The finance department is responsible for managing the company’s financial risks, financial planning and financial reporting. But is it in control? Does it have full control over your financial processes? Complete control over data feeds? Intelligent control on reporting?
Businesses need to ensure accurate and consistent financial close on time, every time. The best-in-class automation solution frees up time and resources to devote to more financial analysis, and reduces the overall stress on your finance department.
3. Introduction
Your finance department is responsible for managing the company’s financial risks,
financial planning and financial reporting. But is it in control? Does it have full control
over your financial processes? Complete control over data feeds? Intelligent control
on reporting?
Businesses need to ensure accurate and consistent financial close on time, every
time. The best-in-class automation solution frees up time and resources to devote to
more financial analysis, and reduces the overall stress on your finance department.
A financial management system is the methodology and software that an
organization uses to oversee and govern its income, expenses, and assets with the
objectives of maximizing profits and ensuring sustainability.
An effective financial management system improves short- and long-term business
performance by streamlining invoicing and bill collection, eliminating accounting
errors, minimizing record-keeping redundancy, ensuring compliance with tax and
accounting regulations, helping personnel to quantify budget planning, and offering
flexibility and expandability to accommodate change and growth.
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Introduction
4. Other significant features of a good financial management system include
Keeping all payments and receivables transparent
Amortizing prepaid expenses
Depreciating assets according to accepted schedules
Keeping track of liabilities
Coordinating income statements, expense statements, and balance sheets
Balancing multiple bank accounts
Ensuring data integrity and security
Keeping all records up to date
Maintaining a complete and accurate audit trail
Minimizing overall paperwork
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5. Financial accounting (or financial accountancy) is the field of accounting concerned
with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions pertaining to a
business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public
consumption. Stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies,
business owners, and other stakeholders are examples of people interested in
receiving such information for decision making purposes.
F
Profit
Finance
Income
Operation
Technology
Product
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6. Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting
standards. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is the standard
framework of guidelines for financial accounting used in any given jurisdiction.
It includes the standards, conventions and rules that accountants follow in recording
and summarising and in the preparation of financial statements. On the other hand,
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a set of international accounting
standards stating how particular types of transactions and other events should be
reported in financial statements. IFRS are issued by the International Accounting
Standards Board (IASB).
With IFRS becoming more widespread on the international scene, consistency in
financial reporting has become more prevalent between global organisations. While
financial accounting is used to prepare accounting information for people outside
the organisation or not involved in the day-to-day running of the company,
management accounting provides accounting information to help managers make
decisions to manage the business.
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7. Web based Accounting Software is an application that records and processes
accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts payable, accounts
receivable, banking, payroll, trial balance and prepare financial statements. It is often
referred to as an online, cloud based, hosted, internet based, ASP or even software
-as-a-service (SaaS) Accounting software application systems.
Debit Rs RsCredit
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9. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business management software—typically a
suite of integrated applications—that a company can use to collect, store, manage and
interpret data from many business activities, including
ERP provides an integrated view of core business processes, often in real-time, using
common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems
track business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of
business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll.
Product planning, cost
Manufacturing or service delivery
Marketing and sales
Inventory management
Shipping and payment
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10. The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments
(manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. ERP
facilitates information flow between all business functions, and manages connections
to outside stakeholders.
ERP
Inventory
Production
Accounting
Purchase
HRDelivery
Sales
Engineering
Production
Planning
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11. Enterprise system software is a multi-billion dollar industry that produces
components that support a variety of business functions. IT investments have
become the largest category of capital expenditure in United States-based
businesses over the past decade. Though early ERP systems focused on large
enterprises, smaller enterprises increasingly use ERP systems.
The ERP system is considered a vital organizational tool because it integrates varied
organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and production.
However, ERP system development is different from traditional system
development. ERP systems run on a variety of computer hardware and network
configurations, typically using a database as an information repository.
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12. Characteristics
ERP systems typically include the following characteristics
An integrated system that operates in (or near) real time without relying
on periodic updates
A common database that supports all applications
A consistent look and feel across modules
Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the
Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is
not done in small steps
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14. In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee,
wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to
employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a
major role in a company for several reasons.
