Brought to you by
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Why automation is now essential

3rd Jul 2015
Brought to you by
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Accounting fees remain flat
The summer edition of the Bankstream Accountants Confidence Index again showed that most practices are unable to increase their fees. Recent discussion threads on AccountingWeb have also revealed widespread inability for practices to raise fees in the current low inflation environment.

Accounting wages up
Yet at the same time, wages, the largest cost for many accounting practices, are growing. The recent 2015 salary guide from recruitment firm Robert Half, revealed that most public practices face wage increases of 1.6% to 2.6% across all levels of staff – all except partners, that is. In order to avoid a squeeze on margins, accountants need to find ways to increase revenue without increasing fee levels – in other words, accountants need to do more billable work. 

Demand is strong
Thankfully, the Bankstream summer survey has also indicated that demand for accounting services exceeds supply. As with the spring survey, accountants responding to the summer edition cited “too much work” as the biggest challenge to their overall performance. Similarly, accountants acknowledge that their clients’ poor record keeping was among their biggest challenges – a problem that accountants can help with.

Automation is becoming essential
Converting unmet client needs into profitable work without increasing labour costs requires practices to do more work without increasing staff levels. To become less labour intensive, practices are turning towards automation.  This trend was on display at recent accounting events such as Accountex in London during May, where there a great deal of interest in accounting automation technologies, such as bank data feeds. The Bankstream Index also demonstrates this, with around a third of all accounting practices are now using bank data feeds, while another 24% are planning to investigate them.

Making robots part of the team
Automation technologies such as bank data feeds offer ongoing efficiency benefits accountants, and they are also generally easy to implement. Naturally staff training requirements tend to be modest as the automation tools are taking tasks away from staff rather than adding to them. The ‘cultural’ impact also tends to be positive because the jobs that are being automated (for example collecting and entering bank transactions) are often boring jobs that staff don’t like doing. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, automation technologies generally don’t require the clients of accountants to learn new software or skills, yet they provide great benefit in the form of saved time.

It’s about time
Low inflation and rising wage costs are putting accountants under pressure. Opportunities exist for accountants to provide more services to their existing clients, however this must be done in a way that raises revenue without raising costs. New technologies, in particular those which enable automation of otherwise manual tasks provide a solution. Bank data feeds are a topic of particular interest to accountants – allowing otherwise costly, manual (and boring) tasks to be quickly and accurately performed automatically by a machine. 

These “robotic workers” are now taking their place alongside accounting staff who are delighted to be relieved of some of the most tedious aspects of their job.  Staff can then use their time for more productive, more enjoyable and more profitable tasks. Clients also benefit from their accountants’ adoption of automation – they are relieved of the burden of becoming ‘part-time bookkeepers’ and can instead spend their precious time running their business. It seems that when it comes to accounting automation, it’s about time.

To find out more about Bankstream visit www.bankstream.co.uk

Tags: