Incorporating automation in any firm’s processes isn’t exactly a new thing. There are probably hundreds of different tools out there that can be used to automate many of your firm’s processes. What most of these firms realize is that there are strategic benefits to incorporating automation, even if you’re still just starting out. To be clear, the goal for doing this is to build a more robust and more efficient firm and not just for the sake of automation. If you’re still not sure about its benefits, this guide breaks down all the reasons why your CPA firm can benefit from automation.

Investing in Your Staff and Their Growth

With automation comes a lot of time and effort saved. But that doesn’t mean your staff will have a lot of free time on their hands. Instead, you can use all the time you save to invest in their growth and help them develop new skills. Imagine what your firm can achieve with hundreds of extra hours per week just by automating write-up and bookkeeping. You can practically reallocate all those hours to prepare your staff for some higher-level work or just help them develop new sets of skills that can be valuable to the company. As your team continues to add new skills and areas of expertise, your firm can offer more meaningful services and value to clients.

Developing Improved Insights and Analysis

Accounting automation also allows you to unify data quickly and continuously. This is a huge benefit as it enables you to explore trends, exceptions, and insights without any delays. You don’t have to wait for period-end close kist to see what the numbers look like and can be improved on your processes. You’ll also have more time for analysis and quality insights, putting you in a better position to support some agile decision-making. At this point, it’ll be easier to start new initiatives and avoid any unnecessary bottlenecks.

Providing Guidance to Your Clients

Any accounting firm that wants to succeed in the industry needs to understand what drives their clients’ businesses. However, doing that can be a real challenge when you’re constantly struggling to keep up with your backlogs. The only effective way to eliminate those backlogs is to either outsource some of the tasks or streamline your processes through automation. The former may be too costly of an option, so the latter is a much more viable approach.

Automation can practically do wonders in making your processes more efficient and a lot less time-consuming. Your staff can then concentrate on providing additional value to your customers instead of being overwhelmed by a mountain load of recurring and tedious tasks.

Enhancing Data Security Protocols

Believe it or not but automation can also influence just your data security in more ways than one. Manual accounting activities that require the use of spreadsheets offer very little protection and lack a lot of preventive controls. Other manual tools are practically the same and increase the risk for cyber-attacks and errors. However, with automation, you can invest in a more secure program that can offer encryption and doesn’t rely on sending and receiving multiple versions of the same file.

Conclusion

In today’s business environment, the need for on-demand visibility and becoming proactive for your clients increases every day. Through automation, that can be achieved along with all the other benefits mentioned on this list.

Firm360 is here to help you streamline your accounting practice in ways you’ve never imagined before. Our all-in-one platform lets you get more work done for less. Through Firm360, you can use an accounting practice management software that has integrated document management, and automated features all rolled into one. If you’re curious about our platform’s features, feel free to reach out to us. Book a demo today and experience the Firm360 difference.