Accounting is an indispensable part of everyday business. But not the most popular one. Many entrepreneurs grumble about long and complicated processes that cost a lot of time and money. One in three self-employed people spends at least 20 percent of their working time on bookkeeping. Time that would be better invested in projects, further developments or strategy adjustments. So it's worth devoting the appropriate amount of time to automating your accounting.

You need more convincing? We have summarized for you why it is worth automating all of your accounting processes.

Save time and nerves

The most obvious benefit: time savings. The less time you have to spend on your accounting thanks to automation, the more time you can invest in other areas: Strategy development, company growth, customer acquisition. Not only your management or yourself, but also employees from different areas gain more time for planning and analysis because annoying routine tasks for accounting are eliminated.

Currently, accountants spend most of their time collecting receipts. Therefore, you should try to reduce this time factor as much as possible. We have several solutions for you here:

• Scan app: Simply scan receipts with your smartphone and they are automatically uploaded to FastBill.
• Mail forwarding with one click: Receipts you receive by mail can be easily forwarded directly to your FastBill Inbox.
• Link your customer portals: With the FastBill GetMyInvoices add-on, you can connect over 1500 customer portals such as Amazon, Telekom or LinkedIn to FastBill so that your invoices are transferred directly.

Automated accounting not only saves time, but also nerves. With an automated dunning system, for example, you no longer have to chase overdue invoices, as your reminders are sent automatically.

Quick and easy overview

Many companies try to get an overview of their accounting with an Excel list. Most will confirm that this is tedious and error-prone. The following overviews can be created automatically with a good accounting software, so that you never again lose the overview in the table chaos:

a. Revenues and expenses

To have a constant overview of your income and expenses, bank reconciliation should happen automatically. Your accounting tool will do that for you. So you have all your accounts in view, automatically see the monthly surplus and where you record the most expenses. This is important to be able to adjust and optimize your expenses again and again.

b. Open Item List (OPOS)

Maintaining an OPOS list manually in Excel is tedious. But it can be created automatically by any good accounting tool. If you send your invoices via such a tool, it will always show you which of these invoices have already been paid and which have not. The automatic bank reconciliation will do that for you as well. If necessary, you can then automate the dunning process so that these open items are cleared as quickly as possible.

c. Lack of supporting documents

One of the most annoying tasks for accountants is to find out missing receipts and collect them in time. This work is also often done in Excel. The corresponding tool can also do the work for you here and automatically display for which expenses the corresponding receipt is missing. When a receipt is uploaded, it is automatically linked to the corresponding transaction on the basis of the receipt number, invoice amount, etc. This way, you can be sure that the receipt will be collected in time. This way, you can be sure that no missing receipt will slip through your fingers again.

Communication and work with your tax advisor is also made easier, especially since you can keep track of your accounting at all times and automatically and quickly forward reports.

Reduce costs

Time is money. Of course, this also applies to your accounting. Accounting software also costs money, of course. However, if you automate processes as much as possible, you will save an average of 40 to 60 percent of your current accounting costs. This aspect is often overlooked and many people are not aware of it.

Let's say you're an independent contractor and you spend one day a week on your bookkeeping. That is 32 hours per month. Let's assume you have an hourly wage of 80€. 32 hours times 80€ equals 2560€.

We now contrast this with an accounting tool like FastBill, which saves this time and money. FastBill Premium starts at just under 60€ per month. Based on the 2560€ per month that a self-employed entrepreneur spends on bookkeeping, our example saves you 2500€ per month. Do you still find accounting software too expensive?

For yourself, calculate how many hours your employees and you currently spend creating invoices, collecting and entering receipts, and preparing monthly financial reports.

As mentioned at the beginning: One in three self-employed people spends at least 20 percent of their working time on this "paperwork". Are you one of them?

Avoid errors and increase safety

Another advantage that automating accounting brings, in addition to saving time and money, is the avoidance of typical data entry and transmission errors. Corrections are usually no longer necessary.

When it comes to invoicing alone, an automated process and the appropriate tools put you in a safe zone. FastBill, for example, ensures that ...

... that your invoices automatically contain consecutive invoice numbers,

... that all your invoices are GoBD-compliant,

... that the retention obligation is fulfilled,

... that all mandatory information is complete.

Deadlines are also no longer a problem with automated accounting and the corresponding tool. For both the advance VAT return and the tax return, you have all the documents collected centrally and ready to hand whenever you need them.

Control finances

To continue driving growth for your business, it's essential to have an overview of your finances at all times.

These include...

... your income and expenses,

... Your turnover,

... your open items (OPOS list),

... a total and individual overview of all business accounts.

With any good accounting tool (like FastBill), the reconciliation should happen automatically, so you don't have to link receipts and transfers/debits to get an overview. From this reconciliation, an OPOS list is then automatically generated, which contains an overview of missing vouchers. This way you always have an overview of which payments are incoming, outgoing or missing.

An overview of all FastBill features is also available at fastbill.com. More tips on accounting and automation can be found on the FastBill Blog.

With FastBill, you always have a daily and automatic overview of your finances. With these figures, you can then go to Cash flow planning. And this is where COMMITLY comes into play.

COMMITLY - simply better cash flow management

Cash position is at the heart of every economic activity. Especially in economically uncertain times like these, knowing your own Cash position is sometimes the most important element for entrepreneurial success. It is not just about knowing the current status of your company's Cash position (how much cash do I have?) but rather about planning ahead for the development of Cash position (how much cash will I have in 3, 6 or 12 months?). This is the only way to make sensible business decisions, react to liquidity bottlenecks or initiate the financing of mid-term gaps in a timely manner.  

Sounds complicated? It is if you try to run Cash flow planning exclusively using Excel spreadsheets, as most entrepreneurs do. For large companies, there are complex and expensive tools such as SAP, Tipco etc.. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent 99.2% of all companies in the EU, these tools are too expensive and time-consuming to implement.

However, COMMITLY, the most popular liquidity planning tool in German-speaking countries, has been around since 2020. COMMITLY allows you to plan and monitor your company's cash flows and Cash position easily and effortlessly, cost-effectively and efficiently.

• Planning made easy: Simply create Cash flow plan , automatic forecasts and controlling, reports at the touch of a button
• Excel bye-bye: No more formula errors, always up-to-date and in-sync with your bank accounts, ready to use at any time.
• Save time: Simple template, easy to use, team-ready, best practice guaranteed.

By cooperating with FastBill, you can easily combine both tools and, for example, automatically include open items in your Cash flow planning .

Do you want to implement this process?

Then test FastBill and COMMITLY free of charge for 14 days.

Also, use code COMMITLY15 to save 15% on all FastBill annual contracts.

You can enter the code in the booking process of your FastBill test account.

Have fun automating!

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash