How to enhance business productivity by improving accounting processes

Including the shocking stats behind the cost of inefficient administration

According to 2018 calculations by accounting software experts Sage, some £13,780 is being lost by small to medium enterprises globally every second of every day in productivity, due to inefficient administration processes.

That’s an incredible statistic. It amounts to billions of pounds so far in 2018 alone – and the number is increasing daily.

Perhaps more enlightening still is the fact that over 80% of this lost productivity cost is due to inefficient accounting and finance processes, which it further breaks down into:

• Accounting
• Generating invoices
• Processing invoices received (also known as accounts payable)
• Tax
• Payroll
• Chasing payments

Source: Sage

The problem of paper

There’s a common thread that binds all these different areas together.

Paper.

Paper-based processes are intrinsically inefficient for the following reasons:

• Paper costs money to buy, store and replenish
• Accounting and finance processes that use paper as the basis for communication involve:
  • Printing – manual time and cost
  • Processing – manual handling, whether to receive or send
  • Postage – the cost of which is increasing all the time
  • Archiving – Placement and organising within a document archive, and search and retrieval from an archive when required
• Time – the hours taken to perform all of the above, as opposed to the convenience of carrying out the process from a desktop, is considerable

The end of finance process productivity issues

Some accounting applications such as Sage and NAV have already made finance processes much easier than before. Add-ons such as Zetadocs can enhance productivity even further by eliminating paper almost completely.

For example, Zetadocs can help organisations:

• Save time and cost by:
  • Instantly delivering finance documents such as invoices and statements direct from the accounts system by email
  • Avoiding the need for the paper and handling usually associated with these documents
  • Make storing and retrieving these documents a breeze
• Improving service by:
  • Speeding up response to customer queries
  • Filing all related documents together quickly and easily for instant access
  • Enabling earlier provision of copy invoices to customers
• Improving green credentials by reducing paper use through:
  • Electronic invoicing, order processing, invoice processing and expense management (to name but a few)
  • Reducing the need for printing and associated consumables
  • Capturing and storing documents electronically rather than as paper files

Solutions for every finance productivity problem

Zetadocs offers a solution for specific finance-related problems which allow organisations that want to improve productivity to move away from paper processes:

• Delivery – electronic sending of reports such as invoices and statements
• Capture – electronic ‘drag and drop’ filing, retrieval and archiving of finance documents
• Approvals – electronic approvals (and reminders) and authorization
• Expenses – electronic expense management, both for employees and finance teams

In summary

Zetadocs directly improves productivity for accounts teams by saving both time and consumable costs. Processing times are reduced meaning that customer service can be improved, and in the whole scheme of these processes, it’s all more environmentally friendly too.

If you think your business processes may be contributing to that overall figure of £13,780 lost every second, Zetadocs can help.

Go paperless with Zetadocs and you’ll make savings in time and money – as well as improving productivity!

Check out Zetadocs for yourself here. Or alternatively, email sales@equisys.com.