As a business owner/freelancer, it doesn’t matter how busy you are or how large or small your business is, if there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s the fact that your accounts and books must be in order at all times.

The last thing you want to do is fall foul to the taxman, but what can you do to help ensure things run without a hitch?

Well, if you manually do your accounts yourself, there’s a good chance that you will struggle, or at the very least, that you will waste a lot of time carrying out tasks that an accountant would have been able to do in seconds.

We have actually been using computers for accounting purposes for over three decades now, and when you consider the fact that accounting software is now more advanced than ever before, it’s easy to understand why that is.

Accounting is all about collecting data and carrying out various processes and procedures in order to ensure that your books and finances are balanced and up-to-date. This is where automation comes into the picture.

Thanks to automation via accounting software, keeping your finances and books in order is now easier than ever. Below we’ll take a look at a few key benefits associated with automation in accounting.

Reduced risk of error

Remember, as great as you or your employees may be, when it comes to dealing with your accounts, there will always be a risk of human error.

All it takes is one missed figure, or one incorrect formula and your entire finances for that day, week, month, or even year, could potentially be ruined, which may result in a fine.

Although with accounting software and thanks to automation, the software has been specially designed to automatically and systematically scan for any mathematical mistakes.

With manual accounting, no matter how careful you are, mistakes can, and often will, happen, and this could literally cost you money further down the road. With automation in the form of accounting software, nonetheless, the risk of human error is hugely reduced.

Save time

Another key benefit associated with automation in accounting is the fact that it has been specifically designed to help you save a great deal of time.

Whether you were to do your finances or hire a pro, you would still need to sit down and go through them in person if you or they planned on doing them manually.

With automation, however, the software itself will take care of all calculations for you, so mundane time-consuming tasks will no longer need to be carried out by you, as the computer will take care of everything. In particular, many freelancers have praised automation in regards to the billing and invoicing process.

If you were working with the same client on a regular basis, providing the same services for the same prices on the same date each week, manually you would have to create a new invoice every single time you wanted paying.

With one client this is perhaps not too bad, but if you’re working with multiple clients, the last thing you want to be doing is wasting time drawing up manual invoices each week.

With automation, the accounting software can be programmed to automatically send out invoices to your clients, on dates of your choosing, without you having to lift a finger. You can simply program the software to send an invoice to your chosen client for X amount of money, whenever you’d like.

Very customizable

When talking about the benefits of automation in accounting software, we cannot overlook the fact that it is very customizable.

Computer-based accounting software can be customized in a whole variety of different ways, so users can scan the data and view it in formats and layouts of their choosing.

Remember, we all have different preferences, so if you are viewing spreadsheets, tables, and charts, in a format you can’t seem to get your head around, more often than not, the accounting software can actually be altered so you can view it in a format that you do like the look of.

Whether you’re creating custom invoice templates, or financial reports and spreadsheets, you can format all of the above, and much more besides, into the layout that appeals to you the most.

Make and save more money

When it comes to automation in accounting, a lot of people often overlook the fact that automation can, and probably will, help save you a great deal of money. You may be wondering how that is, but don’t worry, all will soon become clear.

You see, if you were to invoice clients manually, there is always the risk that the invoice would fail to be sent, or that you simply invoiced for less than you were owed.

With automation, however, the software takes care of the invoice for you, so you needn’t worry about undercharging for your services, or of simply forgetting to send an invoice to a client because you were so busy.

Automated accounting software will alert you if payments have not been made as well as it will alert you about any incorrect payments, plus it will let you know of any potential duplicates of invoices.

Easy to use

One reason why a lot of business owners and freelancers are so hesitant to utilize automated accounting software is the fact that they think it will be very difficult and complicated to use.

In reality, however, the software has been designed with user-friendliness in mind.

This means that often you don’t need to perform regular software installations and updates that you don’t need an IT specialist to come take care of things when an update is needed. Often it will automatically update itself so you really needn’t worry about a thing.

Often it will automatically update itself so you really don’t have to worry about a thing.

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