For a long time, companies have looked to make their accounting more efficient. Technological development within business systems, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) are creating completely new opportunities for more automated accounting.

Automated accounting is a question of saving time, but also of increasing quality. It should also lead to critical financial reports being produced more quickly.

Accounting becoming increasingly complex

Accounting for international growth companies is becoming more and more difficult. This is due to the increasingly complex local regulations introduced and the increased business risk involved in making a mistake. Furthermore, new regulations are being introduced all the time, which international companies need to observe in their accounting processes.

Automating accounting in an international growth company is more complex than with a more “regular” local company with relatively stable operations. However, the gains made by creating automation will be bigger for a larger company. This is because more time can be saved and the risk of making mistakes reduces the overall business risk to which an international business is exposed.

In this blog post, we will highlight the opportunities offered by modern solutions and what is required to attain a completely different level of automated accounting.

What does automated accounting involve?

Basically, automated accounting means scaling away much of the manual work through digitalization and automation of the accounting process. This can be done within a number of different areas, such as:

  • Receiving electronic invoices
  • Sending electronic invoices
  • Integration with banks for automatic payments
  • Automatically accounting for different types of invoice using machine learning
  • Electronic expense receipts
  • Posting receipts directly via apps when a person receives them
  • Automated VAT accounting and VAT reporting
  • Accounting taking place when transactions are created in real time
  • Automating time reporting and invoicing where accounting happens directly.

What basic functions are required in order to create automated accounting?

Accrued income and costs

The basis of a good solution is to be able to create the automatic accrual of income and costs. The system should be able to be set up to process this according to the type of revenue or cost. It is important that the function for this is flexible and can process many different types of requirement. The ability to make forecasts based on these rules is also important.

Accounting of different currencies

One challenge, particularly for international companies, is the efficient management of different currencies. It should be possible to set up solutions to automatically manage the updating of currencies from different sources depending on local requirements. One such requirement in Poland is obtaining exchange rates from the Bank of Poland. Normally, the standard integration from general suppliers is insufficient. The ability to create scripts to determine how updating should occur is necessary.

Revaluation of booked income and expenses

When the books are balanced, the system needs to be able to manage the revaluation of booked income and expenses smoothly and take care of differences in exchange rates.

Consolidation

The system needs to be able to support the option to consolidate countries using different currencies into regions and groups.

Automated accounting without programming

It is also important to be able to create automation without programming being required. This is extremely useful and can save a lot of time if the users can do it themselves. When transactions are made, different types of data are added depending on different types of rules established by the user.

These types of requirements are essential for the setting up of a new modern business system for companies with international growth ambitions. If the system supports this type of function, it will provide large gains over time in the form of:

  • Time – less time taken to perform various work tasks
  • Improved accounting quality
  • Balancing the books takes less time
  • Better reports, created more quickly based on more accurate data

NetSuite ERP is a business system particularly suited to international growth companies. Would you like to know more about how it works and whether it suits your requirements? Download a free guide for more information or book a free NetSuite demo.

Want to learn more? Download our free guide

We have prepared a guide covering various scenarios describing how companies generally avoid problems with international financial administration, as well as the pros and cons of the various solutions. Read more and download the guide here.

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Anu Hemmilä

Anu Hemmilä
Key Account Manager
anu.hemmila@staria.com
+ 358 50 501 5315

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