Automating repetitive and labor-intensive accounting tasks using software robots (also called robotic process automation - RPA) is the latest trend across companies and industries. Across all financial and accounting companies, RPA is disrupting not only internal but also offshore outsourcing models due to its lower costs, accuracy and higher productivity.

A large-scale standardization of processes is the key to RPA's success in accounting. Accounting RPA automation offers the advantage of realizing an ROI almost immediately once it is implemented. Robots are relatively easy to set up since they don't have to be physically integrated with your IT systems. 

Let’s look at some of the benefits of RPA in the accounting sector:

• Saves time
• Increased savings
• Can be easily integrated with existing IT system
• Lesser scope for error
• Easy to scale up
• Increased productivity
• Continuous work across 24 hours, 365 days a year

Finance and accounting professionals are overwhelmed by the growing volume of transactions, repetitive work, and large amounts of data to manage. Keeping track of day-to-day activities, maintaining Excel spreadsheets, and manually entering data are all time-consuming, error prone and tedious tasks in accounting. Using RPA in accounting has the advantage of providing promptness, speed, and accuracy for the processes listed below:

1. Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping involves a myriad of repetitive tasks that are error prone. Getting information from the clients to categorize appropriately. Completing the books on time so that monthly financial reports can be generated accurately and on time are ongoing challenging tasks for a bookkeeper. By using bookkeeping robots which can work during night time, the speed of tasks can be increased. The accuracy also increases. This enables the accounting firm to be more profitable and add clients quickly. Other bookkeeping processes that the robots can do are reconciliation, exception handling, journal entries, extracting information from other portals and entering the data in accounting software and emailing clients or accountants if there are issues.

2. Accounts Payable

AP is a tedious process that requires  digitizing vendor invoices using optical character recognition (OCR) or Computer vision. Through RPA, this process can be automated and payments made to vendors are credited automatically to their accounts after error detection and validation. Streamlining invoice processing can save time and money, and increase accuracy. Some other instances of where accounting robots can help in the accounts payable are verification of vendors and setting them up in the system, extracting invoice/purchase order data, processing vendor invoices and cross-checking them with purchase orders, checking for duplicates, and replying to vendor questions.

3. Accounts Receivable 

RPA makes billing customers for goods and services more efficient and reliable. It's a good practice to  start with Accounts Receivable because it's less dependent on external factors. RPA bots can automatically create invoices and issue them when you use bots as a part of your workforce. Some accounts receivable tasks and processes that can reap benefits from RPA solutions include setting up customer data and their management, extricating customer information from various sources, generating sales quotes and entries, generating invoices and distributing them, resolving disputes, managing credit card risk as well as handling chargebacks.

4. Payroll

Accounting automation software helps you ensure that payroll submissions are timely, accurate, and compliant. Payroll bots perform payroll functions according to rules, but if an update isn't addressed or updated, your organization is at risk. In payroll management, robotic automation can be used for employee data management, verification of employee data (timesheets, leaves, etc), entering timesheet information and approval of timesheets. 

5. Financial Reporting

Profit and loss reports should be updated frequently to monitor financial performance, but updating them manually is tedious and time-consuming. Automation robots can automate this process and generate reports in real-time. Your financial forecasting will be more accurate and transparent with intelligent automation. Automated bots can assist your finance and accounting department in offloading manual tasks. In addition to trial balances and balance sheets, P&L statements, income statements, and regulatory and management reports, RPA can be useful in a variety of reporting processes. 

6. Fraud Detection

Based on specific usage patterns, you can detect fraud as it happens and predict future fraudulent behavior with RPA accounting and optimized processes. Business or regulatory changes are automatically notified to all relevant stakeholders by bots. It flags potential fraud to the relevant department when it identifies it. A simple example would be when several transactions are made in a short period. The RPA bot would flag this account as a potential threat if it was making multiple transactions in a short period.

While robots cannot replace human thinking, they can automate manual, repetitive tasks, allowing your accounting and finance teams to make better decisions. These use cases mentioned above describe how software robots in accounting can fulfill needs in the accounting industry. Integra Balance can solve the RPA needs of your accounting firm, whatever the size may be. Schedule a demo today!