As executive leaders find themselves making decisions based off hitting growth milestones, they realize the need for process improvements and often grapple around the best business system to manage its expanding operations. Long term planning of the best integrated business management software systems often takes a back seat to short-term revenue acceleration goals and fulfilling an immediate need. This leads to departments working in disparate systems for various functional areas, resulting in business process inefficiencies and business and accounting software integration challenges. So, when it comes time to move to a more advanced financial software platform, choosing an integrated accounting software or open architecture accounting software that can easily integrate with your other systems and applications will help improve business operations.
Understanding Open Architecture Accounting Software Works
Accounting and the financial health of your organization is a fundamental part of growth and success. When starting out, accounting software is typically a basic accounting system like QuickBooks that performs core accounting needs and provides limited financial reporting. However, as your organization grows and you require a more robust accounting and financial software management, it needs to be one that speaks to your other systems and applications providing you with an automated two-way, system-to-system communication. The right open architecture accounting software will consolidate data from disparate systems into your accounting software eliminating the need for duplicate data entry. Financial software that can do this well, will become the core and essential part of your organization. Best-in-class integrated accounting software systems are typically cloud-based and offer web services and open APIs, that apply the same complex business logic to transactions regardless of their source. This allows you to tailor your connections to your specific workflow processes.
“Over 50 percent of C-level executives in accounting expect the development of intelligent, automated accounting systems will have the highest impact over the next 3 years”, according to a study by the ACCA listed on G2.
5 Ways Integrated Accounting Software Improves Operations
- Better Manage Cash Flow – Gain new levels of insight into the cash flows and payment processes throughout all departments and entities of your organization. Everything is calculated for you in one system, eliminated manual finance errors and missed calculations.
- Reduce Overall Costs – the automation and integration reduces time spent on financial data input, payroll and administrative tasks, eliminating outsourced services, which allows your organization to take control of the financial framework.
- Automatically Perform Job Costing – Posts made to Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and the General Ledger provide automatic updates through the accounting system to calculate job costs and to perform other accounting processes.
- Access Real Time Information – No longer wait for someone to manually enter information from the ordering system or re-enter it in the accounting system. Access up-to-date financial information for the best decision making possible anytime.
- Improved Productivity – Disparate systems notoriously cause time consuming, manual rework as employees repeatedly key the same information into different systems. With an integrated system, the need to manually re-enter data into multiple systems is eliminated.
Accounting Software Integration Options
Cloud based accounting software, like Sage Intacct with a core financial software management system designed for growth provides simple, yet best-in-class Integrated business management software to meet your organization’s accounting software integration needs. This type of platform allows you to have the flexibility to connect the different applications you have—whether they are proprietary custom applications or widely used business systems like Salesforce. There are two approaches to choose from:
- Pre-built connections. Access pre configured system-to-system connections that are built into Sage Intacct, or available as an add on module. These types of “pre-built” integrations make it easy for you to set up and configure your connection based off of organizational needs.
- Custom connections. Whether you use your own IT team to easily create your own custom connections or a VAR with system knowledge, the team can use the web services API.
Not only does an integrated accounting software improve business operations, it provides accurate data for decision making whenever you need it and greater visibility at your fingertips. Improve business planning and continually measure organizational progress and growth. Leaders can better adapt to evolving business conditions and improve customer satisfaction for an enhanced competitive advantage.
For more information on integrated accounting systems and to learn which business applications and systems you can interconnect, please email us.
