Benefits of Accounting Software
How Accounting Software Benefits a Business
You would of course expect an accountant to say that accounting software delivers great benefit to businesses. You might even strongly agree with the notion that this is true–even if you’re not particularly passionate about the importance of good accounting and great accounting software.
However, I want to make an argument that accounting software delivers huge strategic benefits to businesses. Let me here identify some of the biggest accounting software benefits that I regularly see.
Accounting software identifies profitable customers
Accounting software often easily identifies who your profitable customers are… and how your unprofitable customers are. The reason is that all of this accounting software lets you create customized profit and loss statements that look at just transactions for a particular customer.
Accounting software spotlights employee theft
Do you know about this dirty little secret? I mean, of course, the secret that given a chance a shocking number of employees will steal from their employer if given the chance? This is relevant to a discussion of accounting software because good accounting software makes it much harder for employees to steal from you (because of built-in tools like audit trails, segregation of duties, and passwords) and because good accounting software makes it much easier to find theft that occurs.
Accounting software improves cash flow
Accounting software, you might guess, improves your cash flow in numerous ways. Here are just a few examples that I’ve seen in the last year:
Businesses moving from manual accounting systems to computerized accounting software often find they capture many more tax deductions–which of course saves them income taxes.
Businesses that keep good track of their accounts receivable usually do a better job of collecting from delinquent customers or clients–which of course means they collect their cash faster and experience few uncollectible debts.
Retailers that use point-of-sale inventory accounting software often find they sell more inventory because they better know what customers want–so that increases sales. And these same retailers also often find they can reduce their inventory by moving items from the warehouse to the store floor more quickly–and that increases their cash.