How Automated Forecasting Helps Accountants Solve 5 Big Accounting Challenges

Recently updated on March 7th, 2024 at 10:50 am

Solve Five Big Accounting Challenges : There are many general benefits to using accounting automation for your clients, including faster data retrieval, more accurate data, secure file storage, real-time integrations, and cloud availability. Listing the benefits is easy, but considering the advantages in terms of challenges solved can also be helpful. If one service you provide for your clients is forecasting, here is how you can combine it with automated accounting to help your clients and your business.

Determine Long-Term Cash Flow

Cash makes it possible for your clients’ businesses to remain running. Without cash flow, a business won’t last very long. You can give your clients an idea of their available funds with a short-term cash flow forecast, but if you want to plan for the future, short-term forecasts just won’t cut it. To help your clients organize their finances to fund their future goals, you need to provide them with a long-term view. Once you have a long-term cash flow forecast for your clients, you can compare it against other clients or parts of their business so that they see how their future compares.

Create a Business Roadmap

Your clients may have a business plan and benefit from the reporting you provide them, but delivering your clients a business roadmap can bring them even more value. Business plans point out how a company will do business but rarely provide them with a specific direction, and reporting tells clients how they got where they are, but it will not guide them to their future goals. This is where a business roadmap shines. A business roadmap brings a business plan to life by using visualizations that make it easy to grasp. These let your clients know what needs to happen, when it needs to happen, and who needs to make it happen in order for their desired future to become a reality.

Model Future Purchases and Business Choices

Once you have provided clients with long-term cash flow forecasting and a business roadmap, they may still need to know how changes to their business could affect their future. After all, things do change. How will hiring a new employee help or hurt the business? Will investing in a new asset or infrastructure help the business grow? This is where you can introduce your clients to scenario planning to demonstrate how purchases and changes will affect their business.

Get Real-Time Numbers

No one wants static forecasts anymore. They also don’t want to wait until you update the data to see the new numbers for their business. A business can change overnight. Any forecast based on old data will be quickly out-of-date. And just pumping data into old reports isn’t enough either. Forecasts should evolve based on changes in the data and actions taken by the business. When you automate your accounting data in real-time, and this data is plugged into custom financial dashboards, your forecasts and reports will always be based on the latest data.

Get More Time

Automating reporting and forecasting gives both you and your clients more time. For you, there will be less data entry and manual processes to slow down your day. In addition, your clients will never have to wait for the reports and forecasts to be ready because they always are. That’s how Accountants can solve Solve 5 Big Accounting Challenges

PathQuest can help you solve these challenges and more. PathQuest’s automated accounting solution, SCALE, integrates with platforms like Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage Intacct for real-time data updates so that numbers are always accurate. SCALE also comes with PathQuest BI, our accounting business intelligence software, so you can build custom reports and forecasts for your clients that are always up-to-date and available on the cloud. And to get even more time back in your day, SCALE comes with a blended offshore accounting team dedicated to your business success.

Are you facing any of these Accounting Challenges? Let us assist you.

Published on: 31 May 2022

Author

John Bugh

John Bugh is Chief Revenue Officer for PathQuest, responsible for the strategic direction, planning, vision, growth, and performance of the company’s marketing, branding, and revenue streams.

As a seasoned professional with over 35 years of experience in executive sales, marketing, and operational leadership, John has worked to build high-performing leadership-teams that have a demonstrated track record of accelerating growth, increasing revenue, establishing sustainability, and improving profitability.

He is an avid life-long fan of the NY Yankees and loves to snow ski with his family whenever he has the opportunity!