Increasing the Productivity of Accountants With Microsoft 365
Accountants are leaving the industry in record numbers and with pent-up demand a legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting firms are having to find new efficiencies to hit expectations.
Studies suggest that one of the primary reasons for accountants leaving the industry is a widening skill gap, as technology has changed not only the accounting world but other industries as well.
Ed O’Connell, UK Managing Director of professional services at recruitment specialist Search, notes that “traditional accounting roles have all but gone” whilst David Whitson-Black head of talent development at SME advisory firm Azets suggests the advancement of technology has allowed finance professionals to seek better opportunities in other areas.
It’s amongst this landscape, with businesses across the country, experiencing a shortage of workers, that accountancy practices must look for other ways to meet demands.
Microsoft 365 is a tool these organisations can use to maximise the productivity of their existing staff to help with such problems.
A subscription-based service, Microsoft 365 is more than just your traditional Office 365 suite of Outlook, Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Today Microsoft 365 incorporates a vastly increased range of services that can help increase the productivity of accounting firms.
In this blog post, we’ve identified three primary areas in which Microsoft 365 can help, explained how, and provided examples that can be applied to your accountancy practice. These areas are:
How to Automate Repetitive Accounting Tasks With Microsoft 365 and Power Automate
Improving the Collaboration of Your Accountants With Microsoft Teams
Analysing Your Accounting Firm’s Data Using Power Bi
Microsoft 365 Services for Accountants From Acronyms
How to Automate Repetitive Accounting Tasks With Microsoft 365 and Power Automate
One of the quickest ways of increasing the productivity of accounting firms is by using technology to automate repetitive tasks.
With regular client communication required, a range of different documents used and lots to remember as an accountant, there are ample opportunities for accountants to automate some of their workloads with Microsoft 365, freeing up time that can be spent elsewhere.
Power Automate allows users to create custom workflows that operate automatically across multiple applications (Outlook, SharePoint, Power BI) as well as a variety of platforms such as desktop and mobile devices.
This automation is easy to configure, with a simple drag-and-drop interface, and a collection of predesigned templates also available to use.
This makes Power Automate a perfect tool for this for automating some of the repetitive tasks in your firm. Here are three ways we’d recommend using Power Automate and the benefits we believe they’d bring to your accountancy practice.
Automating Client Communication
Accountants regularly communicate with their clients. A large proportion of this communication though is repetitive, and standard in nature – the perfect task for automating.
For example, an accountant might regularly request receipts and invoices from a client or send their clients minutes from the meetings they’ve recently had with them.
Whilst individually these forms of communication may not take up significant amounts of time, when you consider how many clients require emails of this nature and how many clients you work with, this time can add up considerably over the course of a year. This is time that can be better spent elsewhere.
Our favourite use of automation for client communication is when onboarding clients for the first time.
When onboarding a new client, an accountancy practice will often have lots of information they want to share with their new client. You may be reluctant to bombard your new client with too much information and overwhelm them though, so Power Automate can be used to stagger communication over time.
Automating Document Creation
Everyday accountancy firms create many documents, many of which follow a standard pattern. Whether these be contracts, invoices or reports pulling data from your accounting software, these documents often work from templates. They will be in the same format for each client, with just the specific client data changing.
If you’re using multiple pieces of software, compiling these documents can be time-consuming. Alternatively, Power Automate can automatically compile them for you.
Where you can maximise your efficiencies though, is by combining this type of automation with external client communication. For example, you could create a workflow that compiled data for your clients, emailed the report to them, and then sent that client a text message letting them know the report is waiting for them in their inbox.
In addition to saving time, and giving your accountants more time to spend elsewhere, simple workflows like this can also improve the customer experience.
Automating Reminders
Whilst Power Automate workflows can be beneficial when working directly with clients, they can also be used internally by your accountants, to assist with their daily tasks.
Whether it be a simple reminder to complete regular tasks such as making payments, checking on the progress of a particular client, or reminding you of important deadlines, reminders can take pressure off accountants, by giving them less to worry about.
What can be especially effective though are workflows that create these reminders automatically, without input from your staff. For example, if a meeting is organised with a client in the Outlook calendar, a reminder can be sent one week before the meeting to ensure that all relevant parties have completed the necessary preparation in advance.
Improving the Collaboration of Your Accountants With Microsoft Teams
Small business accounting is a team sport, with accountants often working across multiple clients, industries, and specialisms as one firm. Additionally, since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a large shift towards remote and hybrid working models, dividing teams physically. This has all meant that collaboration, or potentially the lack of it, has a direct impact on the productivity of accountancy practices.
With all this to consider, plus the increased pressures associated with a difficult labour market and the importance of accuracy and timeliness in accounting, it’s little wonder that many financial organisations and feeling the strain when trying to serve their clients effectively.
Microsoft 365 tools such as Microsoft Teams can help facilitate collaboration across your organisation, making the processes of individuals quicker and easier, saving your firm time in the process. Whilst Microsoft Teams is a tool many are now familiar with, we find it is often underutilised, with key features sometimes missed, leading to missed opportunities to increase the productivity of your accountancy practice.
