The global financial management software market is poised to witness a promising growth. With the rapidly changing international markets affected by the COVID-19 impact, the markets have become more stringent. Now, more than ever, you need to focus on process improvements in your accounting software.
Why? Experts anticipate the financial management applications market to be huge by 2025. Growth is typically driven by vital factors such as risks of the market, acquisitions, new trends, and more.
The up-gradation can also help with a competitive edge, ensuring you gain maximum benefit and growth potential.
In this blog, we will walk you through accounting software features, advantages, and some viable financial management solutions.
9 Signs Why You Need to Upgrade to Financial Management Software?
Does your business process currently meet all your financial management needs? You may consider that it does. However, some warning signs may turn to be overwhelming, and you may need to turn to software development for a robust solution. What are these warning signs?
Let’s take a quick look.
Nine Red Flags that you may have been ignoring:
- You are spending too much time implementing manual processes.
- With the COVID-19 impact, it would be great to access your software/application anytime, more importantly, anywhere.
- You have become a global business and want to integrate international standards.
- With a growing business, you’re concerned about security.
- You’ve had to patch up several applications to accomplish your current business needs.
- You own multiple companies, and they require financial consolidation.
- You have been storing extensive inventory in many locations.
- You have been spending too much time on Excel to run the spreadsheets you need.
- You have an increasing number of customers and vendors, and you need to process thousands of transactions every year.
If you have all of these red flags, then the message is quite loud and clear. You need to upgrade to robust financial management software and become an intelligent enterprise.
As the CEO of SAP, Christian Klein says “becoming an intelligent enterprise enables new business models….only an intelligent enterprise can deal with uncertainty and rapid change.”
As you consider upgrading, you can opt for web-based or cloud-based financial management software. Quite a few of the applications help you with lucid solutions, integrating dashboards, and giving you the birds-eye views on your financials.
Businesses vary, and its logical business needs differ too. You may wish for a sophisticated application or a customizable financial management solution.
We strongly believe that there’s no-one-size-fits-all accounting software. It would be best to check out the features that are the best fit for your business.
Critical Features Needed in your Financial Management Application
It’s crucial to have high-quality accounting software. You can opt for a tiered approach, start with basic features, and move to advanced.
However, if you wish to accelerate your company’s growth and achieve your business goals, it is necessary to be futuristic and build in all core elements in the application.
What are some must-have features? To ensure accuracy, your application must-have accounts receivable, accounts payable, banking, and reporting features. You can also include higher-tier plans and integrate time tracking and payroll tools.
Here are some features that you can plan to incorporate.
Functional Features
1. Accounts Receivable (A/R)
Picture this—you have thousands of customers, and you need to keep track of what your customers owe you (accounts receivable or A/R).
You don’t need to feel overwhelmed with such scenarios anymore. Why? A/R features can efficiently handle bills and keep track of customer payments.
When you think of accounting software, it should be able to handle invoicing. The application should be able to prompt you with how much money customers owed you, when to expect a payment, and from whom.
The heart of your system would be the primary customer data with names, addresses, account numbers, and more. You must have a strong security layer to protect the underlying data and the financials build on it.
The A/R feature acts as your collection department. It is quite handy as the app can help you with automated statements, late reminders, and prompts to pay bills. Another exciting trend is changing consumer preferences—users prefer electronic invoices (online invoices) instead of print ones.
The feature can also facilitate processing checks and making bank deposits. Some apps also integrate ACH payments to be directly deposited into your checking account. The amalgamation can help you to reduce staff time and save costs.
2. Accounts Payable (A/P)
Logically, you would need to pay bills and also keep track of what you owe to other parties. The Accounts Payable (A/P) software features can adequately handle the outflow side of your funds.
What are some of the A/P features that your app should have? The app/software should be able to handle your purchases and facilitate everything from generating purchase orders to payments.
It would also be beneficial to keep track of credit memos, which helps to keep costs down in the long run. Developers can help to automate payment processes to ensure that you are effectively handling bank payments and direct deposits.
Wait, there’s more! Your app/software can also have a database of the most common tax forms. It would be great if your accounting system can input the necessary data on the forms for you. In turn, all you need to do is to file them electronically with the IRS—saving any punitive action for late payments.
