives collaboration and user engagement. Our team is here to help set up your automation workflows in Sage Intacct, so they work the way you imagine while delivering superior results.
