Disrupt the Accounting Industry with Automated Insights

Recently updated on March 7th, 2024 at 10:39 am

Automation can be used for far more than simply performing basic calculations and saving time on boring, manual tasks. It can also be a powerful tool when it comes to advising clients as to the decisions they should make and the best ways to maximize their profitability. This is particularly true in the context of a business intelligence system that uses automation. Here’s how you can disrupt the accounting industry using automation to enable real-time reporting for clients, the analysis of financial statements, and comparisons between a client’s performance and industry averages.

Real-Time Reporting For All Clients

It can take hours—or longer—to work through the many sets of numbers in order to figure out how well a company is performing financially. But instead of trying to weigh one factor against another, you can use an automated system to execute real-time reporting for your clients.

For example, suppose one of your clients is concerned about how the purchasing department is using the funds it has available. Your client wants to know how money has been spent over the past six months and which departments have benefitted from these investments. With automated real-time reporting, you can surface these figures in a matter of moments.

Because the data can be unified into a single system, there’s no need to manually dig through the numbers trying to identify trends. This means that within minutes of getting a request from a client, you can respond with a concrete answer based on real, hard data.

Analyze Financial Statements With Specialized Software

Even though financial statements provide an accurate glimpse into the health of a company, it can be difficult to compare one with another or put two different categories side by side. Even if you’re intimately familiar with how a company operates, analyzing financial statements can still be a time-consuming endeavor.

On the other hand, when you have the right kind of business intelligence software, you can identify insights almost instantaneously. Not only does this save you time when it comes to evaluating financial statements, but it also makes you a source of accurate, dependable information that your clients can rely on.

To illustrate, suppose one of your clients is a hardware store with 20 locations. Even though all locations are under the same corporate umbrella, they’re managed individually by different people. Your client has asked its chief financial officer to compare the performances of two of their locations. The CFO then reaches out to you, hoping you can provide solid information before a meeting she has the following day.

Specifically, she wants to know how the cash flows of the company’s San Diego location compare to that of its Burbank store. Anticipating that this may be a useful metric, you’ve already set up accounting dashboards designed for financial performance analytics for each store in the company’s chain. With a few clicks, you’re able to notice that the Burbank location has seen a 5% drop in cash receipts over the past six months. In contrast, the San Diego location has had a 7% increase over the same time period. Instead of forcing her to wait a whole day, you can give her the information she needs in less than an hour.

With the right accounting business intelligence software, insights like these can be made in a matter of moments.

Compare A Client’s Performance With Industry Averages

Sometimes, success can be deceiving. Just because a company is meeting its numbers doesn’t mean it can’t do better. You can figure out whether this is the case by comparing one organization to the industry average within its sector. At the same time, what may appear like failure can be clarified by putting things into an industry-wide context.

Even though it can be difficult to gather, organize, and present all of the necessary information, with the right business intelligence solution, it’s relatively easy to add this kind of analysis to your accounting advisory services. For example, suppose one of your clients, a car manufacturer, goes through two consecutive slow quarters. It has been having trouble with its supply chain and, therefore, hasn’t been able to produce as many vehicles because it can’t get certain components.

However, using your accounting dashboard, you compare this manufacturer to its peers and quickly discover that it is not alone in its supply chain management struggles. Across the automotive industry, various companies have had similar issues. Using the data you have at your fingertips, you explain this to the company and reassure the representatives that, relatively speaking, they’re not doing as poorly as it seems.

Using PathQuest BI, you can automate these and other workflows, adding instantaneous insights to your accounting advisory services. This empowers you to perform financial performance analytics in minutes, giving your clients the data they need to strategize their growth. Learn more by booking a demo today.