3. Full Payroll Services
Payroll modules these days offer full payroll services. You can expect everything from processing wages, paying payroll taxes, and handling statutory deductions.
Your software should be able to handle different pay schedules and diverse types of compensation. The compensation types can include salaries, profit sharing, commissions, bonuses, and more, whereas the benefits include health insurance, retirement plans, and perks like paid parking.
The software could allow you to set up scheduled direct deposit payments. Another critical facet is automatic tax calculations. You can check out if the system supports monthly federal tax deposits, annual reports and returns, state tax returns for income taxes, and more.
You may also want the app to take care of travel and entertainment reimbursements. The feature addition would ensure that payments comply with tax deadlines.
4. Banking
One of the most basic features that your app must have in place is linking to your bank account, making direct payments, and importing real-time data from the bank for your accounting system.
The software can also help to keep track of all your bank accounts and reconcile them. It is also familiar with the software to handle electronic payments and check payments.
5. Array of Reports
Accounting software typically offers a vast range of reporting options. The initial reports can present options for money in and money out. What’s more—the system should be able to generate custom reports, including balance sheets, income statements, and statements of cash flow, A/R, A/P, and payroll summary.
It would be great to have customizable reporting options. How about pictorial data representation? Yes, you’re right! The software should be able to display data graphically that can help you with comparisons.
You can also integrate app features that can help with budgeting, estimating, and other cost functions. If you have multiple businesses, then what can assist you is a system that can amalgamate the financial aspects and give you a better perspective of your entire portfolio.
6. Inventory Management
Imagine if you need to get a grasp on what you have in stock or what you need to reorder. If you had a system in place, then you could manage your purchasing budget better.
You may wish to incorporate inventory tracking, setting inventory levels, and more to streamline business functions.
7. Time and Job Management
Does your business need to monitor attendance and time spent on specific tasks? You may find time and attendance modules integrated into your accounting systems, quite handy.
It would help to keep track of attendance and hours for accurate payroll. It would also help track how long jobs take and make sure that you charge the right amount for it.
For service businesses, a system that could provide an estimate to procure a job could be beneficial. The software can also store such evaluations, which can then be easily turned into orders and invoices in just a few clicks, promoting efficiency.
Essential Features
1. User-friendliness
The UI/UX is getting increasingly relevant for any software/app. The accounting software that you plan to design or upgrade should be user-friendly, intuitive, and highly functional.
2. Secure Sensitive Data
It is pertinent that the software or app should provide complete security and protect all financial information.
Software developers can incorporate user-based access features as a good security measure. You may also find encryption (and other security access controls) used for financial transactions.
3. Identifying and Preventing Errors
Picture this—you place an order for a product, and it is out of stock. If the system can identify such actions and send an immediate alert, then it would be beneficial. Accounting solutions must help to minimize errors and bring in accuracy and efficiency.
Such systems are trustworthy and augment the growth of your business. You may choose to look out for features such as automatic calculation that can facilitate preventing users from making errors.
The list of features isn’t exhaustive. The best way to work on incorporating elements is to brainstorm with your team and understand the accounting-and-financial use case. As you plot down your business requirements, you can streamline the features that you must-have in your new or to-be-upgraded software.
It would also be advisable to look at trending features and integrate such features too. You need to consider the technical facets of having web-based, cloud-based, or customized software for your business.
If you don’t know where to start, then it would be a good idea to reach out to an expert app developer such as Imaginovation and seek help. The Imaginovation team is an expert at developing intelligent fintech software, including peer-to-peer lending system, smart finance management, payment gateways, and more.
Benefits of Advanced Financial Management Application
It’s great that you want to improve processes for financial services radically. Technology can work wonders, simplifying complex processes. The critical question is— should you invest in time and money to upgrade your fintech software?
Well, developed solutions can facilitate your business to run more efficiently. Here’s a list of advantages of accounting software.
1. Better Strategic Planning
One of the crucial features of accounting software is to help out with reporting, providing critical financial information that can aid “what if” scenarios.
Imagine you need to forecast future events, such as identifying new business opportunities or analyzing the potentials for vital market trends and internal affairs.
You don’t need to sweat! Your financial management software can effectively build critical business strategies, which can facilitate executives forecast events accurately.
