Modern accounting principles are derived from evolving commercial traditions for more than five centuries. The best accounting practices are adopted from the fusion of habits, principles, and conviction towards a system. The General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) globally did not change much except for some tweaks depending upon the rules and practices of Governmental bodies of the region.

Since accounting is rule based, it is much easier to create and deploy automation in this field. Well defined and structured data makes accounting a much-sought area to automate.

The evolution of Accounting Process Automation

When robotic process automation is introduced into accounting, it can handle a variety of accounting workflow processes at an accounting firm or an organization. It is possible to automate the areas of accounting where there is a need to capture, categorize and do any calculations of the entered data. Such accounting tasks can be automated accurately, rapidly, and with negligible errors.

The accounting bot (digital worker), like a new staff learns the skills from its peer human and perfects its job in a precise and timely manner.

What Industries are automating their Accounting Processes:

Industries across the spectrum are gradually adopting automation in their accounting departments. Some of the early automation adopters are,

• Accounting firms
• Manufacturing
• Automotive
• Public / Government
• Construction
• Retail
• Consumer goods
• Services Industries – like Banking, Finance, and Insurance

Automation as a time saving process came to the center stage around 2017. This has quickly gained adoption amongst industries such as banking, finance and insurance, and also in the accounting departments across all these industries. You will start seeing transformation across accounting departments in the upcoming years as these tools start becoming widely used.

Which accounting functions can be quickly automated

If the company decides on accounting automation in their enterprise, they need to first and foremost decide the functions and the departments where automation is feasible and cost effective. Though many departments may want to use automation, top priority is given to accounts payable, accounts receivable, daily accounting tasks and payroll.

1. Accounts Payable

The AP Department irrespective of the size of the company bears the brunt in delaying payment to vendors caused due to incorrect data entry, misplaced invoices, and lengthy approval process cycle. Deploying bots in accounts payable takes care of the following issues

• Cost savings of manual and repetitive tasks
• Mitigation of data entry errors
• Check and control of duplicate invoices
• Duplication of payment is avoided
• Ease integration with the enterprise ERPs

2. Accounts Receivable

This is another important area for any company. The onus falls on AR Accountants who spend their work hours to prepare and send customer invoices, remind the clients of impending payments, enter the payment, handle payment delays etc. This entire process is cumbersome and if done diligently there is still a lack of clarity of impending payments. Accounting bot deployment takes care of AR through

• Accurate preparation and scheduled delivery of Invoices
• Coordinating with sales and supply departments to schedule payment collection
• Avoid creation of erroneous invoices and other data entry issues
• Ensure liquidity and prompt cash flows to the business organization
• Integration of departments gives a clear picture of the AR workflow
• Fix areas where discrepancies are seen
• Finally, cost and time reduction

3. Payroll

Payroll process is complex in any enterprise and is tied up to HR department and regulatory functions. Any payroll discrepancy shows the company in a bad light to its employees. Payroll processing must be highly accurate, time bound and confidential. Accounting RPA bot deployment takes care of payroll through,

• Easier, simpler, and accurate wage calculation
• Ensure compliance with the government norms in taxation and filing
• Helping payroll team in entering employee data with accuracy
• Increase the efficiency by mapping an attainable work flow

What are the challenges in RPA implementation?

Even when the management is convinced about accounting automation implementation and believe it is beneficial and cost effective, it is still a challenge at many companies. Some of the challenges automation deployment team will face are:

1. Standardization of the process

Prior to automation, a crucial decision an organization needs to formulate is whether to automate the present workflow with mild alterations or consider revamping the entire workflow. Secondly, though from the blueprint the process might look viable, but during deployment there will be a lot of technical glitches. Deployment team needs full orientation of the business process and cycle to address all the fault lines before starting the process.

2. Prioritize which accounting process need to be automated

When you identify the process, choose the steps that are easier to implement, such as

• Repetitive and standardized items
• Prone to human error
• Recurring cost area

3. Input and responsiveness from the operational and IT teams

Though a road map is chosen for implementing automation, yet the guidance and technical hassles needs to be discussed and coordinated with the operational and IT teams. Their recommendation will facilitate navigating automation issues to ensure a smooth transition and maintenance after deployment.

4. Engaging employees to the change

Many organizations involve employees and seek their opinions during conceptual, design and automation implementation. This education alters the employees thought process to change their perception of a robot as a ‘helping tool’ instead of ‘job stealer’. Further, as a morale booster, through regular training, their skills get upgraded.

If you are an accounting firm (or an accounting department of an organization) irrespective of your size, have a roadmap in place or not, we have pre-built automation solutions for many areas of accounting. Why not book a personalized demo session and see for yourself? To understand more about Accounting Automation, book your personal demo to talk to our automation experts.