As your business grows, challenges naturally pile on. For accounting and finance teams, rapid business growth can feel like dining at a top-notch $100-per-person buffet (Vegas, anyone?). You've budgeted and invested in the experience, so now you feel obligated to pile up your plate and take on more than you can chew. No matter how full you get, the chef just set out more lobster, and there's no way you're passing on seconds.
Finance software integration and automation take time-consuming manual tasks off teams' plates. Instead of opting for the buffet, it's like hiring a personal chef to provide perfectly portioned meals when needed. With the right solutions in place, teams receive financial data in digestible formats—providing ease to closing the books, reporting, forecasting, and more.
Challenges that come with business growth
Finance teams face several interconnected challenges as the business grows.
One of the most pressing issues is the scalability of financial operations, where manual processes become increasingly unsustainable as transaction volumes rise. Cash flow management becomes more complex, often requiring new technology, sophisticated forecasting, and careful balancing. Risk management also intensifies, as teams must handle increased exposure to market fluctuations, cybersecurity threats, and more complex compliance requirements.
On top of these concerns comes a lack of talent. According to the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), the number of candidates for the CPA exam dropped by 33% from 2016 to 2021—along with a decrease in enrollment in college accounting programs.
The solution for growing pains? Automation.
One thing that is both sustainable and scalable for businesses is software automation. Old legacy systems that aren't tightly integrated are not built for expanding finance operations. Now that most business applications are on the cloud, automation is attainable for even the smallest organizations.
If your team has unique requirements, custom workflows are possible through software integration. For instance, imagine you're using a CRM to create new deals and auto-sync details to an ERP or accounting software. As a new invoice is generated, your integrated payment processing system attaches a “click-to-pay” link to the invoice. Once the customer pays, you receive real-time transactional information in your ERP. Little to no manual intervention is needed.
Sound fancy enough? Let's get into some examples of how automation can support finance teams during business growth:
Accounts Receivable and Payable Automation
The main goal in accounts payable and receivable automation is to eliminate repetitive and error-prone data entry where possible. This includes streamlining processes like…
- Capturing customer billing information
- Drafting and approving invoices
- Sending invoices to customers
- Creating reminders for upcoming and overdue payments
- Matching Purchase Orders (POs) to vendor invoices
In a season of high growth, AR and AP automation ensures accuracy and timeliness when teams are pulled in different directions. Applying these solutions does cover the grunt work behind manual processes, but human oversight and financial expertise will always be needed for performance analysis.
Financial Close & Reporting
Speaking of performance, automation significantly reduces the time to close the books and generate financial reports. When teams have to pull information from multiple sources to align expenses, payroll, revenue, and more, the process of building reports is time-consuming and error-prone.
Software integration and automation solutions eliminate the risks associated with manual data manipulation. The American Psychiatric Association saved 1,000 business hours annually on reconciliations thanks to an integration between Chrome River and Sage Intacct. Before integration, the finance team would manually import spreadsheets into their accounting system. The process required an individual to complete when time allowed during their workday. Now with automated processes in place, the finance team can drill down into transactional detail more efficiently from one system.
Tax & Compliance
Tax management can be incredibly frustrating, especially with staggered data and manual effort required. Some U.S. states require a sales tax while others don't. And, compliance gets even messier when growing your business internationally across multiple currencies or accounting for specific tax rules by product type. In this sector of finance, streamlined technology is a must for scaling businesses.
Venn Technology's Business Central Stripe integration has an add-on feature for businesses leveraging Stripe Tax to calculate, collect, and report sales tax on transactions. Depending on your team's needs, taxes can be automatically calculated or manually triggered on invoices created in Business Central. With a more consolidated process, finance teams remain in one system, gain instant access to subtotals with tax included, and can generate documents with ease and accuracy.
How to successfully integrate and automate finance software
The best approach for any technology project is a collaborative one. Keep your people in mind first, learn more about the processes they rely on the most, and then use those learnings to address technology needs.
1. Assess your team’s processes and pain points
Before making changes to your technology, it's important to evaluate and document your finance team's processes. Which procedures are most important? Do certain ones require someone to hand key information? What tasks require the most time and effort to complete?
2. Identify tasks that need to be automated
There's likely a long list of manual processes your team hopes to automate. Consider categorizing tasks based on the level of resources required to complete them. When automated, how much time would your team save per week? What are other valuable initiatives teams could accomplish with that time back?
3. Choose how you want to integrate: Build, Buy, or Partner
After identifying pain points and which processes to automate, it's time to pick which integration method is right for your organization. There are three paths to consider: build in-house, buy pre-built solutions, or partner with an integration provider for custom needs. This decision is mostly influenced by the technical resources you have in-house. Does your IT team have the expertise and time to build your software integrations? If the answer is no, then you can work with an outsourced provider to build and maintain solutions for you.
4. Test, test, test
A testing phase is crucial for any technology project. Why should you test? Think of software integration testing as preparing for a Formula One race. It takes a full crew to ensure the vehicle's running smoothly before the driver takes off at full speed. Integration testing requires collaboration and thoroughness. It should be an exciting experience for teams to see for the first time how automation will soon improve their day-to-day.
Measuring the success and ROI of automation
One of the driving factors for implementing automation is the health of internal resources. Businesses in high-growth mode either choose to hire new team members or invest in technology solutions to cover needs for the time being.
To measure the return on technology investments, consider the time savings automation provides per week, per month, and year. Certain solutions could even cover the need for hiring full-time staff—the average salary for accountants in 2024 is $65,000+ plus other employee benefit costs.
Well-built software integrations, especially ones connecting cloud-based applications, are future-proof. As growth and time changes the state of an organization, technical solutions offer more flexibility and reliability.
Conclusion
Finance teams are swamped when businesses experience growth. High-volume sales lead to more financial data. Legacy systems and manual processes leave teams feeling stuck in a never-ending cycle. How do organizations continue to stay on pace? Software automation.
Integrated technology across finance and other departments provides real-time data visibility to teams and keeps operations running 24/7. Automation solutions are future-proof and flexible as businesses expand their horizons.
Need help integrating your finance apps?
Our mission at Venn Technology is to free teams to focus on what they're best at. We accomplish this using a white-glove approach to building integrations across your tech stack and automating painfully time-consuming manual tasks. Schedule a consult with us to learn how automation can empower your finance team.
