How Companies Should Re-Deploy Employee Hours After Saving Time

Introduction

Mid-market companies often take more than ten days to close their books, and most of those days are usually spent on data management and matching. CratoMatch helps clients save 45% of their time on accounting operations. While this is wonderful, companies may struggle to identify how to allocate those time savings to more meaningful work. Eliminating time-consuming accounting tasks like bank reconciliation, bill payments, and expense categorization may lead to leaner teams. Companies can struggle to quantify the labor costs of employees, especially when they’re working inefficiently, which may be manually repetitive tasks with automation potential. 

What Can Be Done?

Better strategize how to make accounts profitable

Automated systems can probably help identify potential areas, but they aren’t necessarily the best at recognizing situational remedies. Eliminating human work from the tabulation phase helps focus more on problem-solving. In addition, automated systems like Cratoflow can display the data in eye-catching ways, like charts and graphs, so accountants can process the data instead of hunting and pecking their way through spreadsheets. Also, think about how much time teams usually take to create dashboards or presentations to guide leadership through the state of play. Cratoflow makes it simple for everyone to understand the organization's financial health, eliminating extra labor. 

Identify smart ways to replace costly activities. 

Automated systems tend to do a good job of categorizing transactions, removing duplicates, and identifying potential mistaken expenditures and fraud. But they cannot understand which costs are mandatory, which can be avoided, and which providers may do a better job at a lower cost. In this scenario, the system gives you the facts, and you decide what to do with them. It also presents them in a way more easily interpreted by the human mind, e.g., visual charts that provide an easier way to visually forecast your future cash projections.

Forecast future spending.

Having your recent and historic accounts payable and receivable data is crucial to forecast future profitability or deficits. Watching your spending patterns is like monitoring your heartbeat. It helps you take your pulse of the money you put in and out of your bank. Cratoflow eliminates the need for employees to root around documents, instead giving them specific information in an easy-to-digest form.

Contribute to other aspects of the business. 

Companies are increasingly looking to break down silos and foster greater collaboration between employees. In addition, studies have shown that one of the most common reasons employees leave during the Great Resignation is that they do not see a path for advancement or don’t learn new skills. Eliminating unnecessary tasks from the accounting teams’ daily routine opens up the opportunity for them to do more training or attend brainstorms, or otherwise contribute to the overall company strategy. 

Assess vendors.

 The FinTech sector continues to produce new banks, sales systems, and order management providers. Accounting teams rarely have enough time to research and/or meet with the new companies on the block to assess whether they would provide better services. Automating many processes provides those individuals with a great opportunity to keep on top of the new players and negotiate rates for a new relationship.

These are just five examples of tasks that humans excel at, but rarely have the time to devote to them. The accountant team can often feel like hamsters on a running wheel, struggling to get beyond the end-of-month reconciliation to make a meaningful impact on the bottom line. 

By turning to automated bookkeeping systems like Cratoflow, you not only save money, but also improve your company’s financial health and provide meaningful work to your accounting team. Cratoflow is a true partner in every step of the way, helping you set up your systems to take advantage of automation, empowering your employees.