Payroll automation refers to the use of computers to produce pay checks and
manage benefit payments for a company or community. Often, payroll automation is
integrated into the company’s enterprise resource planning system that provides an
overall view of the company’s or community’s finances; in addition to payroll, it can
manage customer relationships, production, personnel resources, invoicing and
accounting.
Payroll automation
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15. Payroll activities
Calculating and paying wages, settlement of tax withholdings
Delivery of wage calculations and certificates to the employees
Compiling statistics for different authorities, and for the purposes of
improving activities
Drawing up employment contracts
Providing regulatory reports to the tax agencies and insurance companies
Calculating annual holidays
Managing deductions for employee benefits
Payroll management consists of several stages and procedures that require
expertise in financial administration, such as employment contract management.
Payroll management performs the following tasks
The travel costs and travel invoices from the employees are usually processed
together with payroll.
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16. Methods
Payroll functions can be automated using software to facilitate the collection,
organization and storage of all information required for payroll calculations and
regulatory agency reportage requirements.
If the payroll software is not purchased as part of a comprehensive business
management system, it can usually be combined with the company’s existing
solutions for accounting, sales ledger, working hour management and recruiting.
Information that has been captured in one part of the system can be used by
other modules. Hours registered in the work management system, for example,
are automatically transferred to the wage calculation system.
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17. Benefits
Effective payroll automation collects all relevant information in one place in
electronic format, reducing mistakes by eliminating the need to synchronize and
manage otherwise duplicate data sets.
This improves the work satisfaction of the wages clerk, as routine work is
reduced. The American Payroll Association (APA) estimates that automation
reduces costs related to payroll management by up to 80%, which is partially
explained by the reduced mistakes in wage payments and invoicing.
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18. It considers collective labor agreements and employer-specific procedures and
exceptions
It provides a breakdown of the allowances and other bases for wages in the
report, with dedicated rows for each day, week and month
It automatically follows the legislated accounting and calculation rules in the
calculation of annual holidays
It manages the drawing up, posting, archiving and reporting of travel invoices
When combined with work shift management software, it can utilize data
concerning working hours, overtime, allowances, holidays and absences
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Well planned, modern payroll software provides the following benefits
19. Do’s and Don’ts for Future Finance Automation
Wealth, asset and investment management firms are experiencing record results.
In 2013, assets under management grew to a record $68.7 trillion, while
operating margins grew 39%. Things couldn’t be brighter for the industry.
Automate Products
Incumbent firms already have many of the necessary licenses and regulatory
infrastructure to support the automation of offerings such as life insurance,
secured loans and annuities.
Develop automated investment services that cover a broader range of complex
financial needs. This could also offer an opportunity to experiment with new
models, such as peer-to-peer lending and social networks of investors.
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20. Get more Human
The greatest value a human financial advisor offers is focusing a client’s attention on
what matters, and on a bigger picture. Clients are prone to loss aversion bias, and
during market swings, they may make choices that are highly damaging to their long
term financial health.
Human advisors can effectively address that client behavior better than any
automated process or a call center representative. Humans can also more effectively
initiate contact with clients around life events and other changes that impact goals;
this prompting can be kicked off, and amplified by the digital platform.
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21. Automate Services and influence New Investors
Incumbent firms must develop products that allow them to offer relevant services to
younger, lower net worth individuals that will be the next generation of high net
worth clients. The days of investors migrating to old-school advisors in middle age
will come to a screeching halt.
Those investors are already drawn to automated, passive, low cost vehicles. Each
company will need to offer an automated solution that mimics this core value
proposition while offering a more sophisticated, curated offering.
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22. Client First Policy
The days of salespeople as brokers are numbered. Demand that all advisors and
brokers adhere to the fiduciary standard. Few customers trust that decisions made
by a broker are in their best interests.
Companies perceived as exploitative—with opaque fees and murky conflicts of
interests—will face a tremendous trust gap when a generation of digital natives who
expect transparent access to information controls most of the wealth. Act in the
customer’s best interest, not just in marketing, but in practice.
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