Accounting is a discipline that can lead its stakeholders to perform basic tasks and, moreover, repetitive. However, there are certain accounting automation mechanisms that allow in particular to no longer have to achieve them but also to limit the risk of error related to human intervention. Compta-Facile unveils its advice to save time on its bookkeeping by answering the question: how to automate the accounting of a company ?
What is accounting automation?
Definition of Accounting Automation
Accounting automation is a process of avoiding the use of manual processes to the extent possible, preferring automatic processes . This technique also applies to the basic task of accounting entry (entry of purchase and sales invoices, entry of payroll entries, entry of bank statements, etc.) than to other services of the company (quote, invoicing , pay, etc.).
Benefits of accounting automation
Automating your accounting has many advantages , even if the company works with a chartered accountant to keep its accounts. First of all, this technique allows the company, as well as its potential accountant, to free up valuable time to devote to its core business. The company manager or manager can take care of developing his business and the accountant can offer his client (the company) benefits with higher added value and especially in terms of advice. Then, it reduces the risk of error generated by human intervention and manual entry including (double entries, copies of information ...). Finally, it generally allows the centralization of information; This allows faster access to information and especially to have access to up-to-date information.
Companies involved in accounting automation
All companies in the obligation to keep accounts are concerned with the automation of their accounts and have an interest in opting for them. Depending on their legal status and tax system, some may or may not emphasize the importance of automation (this is particularly the case for individual companies subject to the regime of non-commercial benefits for example).
What are the different ways to automate your accounting?
Centralize company information
The first thing you need to do to better automate your accounting is to promote the centralization of company information . All data from these should preferably be grouped together in a single database . Different modules then collect this information and thus have the same source of information.
In concrete terms, this means choosing a complete accounting management solution adapted to the business. The smallest companies that manage their own accounts, the preparation of their quotes and their invoices will have every interest in retaining the software publisher who offers them an accounting software coupled with a commercial management software. The largest companies generally use an ERP (ERP) system that includes a large number of IT applications: the supply management module, the inventory management module, the sales management module, the accounting management module, the management module. payroll, etc.
Automate the accounting treatment of invoices
Registration of purchase invoices
Medium-sized and / or large enterprises organized into different services ("purchasing" service, "stock" service, "marketing" service, "supplier order" service, etc.) may use them alternately or concurrently during the course of the year. process of a particular process (placing a supplier order in particular). Thus, for example, a service may need to define the needs to manufacture a product, another to order the appropriate materials and products, another to receive them, another to receive and validate the invoice. In these circumstances, it is necessary to ensure good traceability of information . This requires a fairly complex management solution that allows:
Generate purchase orders to send to the relevant suppliers,
To confirm receipt of ordered goods,
To issue, if necessary, a request to have if a problem appears (quantity error, poor quality ...),
To transform purchase orders into purchase invoices,
Automatically integrate purchase invoices into the accounting software .
For small businesses, or those whose organization is not complex, this role can be provided by the supply and inventory management software. In the larger ones, it is usually an ERP that must be used.
Registration of sales invoices
The same logic applies here for automating the accounting treatment of sales invoices . The management solution must allow:
To create quotes and follow them until their validation by the customer,
To transform these quotes into purchase orders then into sales invoices,
To automatically dump sales invoices in the accounts .
This task may be provided by commercial management software or an integrated management software package.
Namely: the process of analyzing and recording purchase and sales invoices can be fully automated by means of automatic invoice recognition .
Automate the accounting treatment of payroll
When a company carries out its employees' payroll itself and sets up its payroll tax slips, it has every interest in choosing a payroll solution compatible with its accounting software.
If this is the case, most publishers offer the possibility, at the closing of payroll operations, to automatically record all payroll entries in the appropriate accounting journal : aggregate gross registration, employer payroll taxes, social benefits, various benefits in kind and net to pay for each employee.
Automate the accounting treatment of bank statements
Some software offers to automate the process of entering banking transactions by automatically integrating bank statements of a company into its accounts. Bank data is retrieved and entered without manual intervention in the appropriate accounting journals, using a secure process called ETEBAC.
This technique is completely functional and especially adapted to companies authorized to keep cash accounts . However, it requires a prior configuration (it is possible to teach the software to automatically classify transactions in certain accounts according to the wording they present on the bank statement). It results in a full allocation in the balance sheet accounts and the management accounts, with possible splitting between the amounts excluding taxes and VAT.
Set up accounting entry guides
For commercial, industrial or craft companies having to keep a full accounts receivable and debt-based account, the automatic recovery of bank statements and generally less interesting because the transactions will generally be recorded in third party accounts: accounts receivable or accounts suppliers. However, most software does not allow to classify them in the right accounts.
Those who can not automate the accounting treatment of their invoices have the option of creating accounting entry guides . These are frames which are automatically incremented in the appropriate accounting journal (purchase or sale for example) when a third party account is selected (customer account or supplier account) and the amount inclusive TTC. This technique requires having set up, beforehand, each account of third parties by indicating on the one hand the management account to be used in return and on the other hand the rate of VAT applicable.
Conclusion : the automation of accounting is a challenge for all companies. It saves time and ensures better reliability of accounting information. Automation promotes, among other things, optimizing the management of a company through its accounting .