APPS THAT REALLY ADD UP

More and more businesses have made the transition to cloud-based accounting platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero and SageOne, writes Jo Waddicker. This new approach to accounting, together with a range of apps, offer benefits that have not been as readily available to accountants and their clients until now.

Apps are third-party products that link seamlessly with the cloud-based accounting platforms, enabling accountants to give real, value-added advice to their clients.

If you’ve already made the move to a platform such as QuickBooks, Xero or SageOne, you’ve probably already benefitted from time-savings, improved simplicity, real-time information and enhanced reporting. What you may not realise yet is that there are easy ways to make these platforms work even harder for you.

One popular tool that many of our clients have adopted is Receipt Bank (https://www.receipt-bank.com/receipt-scanning-app/), which allows you to take pictures of receipts and invoices and then automatically reads and processes the data for you.  It can also create employee expense forms when your staff upload images of their own receipts.

Another app for capturing data from receipts, sales invoices and bank or credit card statements is AutoEntry(https://www.autoentry.com/) which integrates with your accounting software or has the option to upload data into it.

What might have previously taken us an hour or two of manual processing can be accomplished much quicker with Receipt Bank or AutoEntry.

Chaser (https://www.xero.com/uk/marketplace/app/chaser/) is an app which will fully automate your credit control function; saving you time and improving your cash collection. The creators of the app claim that some businesses can save over seven hours a week in credit control work and boost cashflow by an impressive £22k for every £500k of turnover.

It’s also worth mentioning stock management, which can be a big challenge for many companies. Unleashed(https://www.unleashedsoftware.com/product/mobile-app) provides enhanced functionality and is a more comprehensive option if you have complex stock systems to run.

So accountancy is changing at a very fast pace, which is a reflection of the huge advances in technology in recent years. But it’s also worth talking to your professional advisers about what technology you should be using to run your business in the most efficient and effective way.