Internal accounting teams have their work cut out for them today. In addition to pressing challenges like maintaining accuracy, following internal policies and supporting data security, accountants must also ensure compliance with industry standards while streamlining their own working processes.
However, making these changes successfully is often easier said than done, and requires the right technological solutions that can seamlessly integrate with the business’s current accounting infrastructure.
Let’s examine a few of the ways that accounting- and financed-focused automation and processing solutions can make all the difference, and elevate the capabilities of your internal team.
1) Automate accounts payable processes
A key challenge for internal accounting teams is keeping up with the demands and payment schedules of accounts payable (AP) processes. When these activities are streamlined, it results in the elimination of human error as well as speedier payments to support the company’s internal financials and resource planning.
Bringing automation into accounts payable represents a game changer for internal accounting and finance teams, as it reduces the need for human intervention, particularly when it comes to error-prone and time-consuming processes like data entry. As opposed to saddling an employee with certain AP tasks, an intelligent solution like SK Global and SignUp Software’s Accounts Payable Automation makes short work of handling these workloads, while following the company’s own specific invoice approval processes. Simply scan the invoice, and let the automated solution take over, directly within the business’s own Microsoft Dynamics platform.
Because the system automatically sends out notification emails to specific accounting staff when an invoice is ready for approval, internal employees can save time while ensuring that no payment falls through the cracks.
Check out the full process for AP automation here to learn more.
Empower your accounting and finance teams with automated solutions that better support their workflows.2) Automate vendor payments
In addition to automating accounts payable processes, it’s highly advantageous to automate other key accounting processes as well, including outgoing vendor payments. Because these are often time sensitive and critical to maintaining partner relationships, automating vendor payments can help reduce and even eliminate late payments while supporting security and accuracy.
It’s imperative to find an automation solution that enables direct payment transmission between the company’s internal Microsoft Dynamics platform and the vendor’s bank. In this way, vendor payment processes are streamlined, centralized and fully secure.
The solution leveraged here should also be capable of supporting a range of global payment standards — including ACH, SEPA, IAT, BACS and more — to enable international business. And, a solution that allows accountants to consolidate their outbound files from multiple payment journals can reduce time spent on vendor payment tasks and open these employees up to more value-add and important finance work.
SK Global’s Vendor Payment Automation solution includes all these features and then some — check it out here to see how this technology can save valuable time and money.
3) Credit card payments: Support real-time processing and pre-authorization
Keeping credit card payments safe and secure is important, as is ensuring that these payments can be processed and smoothly as possible. A solution that allows pre-authorization for credit card payments is a powerful asset, particularly when it comes to recurring customer transactions or subscriptions.
In addition to pre-authorization, real-time credit card processing further cuts down on the necessary time employees need to spend on these tasks. A solution like SK Global’s Credit Card Advantage can integrate directly with Microsoft Dynamics, enabling accountants to capture, authorize and process credit card transactions in real time, right within the Dynamics platform.
Not only does this reduce the number of steps for accounting staff members, but this caliber of processing solution also decreases manual data entry and related errors, while fully securing payments through the compliant PayFabric Cloud processing technology.
Credit Card Advantage was designed with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards in mind, ensuring every transaction is processed in a compliant and protected manner. All customer payment card data is stored anonymously, and the solution enables users to update or delete card data as needed. In this way, the business never stores unnecessary data and reduces its overall risk.
Once payments are processed, the system automatically provides a customer invoice within the company’s Dynamics platform, and sends a receipt to the cardholder.
Empower your accounting team
The right solutions can make all the difference for your finance and accounting staff. However, it’s key to find systems that can integrate and work directly with existing platforms, like Microsoft Dynamics. This type of technology can reduce the learning curve for users, while enabling the kind of ROI-supportive benefits that business leaders expect.
To find out more about how SK Global solutions can empower your internal teams, connect with us for more details or a demo today.