How fintech in accounting can reduce the burden on chartered accountants?

Apr 05, 2024

The rise of fintech over the past few years has changed quite a bit about the business world.


Not only has it revolutionized how we process and manage finance it has also had a significant impact on the kind of work our accountants and finance teams do.


They have helped improve efficiency and manage stress on accountants. Chartered accountants, in particular, have seen much of their workload lightened with the help of fintech in accounting solutions.

Impact of fintech in accounting for businesses


Financial technology or fintech is represented by the technological wave of innovations that are revolutionizing the landscape of financial services.


From insurance and investments to lending and payments, fintech has had an influence on pretty much every aspect of the industry.


Cloud-based accounting and bookkeeping software, in particular, has caused the most noticeable disruption in the way that accountants go about their work.


Traditionally, accountants would have to spend the majority of their time and energy on mundane, manual tasks like expense processing, compliance, and tax preparation.


In fact, a large number of accountants believe that processing expenses are the task that they used to spend most of their time on. This was, however, before fintech came into the picture.


Now, with the advent of fintech in accounting, accountants can spend more of their time on value-generating services, like consulting and advisory services.


Thus, Fintech in accounting has helped chartered accountants become more efficient and effective in their work. It has also enabled an approach to work for accountants that lets them take a more analytical approach to accounting.

The four key pillars of fintech


Innovation


Innovation is at the very center of everything that makes fintech what it is today. It is innovative thinking that has given us the transformative products that businesses are revolutionizing their operations with.


Financial innovations have been key in promoting broader financial development. This development of financial services has led to economic growth through its positive impact on investment, saving, and output.


Financial innovation is thus such a critical deriving factor of growth for businesses.


Technology


The fintech revolution would never have been possible without the technological advancements that power it. Technology drives fintech as well as the transformations that fintech brings to businesses.


Technology is a key pillar of fintech because it has enabled the replacement of many traditional, inefficient operational processes.


With the power of technological advancements such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, fintech companies are providing solutions that radically improve the way businesses manage their finances and the workload on finance and accounting teams.


Regulation


Financial management can become quite a sensitive task, especially because it involves dealing with important details connected to users’ finances. This is why regulation also falls amongst the key pillars of fintech.


Fintech regulation is of great importance because it is designed to ensure the safety of payments and protect users’ sensitive data.


In order to provide secure services and protect their users, all fintech financial institutions must adhere to fintech regulations and laws.


Digital payments


The time of cash as the primary mode of payment is at its end and fintech has had a massive role to play in this.


The advent of digital payments has given fintech solutions a real feather in the cap, one that truly boosts their effectiveness.


The introduction of digital payments has helped increase the ease of conducting online transactions, reduce the costs and risks of handling cash, and increase transparency among monetary transactions among people.

Accounting challenges chartered accountants face


Keeping up with tax regulations


Staying in line with tax regulations is a constant challenge that accountants face on a regular basis. Keeping books and records in order, tracking and monitoring expenses and other tasks can be quite challenging to do consistently.


On top of this, tax regulations and laws are ever-changing. These changes must be kept track of and adhered to strictly.


Accountants and CPAs of all levels must be mindful of these changes, they must also be able to utilize accounting and tax management technology so that they can handle taxes online.


Financial fraud


Financial fraud can become a serious problem if left unchecked. Accountants have to deal with the threat of financial fraud from both internal as well as external sources.


Most prominently, they have to manage the problem that is posed by employee occupational fraud. The challenge, for accountants, is implementing tools and processes to protect sensitive company data as well as company finances.



Long hours of manual work


There can be a lot of manual work involved in the practice of accounting processes, especially if the company is still using traditional forms of expense management.


Accountants have to go through hours of manual labor when working with inefficient bookkeeping and accounting systems.


Gathering data on finances, dealing with paperwork, and doing data entry are all time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks that accountants have to manage.


Additionally, the more there is manual work the higher will be the risk of errors and discrepancies, which only make things even more difficult.

How does Fintech help soothe the pain points of accountants?


1. Bookkeeping automation


Bookkeeping and accounting automation is a system where AI and software are employed to convert manual, traditional processes of accounting into optimized and instantaneous workflows.


Bookkeeping automation really helps manage stress on accountants. It eradicates manual tasks such as data entry, thereby giving accountants more time to focus on important tasks.


Bookkeeping automation eliminates the tedious tasks of creating templates, doing data entry on excel sheets, and so on.


It uses in-built tools that help finance teams generate reports efficiently and quickly. Additionally, machine learning helps accountants with calculation checks and repetitive data entry tasks.


2. Help with the specificities of compliance, audit, and tax


Fintechs are also great at helping accountants stay on top of compliance, audit, and tax requirements. With the help of fintech in accounting solutions, keeping books in order has become easier than ever before.


This has been possible, particularly because of the accounting integrations and expense management services that fintech provides.


With the help of expense management systems accountants can ensure no unauthorized expense is ever made via company finances.


This way they can ensure company practices are always compliant with regulations.


Accounting integrations, on the other hand, help accountants sync company books with accounting software seamlessly, thereby making it much easier to keep books in check.


3. Provides valuable real-time insights into making informed decisions


Fintechs have become instrumental in informed decision-making processes for businesses. They help significantly manage stress on accountants when it comes to gathering data and making decisions based on them.


No longer do accountants have to sift through piles of data to gather key information and insights. Fintech can do this job for them, automatically and at breakneck speeds.


Fintech software is equipped to handle a lot of data at once, analyze it and then give valuable insights into them.


Data on, for instance, spending behavior, cashflow, and books can all be gathered easily with the help of fintech software.


4. Automating accounts payables


The accounts payable system of a company involves all the processes that go into paying money owed to the company’s creditors, vendors, suppliers, etc.


Traditionally, accounts payable involved a lot of manual work on the part of accountants in the form of checking purchase orders, doing data entry, and so on.


Not only was the process of accounts payable labor intensive but it would also take a lot of time, not to mention the high probability of human errors.


Now, however, fintech in accounting software has introduced tools and systems that can manage this entire aspect of the accountant's job.


Accounts payable automation tools can take care of the entire process, from the point where an invoice is received up until the payment is made.


5. Better management of receipts


Ask any accountant working with a traditional expense management system and they’ll tell you how much of a hassle it is to manage receipts, invoices, and other such supporting documents.


Not only accountants but other employees who frequently have to make business purchases and submit receipts will also attest to this fact. However, with the introduction of fintech technology, this problem too has been bypassed.


With the expense management solutions we have today there is no longer a need to store and manage physical copies of receipts. You and your employees can simply take a photo of the document and upload it to the software.


The software will not only store the image but by using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) it can even extract data from the receipt for future use.

Automate accounting operations with real-time accounting integrations


The fintech in accounting solutions that are available today are truly excellent tools that help manage stress on accountants. Volopay is one such solution for automating accounting processes. With Volopay accounting has become easier than ever before.


You get features like accounting integration triggers, automatic categorization, receipts management, software integrations, custom rules to map your transactions and so much more.


Whether you want to automatically sync all your transactions with your accounting software or simply create customized rules to track your transactions.


This can be easily done with Volopay’s comprehensive accounting and expense management platform.

Streamline your accounting processes with automation today!