As accounting technology continues to evolve, more and more firms are embracing Cloud and intelligent technologies to enhance their accounting process, delivering more value to clients. With cloud-based accounting solutions, accountants have the ability to log in wherever, whenever and provide real-time insight to clients – enabling accountants to quickly evolve from simply assessing data to making informed projections about a business’ financial activity.
The next step in the accounting evolution is collaborative accounting, a concept enabled by the wide scale adoption of the Cloud by organisations of every size.
Bringing together external accountants, internal accountants and clients, a collaborative model enables everyone to work in unison on specific data files, ensuring up-to-the-minute, real-time data entry, reporting and analysis.
In this blog, we will discuss how collaborative accounting can help your firm and its clients.
What are the benefits of collaborative accounting?
As collaborative accounting is cloud-based, no additional software or infrastructure needs to be acquired, driving the cost of the accounting operation down. For small businesses, it offers the opportunity to enhance existing accounting and reporting processes – enabling the delivery of more value to clients on a regular basis.
How safe is my data?
The most sophisticated cloud-based collaborative accounting solutions are far more robust than in-house infrastructure and provide access to documents, data and reports in real-time for effective remote collaboration. Data is far more secure and confidential and the risk of data theft or damage is significantly reduced.
The key to financial reporting efficiency
In addition, collaborative accounting enables accountants and clients to operate, communicate and manage everything at once, removing the need for sequential operations. This provides another benefit: efficiency. As clients and accountants are no longer waiting for information because everything is real-time, the entire process is streamlined and cost effective.
Furthermore, as tasks are completed sooner, accountants can spend more time on elements of their remit that add value.
Picking the right collaborative accounting solution
But before your firm can reap the benefits of collaborative accounting, it’s vital that it picks the right collaborative accounting solution. In order to maximise productivity, the solution needs to be available via the Internet and possess the necessary functionalities your accountants need to deliver value to clients. This might be an extension of your existing services, plus some additional ones.
Features such as real-time data synchronisation that ensure up-to-date information reporting are fundamental, as well as online/offline and remote access with routine information updates, meaning any work completed offline will be updated online once the user is connected to the Internet.
Another key component is the ability to add-on features to improve accounting processes. For example, cloud-based add-on tools that include pre-built modules for accounts, auditing and taxation, make the financial reporting process incredibly easy.
If you're thinking of reaping the benefits of collaborative accounting, then our powerful bolt-on-tool, SmartSync, is the answer. CaseWare SmartSync enables audit teams in different locations to synchronise and update their work via CaseWare Cloud, but without the constraints of having to be online 24/7.
To learn more about why CaseWare SmartSync is the next generation of audit collaboration, watch our SmartSync video.