2. Streamlined Financial Processes
We’ve been stressing on the “streamlined” facet. When you have a disjointed, large enterprise, or multiple businesses, budget management may vary. You may find that each business unit may recognize income and revenue differently.
What can get majorly affected? Yes, you’re right! The integrity of process execution could get compromised, hindering efficiency.
When you have financial management software in place, it can maintain consistency. You can implement formal procedures that can facilitate how users can handle financial transactions across the entire enterprise.
3. Increased Accuracy and Accessibility of Financial Information
Picture this—you have financial information across numerous remote locations throughout your business. What could be a concern? Yes, you’re right! It would be hard to get a comprehensive view of the company’s financial status or track the related activities.
When you have financial management solutions in place, you can centralize the information, making it readily accessible. Such a centralized repository can boost information accuracy and consistency.
4. Facilitates Regulatory Compliance
As a business owner, you’d want to ensure full adherence to BASEL II, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other financial reporting guidelines. With a financial management software system, you can minimize the risk and build a robust compliance framework.
Such a structure can integrate adherence to the concerned financial reporting guidelines. How? The system helps with improved financial controls, advanced reporting functionality, and enhanced information auditing capabilities.
Additionally, the system can also help to match up to activities such as corporate legislation changes and more.
5. Increased Productivity
When it comes to preparing financial analysis, generating reports, or future economic projects, it is time-consuming.
When you have an accounting software system in place, you can process tasks faster, increasing productivity and efficiency.
6. Increased Security
What’s the primary concern of going digital? That’s right—Security! You may consider placing all essential financial information in a cloud-based platform—is risky. The truth is far from it.
Developers create business management software systems with multiple levels of security features, which ensure that all the information is secure. You can also relax, as you won’t face data loss issues or alterations in documents and transaction data.
You would find that the system protects your financial information, and only those who are granted authority can access it.
7. More Simplified
It is incredible how UX designers bring in solutions. You can enjoy a simplified design version for the financial management software.
The users can easily navigate, and also operate on the functions without much training. With a user-friendly interface, operating complex processes are a cake-walk.
8. Stress-Free
Financial transactions, calculations, and data processing can get stressful. The users typically worry about getting things accurate. Now, with accounting software, you can get complex operations done with just a few clicks.
Cloud accounting software makes financial tasks easy, reducing the chances of error. The result—a stress-free work environment!
With so many benefits, you must reflect on what’s still keeping you from making that upgrade decision. As business owners poised for a rapidly changing market scenario, it is prudent to invest in overcoming accounting challenges with your financial management software.
The next vital question is whether to go in for a custom application or third-party application.
Custom vs. Third-Party Application: Which One to Opt?
You would find oodles of accounting and financial management software available in the market. You may wonder whether to opt-in for third-party software that is created by established companies or choose a custom app that fits your business needs.
There is no straightforward way to answer this. It would be best to plot down the third-party providers, the features that you are looking at, provider experience, domain expertise, and the cost for the software. If your expectations don’t match what is being offered, then it would be logical that you opt-for custom development.
You may choose to look out for an expert app developer who can provide you end-to-end customized development services that can improve your accounting and finance management processes. One of the facets to also consider is whether the experts are developing solutions using technological solutions that are the right fit for your business needs.
Some developers may offer solutions using open source platforms like Ofbiz, Odoo, and Opentaps. You may also want to check if the development team is skilled at facilitating online payments with credit cards, PayPal, or e-checks.
Another facet to consider is integration with your existing tools and technologies whether you go in for a third-party application or a custom application.
If you want to integrate your financial management software with Shopify, Salesforce, PayPal, WooCommerce, and Magento, you may also find plenty of solutions with technologies like Quickbooks and Acumatica.
In conclusion, you can look at myriad factors such as your accounting challenges, business needs, the features you wish to incorporate—before you make that final decision. Did we forget to mention—the time is ripe to make that decision!
Create a Brilliant Digital Transformation in the Finance Sector With Imaginovation
If you want to build an incredible financial management software system that can help to improve your business process and facilitate growth, then get in touch with us.
We are an award-winning web and mobile app development agency with a vast experience of crafting remarkable digital success stories for diverse companies. Let’s talk.
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