What is accounting software?
Accounting software is used by accounting professionals to analyse and process all financial statements, transactions and records. This enables a lot of financial transactions to be completed and recorded much sooner. In short, accounting software minimises the need for manual handling of all kinds of financial data, and automates the process to make it more efficient and error-free. Accounting software is used by many firms and businesses to keep a track of their finances, rather than hiring an accounting team to overlook everything.
Accounting software can be used by all kinds of businesses, irrespective of the scale of business. It has numerous benefits and advantages over manual accounting, and is especially profitable for smaller businesses. AI automation makes the process completely error-free and transparent. Cloud based applications are now used to make the process more secured. Data security is a risk when it comes to accounting software, since all financial records of any company can be accessed if there are inadequate security measures. Data encryption and biometric security measures are usually used to safeguard these.
What are the features of accounting software?
Accounting software can handle every financial aspect of a business, and keep a record of all financial exchanges and transactions for the future. These can be accessed at any time by anyone who has the required clearance to overlook accounting processes. The general features are:
- Invoicing and billing: the software can produce invoices and send reminders and updates to clients and customers regarding payments.
- Bookkeeping: the software can overlook all activities of the sales and purchase ledgers, keep a record of all financial exchanges.
- Payroll: can handle and compute all data regarding payments, salaries, income tax, deductions, overtime calculations and pay slip generation.
- Reporting: the software can generate reports regarding income statements, cash flow, quarterly profits, balance sheet and all other analytical documents.
What are the benefits of this system?
- Ensures complete transparency and makes the whole process error free, reducing the chances of fraudulent activities.
- Ensures easier and better financial management, since everything can be accessed from one place and is automated. The financial reports are comprehensive, enabling better decision making.
- The data entry process is simpler and more accurate as well as efficient and fast.
- Saves expenses on hiring manual accounting staff.
- The storage of all business related data is in one secure place.
What are the possible risks of using this system?
No software comes without risk and so does all accounting software. The most important is the security concern, since everything is uploaded to a cloud based app or software, and thus can be accessed easily if there are not enough preventive measures. This is why a team of professional data recovery specialists should be hired. If at the time of entry, data entered is wrong, then that will reflect in all reports and transactions. The initial costs of setting this up can be a little expensive for smaller companies.
