From manual month-ends and spreadsheets to the new world of AI-powered continuous accounting
5 min read
Small and medium business (SMBs) owners are already gaining back hours upon hours of valuable time by automating manual finance processes rather than relying on spreadsheets. Today, even the smallest businesses can use intelligent accounting software to create dynamic budgeting and forecasting models, create invoices, or consolidate financial data from different sources.
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Take the example of Seaborne Logistics, a Sage Intacct customer, which moved from a manual, Excel-based process for reporting towards cloud-based financial management. This technology has not only cut down the human labour involved in generating reports – it also gives the firm accurate, real-time insights into their business, making the decision-making process quicker and more effective.
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Another medium-sized business is Q4 Fuel, which has reduced invoice processing time from a full day to under two hours and accelerated its month-end close by 10 days following its adoption of a modern financial management platform. What once took full workdays to produce, monthly reports, can now be generated in seconds through live dashboards.
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But the transformation of SMB financial processes with automated tools is only just beginning. Artificial intelligence (AI) represents the next wave, with over two-thirds (73%) of South African SMBs having invested in AI technologies over the past year. With its ability to process and analyse large data volumes in the blink of an eye, AI is opening new opportunities for automation and insight.
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Next-generation AI and automation
The latest cloud-based financial management solutions include rich features that were once accessible only to the largest companies. These platforms use application programming interfaces, AI, and the cloud to unlock powerful functionality, while remaining easy to use and to deploy and integrate with a company’s existing IT environment.
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Intelligent General Ledger (GL) is one example of a next-generation feature that makes life simpler for finance teams and business users. Where traditional ledgers record data. Intelligent GLs help businesses to interpret it. SMBs can now automate complex journal entries and easily run real-time reports segmented by dimensions such as location, team, or product.
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Meanwhile, processes such as accounts payable can be automated almost from end-to-end. AI and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can be used to capture invoice and receipt data instantly without typing line by line or rechecking spreadsheets. Then, AI can automatically match invoices to purchase orders; extract and populate key fields like supplier, date, and line items; and flag potential duplicates before payment.Â
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Another feature businesses are starting to take for granted is anomaly detection in real-time. Sage Intacct scans over 15 million transactions a week to flag potential outliers before they post, errors that would otherwise take hours to find in a spreadsheet. This removes a layer of tedious manual review from the accountant’s workload and increases the accuracy of financial data.Â
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From point in time to real time
Automated platforms are enabling finance teams to move from static spreadsheets to dynamic forecasting. Rather than getting a point-in-time view from spreadsheets, businesses have a real-time view of their performance. We’re seeing a shift from the traditional accounting cycle, built around month-end closing, towards continuous accounting.
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This means businesses will always have access to current financial information rather than waiting for periodic reports. What’s more, we’re also seeing a democratisation of finance systems and data. Non-finance users can access information directly through self-service features, helping them to make better business decisions.
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The next step will see conversational AI tools change how people interact with accounting systems. Voice or text-based AI assistants can answer financial questions, provide insights, and even perform tasks through natural language conversation flows. This will make finance tools even easier to use, with AI becoming a co-pilot for decision-makers.
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In future, entrepreneurs will be able to tap into AI for powerful prescriptive analytics. Next-generation AI accounting systems will not just identify trends or forecast outcomes. They will be able to recommend specific actions to improve financial performance, such as changes to payment terms or expenses that could be reduced with minimal impact.
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Amplifying your impact
Automation isn’t about replacing the human element in the business but amplifying it. By automating routine financial tasks, entrepreneurs can unlock valuable time that they can direct into strategic planning, innovation, and driving business growth. Automation puts business owners in the driver’s seat, knowing that the finance basics are covered.
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