For any business, accounting is one of the most integral areas of operations. From managing daily invoices, tracking sales activities to generating audit reports, it helps businesses to be efficient and faster.
While managing all these activities through the traditional approach is time-consuming, and leaves one in a situation where they are prone to errors, new-age businesses have already started embracing modern accounting systems.
Such developments are definitely driving the rapid growth of smart innovations, raising the expected market value of accounting software to USD 19.59 billion by 2025.
Modern accounting software is empowering businesses to make wiser business decisions by offering various benefits from managing billing to generating financial reports to managing compliances from the common backend, the businesses gain 360-degree visibility of their financial health.
While there are multiple accounting software in the market, businesses often struggle to pick the best fit for their needs. Conducting exhaustive research about regular financial activities and categorizing business needs is the finest way to go forward.
Here are six factors to consider before choosing an accounting software:
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Table of Contents
Examine Your Business Needs
Identifying and understanding the key purpose of the adoption of accounting software should be the first step in the process. Answering questions such as – Is it needed for automating tax filing operations? Or monitoring sales activities? Or both? Having the answers to such questions can really help you to identify the main objective.
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Safeguard the Business Data
As per a recent FBI report, complaints of cyberattacks had risen to almost 4,000 a day, a 400% increase over pre-coronavirus numbers. This spike in security breaches has compelled businesses to tighten their security belt and choose the accounting software powered with stringent security features. As accounting softwares help companies manage their financial activity on the go with any device or platform, security is a critical aspect to be considered. Before choosing a software, some of the factors to be considered are where the date is being hosted-on the vendor’s server or other trusted hosting service provider, as well as if the vendor is using an HTTPS connection.
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Intuitive User Interface
For the ease of access and efficiency it is important for the software to offer a simpler & convenient user interface for everyday operations. It should not be bloated with unnecessary features, creating hindrance for users. Hence, it is imperative to check prior to purchasing that the business accounting software augments the efficacy of the concerning professionals.
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Should Support Scalability
Many times, present scenarios play a key role in tech adoption, giving rise to future situations where the business has to migrate their financial data to a new system. However, it is certainly a complex and time-consuming process. It is important for businesses to also consider their future expansion plans and invest in business software that can be scaled up as per their needs. A good choice of software would be one that offers multiple versions of software-entry-level version and feature-rich advanced version.
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Ensuring Compliance Requirements
Businesses must ensure that financial records comply with the laws. It is critical for businesses to report invoices in the standard format with e-invoicing to support the tax authorities to access the entire trail of invoices submitted by taxpayers in the GST portal. Similar is the case with the e-way bills. However, adhering to such compliance guidelines manually is a tedious and time-consuming for accountants. Hence, the businesses must adopt and embrace an accounting software that can simplify such operations, ensures compliance, and automate the process of e-way bill & e-invoice generation.
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Support Services
For some, accounting software might seem like a big investment, and opt for a cheaper version. One of the key differences between a cheaper version and more expensive version are the services offered, especially in the support function. Selecting a vendor that offer 24*7 support services is very critical, especially when working with software that deals with one of the most critical aspects of a business.
As modern accounting software boasts of improving brand visibility, improves customer experience and facilitates business growth with its lucrative features and benefits, selecting the right accounting software is a daunting task. Businesses must acknowledge key factors to make the process easier, such as analyzing the business needs and considering data security requirements, necessary support services, scalability factors & user navigation.
Written by Mr. Niraj Hutheesing, Founder and Managing Director, Cygnet Infotech
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