Growing tech companies are no strangers to adopting new technologies. Innovation is something we all share enthusiasm for, but it’s often applied in different ways. In this guest post from our Associate Sponsor, Gravitate Accounting, we hear about some finance related tasks that can be automated – freeing up time, improving processes and saving money.
Automation frees up time to build and innovate. It can keep your team lean without slowing things down and enables you to build scalable systems and strong operational foundations right from the start.
As accountants, it won’t surprise you to learn that our main application of automation is to finance – both for our clients and our internal needs. Outside of our sector, many businesses are missing enormous opportunities to save time, money and – above all – stress.
So, here are 8 essential finance-related tasks that your tech business should be automating (if you aren’t already!)
- Recording of bank transactions
The fundamentals of integrating bank transactions are the downloading and uploading of statements. When done manually, this takes time, effort and risks human error causing a variety of issues down the line, even for smaller businesses with relatively few transactions.
With platforms like Xero or QuickBooks you can automatically import all transactions daily, enabling real-time bank feeds and cash flow clarity.
This is important because it means no more manual administration, but also means faster, stress-free reconciliation without the need to hire people in to do the job.
- Purchase invoice entry
Even a handful of purchase invoices, processed and uploaded manually, invites errors and takes valuable time. For larger, high volume activity businesses, the disruption increases dramatically.
Tools like Dext Prepare & Hubdoc offer a cost-effective way to instantly scan invoices via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and post these directly into your accounts.
- Automatic invoice chasers
Cash flow is everything for a growing business, and disruptions caused by delayed invoice payments create all manner of financial headaches. It can also mean awkward conversations with customers, another layer of unnecessary stress.
Automated invoice chasing tools, like CHASER or Xero’s reminder system, enable you to set up fully automated (and bespoke) reminders to customers whose invoices remain unpaid after periods of time chosen by you. You can even set multiple reminders with different wording on each.
All of this can be done without you lifting a finger beyond the initial set up.
- Capturing expense receipts
Managing expenses is another pain point for fast moving businesses, especially when there are multiple team members making purchases out and about. This painful process involves sifting through a backlog of expenses, trying to locate receipts from weeks ago, and dealing with inevitable gaps as a result. HMRC only allow VAT to be reclaimed where evidence of VAT suffered is available.
Apps like Pleo enable staff members to have their own virtual card for business expenses and remind them to upload receipts/invoices in a variety of formats (including photos) for all purchases. Naturally, this is automatically synced with your accounts.
Pleo also enables managers/approvers to instantly review and approve team expenses anywhere with a mobile signal.
- Recurring invoices
Start-ups and scale-ups rely upon timely billing and predictable income with minimal admin. If your business is in SaaS, works on retainers, or issues licenses, recurring invoices can mean a small amount of effort, multiplied over and over until it becomes a significant burden. By automating your recurring invoices, you can remove this burden entirely.
- Repetitive bookkeeping tasks
Most businesses should have at least some bookkeeping automation in place, particularly since the introduction of Making Tax Digital for VAT.
Bookkeeping is one of the simplest tasks to automate, but its benefits are enormous. It saves a significant amount of time, and you can even categorise recurring spend. It ultimately keeps your accounts tidy and accurate, which you will be glad for at the year end.
If you aren’t automating this yet, we strongly recommend you start right now using a platform like Xero or FreeAgent. We are happy to advise you on which would be most suitable for your business.
- Non-financial KPI tracking
Accurate financial KPI tracking is obviously essential for sustainable growth, but these KPIs can also be non-financial. Things like customer/user base or churn. Integrating all this together might be a data admin nightmare, but its value is tremendous.
That’s why we recommend our clients use tools like Fathom to track and combine key operational metrics into bespoke Management Accounts. This makes performance reporting smarter and less overwhelming, and helps you answer investor questions or pivot quickly without the stress.
- CRM email logging
Automatically logging every client interaction is a powerful way to keep on top of all leads/prospects and provide a single, detailed customer view for everyone. Keeping this customer or prospect information clean and consistent manually is time consuming and, as a result, invites errors or inconsistencies.
Automating CRM logs using platforms like HubSpot is a game changer, particularly for smaller teams. It promotes transparency, accountability, and provides a structured sales pipeline at a relatively low cost.
About Gravitate
Gravitate is a Sheffield-based Digital Accounting business, based in Neepsend, and we are Associate Sponsors of Sheffield Digital.
We have partnered with Sheffield Digital because we share common goals with others in this community. We want to unlock efficiency through technology and push the boundaries of what automation can achieve for businesses with high stakes, small teams, and ambitious growth plans.
This could just be setting you up with the right apps, with a little guidance and training thrown in. But it could also be a complete overhaul to futureproof your finance function from the ground up.
We would love the opportunity to speak to any Sheffield Digital members interested in how they can deploy financial automation technology to their business.
Contact us: gravitate.digital