We’ll explore the challenges that face accounting departments, take a good look at what accounting automation software looks like, describe the benefits of these solutions, and consider what it takes to choose and implement a top-of-the-line accounting automation solution. Let’s get started!

Accounting Challenges 

To begin, let’s consider just a few of the challenges facing accounting departments. Accounting departments must deal with anywhere from dozens to hundreds of documents per day, depending on the size of the company. All these documents must be organized and retrievable at a moment’s notice (for at least seven years).

Accounting departments also maintain sensitive information like employee salary information, bank numbers, and contract details. These departments may need to create invoices or other documents at regular intervals, sending these documents through collaborative editing processes and then through different approval stages.

For departments without automation software, these challenges often translate into long hours of tedious, mindless tasks for your employees. The chances of manual errors are high, and your employee satisfaction is likely low. Clearly, something needs to change.

How Accounting Automation Can Overcome These Challenges

Thankfully, there’s a way to overcome many of these accounting challenges. Automation software can transform your accounting department’s processes by largely eliminating tedious manual tasks. Automation solutions can create document templates, send documents through approval templates, enhance security, and make compliance easier. They can also organize documents and create metadata on those documents, improving search functionality.

What’s more, AI is now creating new possibilities for automation software. AI can “read” documents and summarize them, enhance search capabilities, and redact sensitive information when analyzing data. It can also assist in document creation and drafting. In truth, the industry has only just begun to explore the many ways in which AI can improve accounting automation.

All these features translate into hours saved and errors avoided—instead of spending time and energy on repetitive, tedious tasks, freeing them up to pursue more important, higher-order tasks.

Exploring M-Files, a Premier Accounting Automation Solution 

To take a closer look at the benefits of an accounting automation solution, let’s look at the features of M-Files, a powerful modern accounting and document automation solution. M-Files is a unique document management software that organizes documents based on what they are, not where they are stored, creating a metadata-powered search and organization. It also allows employees to create documents based on templates and questionnaires, standardizing documents across your organization and saving hours of work.

Here’s what M-Files brings to the table for accounting departments:

• Organization: In M-Files, you can intuitively organize documents and information based on metadata and a simple drag-and-drop user interface. You and your collaborators can edit one document simultaneously right in M-Files, avoiding the confusion of multiple document copies, while still retaining the ability to revert the document to a previous version.
• Automation: In another drag-and-drop visual interface, you can easily create workflows that automatically send accounting documents through multiple levels of approval every time. You can also make it easy for your clients or partners to sign and approve documents with integrated e-signing platforms and Microsoft 365.
• Security: Administrators can easily create role-based access permissions, ensuring that only the relevant employees can access sensitive documents. M-Files eliminates the need to email documents back and forth, keeping information secure within its own system.
• Compliance: Strict version control means you can always see who made which edits to a document (and can revert to a previous version if needed). This has extensive benefits when your company is audited, as you will have ready-made audit trails.
• Integration: M-Files has many ready-made integrations to choose from. In addition to the e-signing and Microsoft 365 integrations we already mentioned, you can incorporate master data from your CRM into client documents or metadata. You can also build connections with specific accounting tools such as CCH Axcess or Sage.
• AI: Through its Aino AI interface, M-Files is revolutionizing its search capabilities. You can now use natural language to find documents without knowing their exact titles. Aino can also summarize lengthy documents, giving you the information you’re looking for in seconds.

As you can see, M-Files has a host of benefits for accounting departments (and beyond!). However, choosing the perfect automation software is only the first step. Next, you have to implement that solution effectively.

Implementing Accounting Automation Software 

Implementing a given software solution is just as important as choosing the right solution. Even the best software will fail if it isn’t implemented correctly. Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re implementing an automation solution (or any other software solution!).

• Clean your data: The best automation software in the world won’t produce good results if the data you put into it isn’t clean. Before you implement any software solutions, it’s worth the investment to dive deep into your data, getting rid of outdated documents, duplicates, and corrupted or inaccurate data.
• Integrate your solution: M-Files—and other accounting automation software solutions—is built to break down data silos and unite data and documents across your organization. If you don’t integrate it with your other software solutions, such as your ERP, CRM, and more, you’ll miss out on its full potential.
• Customize your solution: Every accounting department and every company is unique, and therefore every software implementation should be unique. What sets your company apart? Be sure that uniqueness is reflected in your software in order for it to best meet the needs of your situation.
• Support employee buy-in: This may be the single most important factor in whether your software implementation will succeed or fail. You need to make sure that your accounting employees are committed to using the software to its fullest extent. Strategies to increase employee buy-in include holding listening sessions to ensure that the solution will meet the needs of your employees, providing incentives to attend training and to adopt the software, and soliciting employee feedback throughout the process.
• Train employees: Again, so much hinges on how your employees use the software. Be sure they are aware of all the ways in which this software can make their jobs more efficient! Hold multiple hands-on training sessions, cover the material extensively, and be sure all questions are answered.

Keeping these considerations in mind will help you successfully implement an accounting automation solution.

Ready to Get Started? Laminin Can Help!

 We’d like to highlight two of the points above: in order to successfully implement accounting automation software like M-Files, you need to integrate and customize your solution to match your company’s unique needs. That’s where Laminin comes in!

If M-Files is the right system for you, we can help you integrate it with your existing software and personalize it to your specifications. We can enable you to make the most out of your implementation and achieve the highest ROI possible on your investment. Contact us today to get started.