The accounting responsibilities for your small business can quickly evolve into a complex and time-consuming endeavor. As your business expands, the intricacy of your accounting tasks increases. Tasks such as generating invoices, recording journal entries, preparing financial statements, and more become necessary.
Implementing accounting CRM has become quite popular in recent times. But an accounting CRM empowers you with far more capabilities. According to a recent report by Mordor Intelligence, “the accounting CRM market is expected to reach $19.59 billion by 2026”. By employing Accounting CRM software, you can automate various stages of the accounting cycle, freeing up your time to focus on what truly counts- business growth.
A well-executed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software effectively consolidates all your financial and accounting data. It also unifies all stakeholders of your organization, including clients, external collaborators, vendors, and suppliers. The outcome is simplified management of your relationships and interactions.
Accounting CRM software serves as a valuable tool for accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners and the CPA firms, thus facilitating the management and automation of accounting transactions and business accounts.
The sole objective of an accounting CRM is to streamline various tasks within the premises of finance and accounting transactions. For instance, it enables the automation of journal entries whenever a payment is made through the business account. Additionally, generating financial statements becomes effortless with a simple click, a task that could otherwise consume hours when using spreadsheets. According to a Sage Report, more than 45% of accountants adopt a CRM software for automating repetitive, time-consuming accounting tasks, such as data entry and number-crunching.
While there are many different advantages of using an enterprise CRM, we will be talking about ten benefits of implementing it. That’s how ConvergeHub empowers growing entrepreneurs in the finance sector.
Cloud CRM software like ConvergeHub comes with enterprise-grade features that offers a clear advantage over traditional accounting systems, primarily due to its ability to provide access to data anytime and from any device.
With cloud CRM, you can conveniently implement it on your desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. Through a cloud delivery model, you can access accounting data, no matter where it is located. All you need is a device with steady internet connection.
This feature offers numerous benefits for businesses, irrespective of their sizes. From drafting and sending out invoices directly to the stakeholders to checking the day-to-day transactions, everything is sorted with a cloud platform. Similarly, generating, viewing, and downloading financial statements and reports is a breeze with just a few clicks.
Gone are the days of requesting your accountant to prepare reports in advance. Simply log onto the platform, navigate to the Financial Reports section, and download the required financial statement hassle-free.
Back then, users needed to make changes to a spreadsheet, save it on a USB drive, and distribute to the stakeholders. Later on, you personally need to ensure that your members are aware about the most up-to-date financial statements. Today, the scenario is different.
Accounting CRM software provides real-time access to accounting and financial data for all users. Simply by logging into the platform, users ( team members, vendors and the customers) can easily execute their tasks without any bottlenecks or wasted time.
The biggest advantage of the accounting CRM is that multiple users can simultaneously work on the same data on the same platform and in real-time. Plus, nobody will be interfering in each others’ tasks. This makes the entire workflow more process-oriented and streamlied.
Moreover, online accounting software allows you to grant different access levels to different users. This feature enables you to customize permissions based on specific accounting or bookkeeping functions that each user needs to perform, ensuring appropriate data security and streamlined collaboration.
The process of “data collection” often comes with a massive influx of information, which can be overwhelming even for experienced accounting professionals. However, an accounting CRM system proves to be invaluable in such scenarios. It saves a significant amount of time by eliminating the need for extensive document searches or sifting through numerous columns in Excel spreadsheets to locate the required information.
An accounting CRM system enhances the efficiency of certified professional accountants (CPAs) through various automated workflows, including:
By employing these automation and data centralization mechanisms, you can leverage your data more effectively. It allows you to gain insights into your client base, improve your strategies, maintain seamless client follow-up, and have a holistic view of all your activities. These features are incredibly valuable for accounting professionals.
Marketing and accounting often require access to the same information in order to enhance efficiency. By implementing an accounting CRM, these two departments can seamlessly collaborate on various sales, marketing, and management activities, among other tasks. ConvergeHub’s intuitive platform helps implement deep interconnections between these crucial business functions.
Let’s explore some examples of how marketing activities can be significantly improved through the use of robust and easily accessible accounting data:
Equipped with the necessary accounting information, marketing experts can more effectively assess the efficiency of implemented strategies. They can leverage improved key performance indicators (KPIs), create insightful dashboards, and enhance the return on investment of online marketing initiatives. Accessing the right numbers becomes effortless with just a few clicks!
Moreover, with a CRM in place, accounting professionals serving multiple clients can deliver superior service and foster customer loyalty. Automated features such as newsletter distribution and timely responses enhance the client experience. Accountants can promote their services effectively and elevate the satisfaction levels of the businesses that engage their services.
Believe it or not, with an accounting CRM, accountants and bookkeepers can reduce the majority of the manual and repetitive work. Because things are automated, hence time is optimized. Implementing a CRM software in your CPA firms can help automate invoice creation for each sale, tracking transactions and generating corresponding journal entries, and sending late payment reminders to clients. The pattern becomes extremely clear – many steps in the accounting cycle can be automated, and that’s where online accounting software truly shines.
To begin with, you can streamline the creation of journal entries by integrating your bank directly with your accounting software. This integration enables automatic generation of journal entries whenever a payment is made or received, ensuring proper mapping to the appropriate accounts.
ConvergeHub is empowered with exceptional reporting features that help in in-depth financial reporting from start to finish (for example, generating a report on a specific day of the month) or setting up automated vendor payments.
However, at the same time it’s pretty clear that all CRM software does not offer the same level of automation. If you are seeking accounting software that excels in automation capabilities, we recommend giving ConvergeHub a try.
In the financial transaction, maintaining accuracy is the biggest challenge. With an accounting CRM, you can get your accounting records consistently organized in a precise and meticulous manner.
Remember those frustrating moments when you would spend hours trying to identify why the balance sheet failed to balance? Well, say goodbye to those exasperating times.
With cloud accounting software, any newly created journal entries that don’t reconcile will prompt immediate notification and highlight potential errors. This proactive approach alerts you to the issue before you even commit to it by clicking the submit button.
This simple example exemplifies how accounting software can immensely assist in maintaining accurate accounting and financial data for your business.
Another common accounting error that can be eradicated through the use of accounting software relates to data freshness. Picture a scenario where you are editing a spreadsheet or table that has already been updated, but you haven’t received the latest version. The task of merging changes from two separate files can be time-consuming and arduous. However, with online accounting software, such predicaments become obsolete, as all data is synchronized in the cloud.
Ultimately, the adoption of online accounting software ensures that your accounting records are impeccably organized and accurately maintained. Consequently, your financial reports will exhibit greater precision, enabling your team to make faster decisions and prioritize effectively.
The exponentially growing data in the premises of the accounting and financial sector has made the requirement of an organized tool a business imperative. This surge in demand has fueled the need for enterprise tools such as CRMs and other BI tools. Statista reveals, revenue generated by an accounting CRM software is projected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.68% from 2023 to 2028. No doubt, it reflects the growing recognition of the value these CRM tools offer. Also, they made data available and relevant to drive business success.
Numerous startups and small businesses often shy away from utilizing CRM tools due to concerns about the associated expenses. This may include subscription fees, setup costs, training expenses, configuration requirements, and customer support charges. However, it’s important to recognize that leveraging a CRM effectively can actually lead to substantial cost reductions in client acquisition, customer retention, and support processes. By optimizing the use of a CRM, businesses can streamline their operations, enhance efficiency, and ultimately achieve significant savings in various areas of their customer management endeavors.
