How to automate your bookkeeping processes

Are you still entering all your bills into your accounting software manually? You're not alone - a study done in 2017 by Snap Logic found that 90% of workers are burdened with boring, repetitive tasks costing the business an average of 19 working days per annum in productivity.

Bookkeeping tasks can be especially mundane and repetitive, it is the most common task business owners put off and consequently fall behind. This of course creates extra stress as work builds up into what can feel like an insurmountable task.

Repetitive tasks have an impact on the mental health of employees. They are not just boring and dreary, they can lead to an adverse mental state. Employees are likely to become demoralized, desperate, depressed, and likely to change their jobs"

Automate your workflow

Most bookkeeping tasks are ideal for automation. With so many apps available in the market place that will automate that process- it is surprising how little business's are embracing those technologies.

A good rule to follow with automating your workflow is to ask yourself... is the task repetitive? How often do I do this task - is there a set of rules I can apply to the process to ensure accuracy. If so it is probably a task you can automate. Any task that require little input from you can be automated. 

Most common repetitive bookkeeping task

Entering bills into your accounting software is one of the most common repetitive tasks in bookkeeping - even if you only spend 5 hours a week extracting bills from your emails and entering them into your accounting software and then filing them, that would equate to just over 32 days per annum - time you could be spending building up your business instead.

The good news is this is one part of your business that you can automate easily, utilizing features you most probably already have available to you through your cloud accounting software and email client. If you already have both of these - all it will cost you is the time it takes to set it up and maybe the cost of an additional email address if you don't host your emails inhouse.

So if you don't know where to start here is a simple guide to giving you back some of those hours:

Create a dedicated accounts email address

Smaller business's often don't recognize the need for a separate email address for accounts. Not only will it make your day to day life easier by decluttering your inbox as you are not being inundated with unnessary emails - It is a small cost item that will make your business look much more professional.

Having a separate email address will also make it easier to hand off the task to someone else as your business grows, or with staff changes if you already employ someone to complete this task. It will also flow through to your accounting procedures and with segregation of duties.

Create an accounts@yourbusinessdomain email address and instuct your creditors to send their bills there. Alternately you can have attach an email alias to your current email address. 

Set rules in your email software

Most email clients allow you to set rules for incoming emails - forward all incoming invoices direct to your accounting software inbox for automatic processing or third party data extraction app (see below). Don't worry most data extraction apps won't publish duplicate items. Although with any automated process you need to oversee it and reconcile regularly so you will be able to catch any that may slip through. 

You can find your email address for forwarding documents in the settings of the app or accounting software. Save the email address as a contact in your email client for future reference. You can also use this to forward those one off bills you may receive that don't have a rule set.

If you like to see a decluttered inbox, you can also set rules to move forwarded bills to a sub folder under the supplier name in your email client - so you can easily find any bill/s from any supplier if you need to refer to them. This also becomes a handy filing system although we also recommend backing up bills to your cloud storage if you have one - or in house server. You data extraction app should also give you the ability to do this - that is sync with eg dropbox, onedrive etc as well as to sync with your accounting software. 

Invest in a scanning app

If your accounting software doesn't come with an upload documents for data extraction functionality - look for a compatiable app in the app store on your phone and of course make sure it will sync with your accounting software. There are plenty to choose from. 

In addition to emailing bills directly to your app - you can also take photos of any paper bills or receipts directly in the app using your phone - eg over the counter petrol and/or office supplies receipts or suppliers that still bill you manually.

Not only will you have a scanned version of the transaction to attach to your accounting software - you won't be hauling your receipts to your accountant at the end of the year in a shoebox. 

Set rules in the scanning app

Just as you can set rules in your emails - you can set rules in your scanning app which will automatically publish most bills/ receipts with little input from you. Your invoice will appear in your accounting software as a transaction. Your (or your staffs) role will be to moniter and reconcile the automated process to ensure accuracy. 

Automated Filing

Utlilizing your accounting software to it's full potential and/or investing in a data extraction app will also save you time on the most mundane task of all - Filing.  Not only will you have your documents attached to each transaction in your accounting software, if you also sync to your cloud storage - you will automatically have a back up of each document filed and a back up in your email client. 

lmplementing bots 

For larger companies  - that require more processing and decision making for data entry - you may benefit from speaking to an IT consultant to design a bot for your business to streamline operations further

That's it, you're done. You've now freed up some of your time. Look out for our upcoming articles on how to automate other aspects of your bookkeeping system.