We’ve therefore given a brief breakdown of some of the key features of Microsoft Teams, followed by the benefits they can offer accountants.
File Co-Authoring
Microsoft Teams allows multiple people to work on the same files simultaneously – in real-time. This reduces the risk of people saving over work that’s been completed or having to wait for another colleague to finish with a document before using it themselves, reducing delays. This can be particularly useful with accountancy practices that have staff working across multiple offices or from home.
Recording of Meetings
In addition to the core functionality of holding virtual meetings, Microsoft Teams allows you to record these meetings to view at a later date. This can provide a more accurate means of keeping minutes, allowing team members to verify what has been said at a later date. Similarly, if someone cannot make a meeting, these recordings can be used to catch up. They can be used internally or shared externally with clients and suppliers alike.
Channels & Group Chats
Instant messaging has become common in the workplace, but in Microsoft Teams you can create channels for specific projects or topics as well as group chats on the fly, allowing people to work collaboratively in a virtual space, in much the same way they might in person.
Again, this is of particular benefit to accounting firms that don’t have staff in the same office at the same time and can ensure that progress is made on work, without waiting for calendars to align. This form of digital communication can be the perfect way to reduce the number of meetings a company is holding and the time delay between them, giving your employees more time to focus on their roles.
Task Management
Microsoft Teams integrates natively with another Microsoft 365 application – Microsoft To Do. Microsoft To Do allows accountants to assign tasks and track the progress of them.
This can be particularly useful when working towards strict deadlines that involve multiple parties, including those external to the company such as clients. Tasks can be assigned and discussed directly within Microsoft Teams and shared in real-time at virtual meetings.
As a collaboration tool, it allows users to see the progress of others, enabling team members to help each other where assistance may be required, keeping the whole organisation on track.
Third-Party Integrations
On the topic of integrations, Microsoft Teams also integrates with many third-party applications that can speed up accounting processes. Accounting software such as Xero and QuickBooks can be integrated directly into the platform meaning accountants can work from one place. With multiple applications often being used simultaneously across accountancy firms this can help keep things organised and stop employees from feeling overwhelmed with the stresses of multitasking.
In addition to your accounting software, you can also integrate other commonly used software. Trello, for example, is used by many accountants use to manage projects as well as Adobe Sign which can be used by clients to sign paperless contracts.
Whilst these integrations won’t save hours in a single instance, the many tiny savings made across an entire organisation soon add up and allow your accountants time to focus on providing advice and value to their clients as opposed to merely handling administrative work.
Analysing Your Accounting Firm’s Data Using Power Bi
The role of accountants has changed as technology has developed with accounting firms responsible for more strategic advice and planning, than simple financial data entry. With much of the manual data input handled by technology accountants are often relied upon for data analysis, which can be vastly improved with the aid of technology.
Power BI, which can be added to many Microsoft 365 packages is a fantastic tool for analysing the data of both your clients and your own firm.
In a nutshell, Power BI is a data visualisation tool that can be used to create interactive reports and dashboards. You can integrate it with multiple data sources such as your cloud accounting platforms to create visually appealing reports ready to share with your clients.
Some of the major benefits of using Power BI are as follows.
Better Data Visualisation
Accountants often need to explain difficult, numerical concepts to their clients, which can be confusing or hard to understand for some. Power BI can help here, by taking complex and detailed data sets and presenting them in a manner that is easy to comprehend and digest.
Not only does this make it easier to pass on important pieces of information to your clients, but it makes it easier to identify trends and patterns as well. In turn, this allows you to react quickly to different situations, saving time and potentially money, and increasing customer satisfaction as well.
Most notably though, the ease at which your data can be viewed and understood has a direct impact on the two other major benefits of Power BI – the ability to make better-informed decisions and identifying areas for improvement.
Making Better Informed Decisions
As discussed previously, the role of the accountant has changed, with a greater emphasis on providing advice and strategic guidance to businesses. By processing data and visualising it in Power BI, accountancy practices are in a better position to gain valuable insights into the operational and financial performance of their clients.
This helps create an informed decision-making process, which can speed up the delivery of advice to clients. It can also provide a clearer indication of where a business should allocate time, money or resources, what products or services it should favour, as well as other business insights to improve overall performance.
Identifying Areas for Improvement
Power BI can also be used internally by accountants to make their own accountancy practices more efficient. By analysing data and creating various reports they can identify areas of their own businesses that need improvement.
For example, it can help you identify which clients are most profitable, which services are in greatest demand and any areas of your business that are not performing well. This can help increase productivity, by allowing you to focus your attention on areas with the greatest return on investment.
On an organisational scale, this can lead to data-driven strategies that underpin the overall direction of your firm, allowing you to grow and succeed in the future.
Microsoft 365 Services for Accountants From Acronyms
At Acronyms, we look after your IT, so you can concentrate on doing what you do best – looking after your clients and business!
With this in mind, we’ve helped many accounting firms get the most from their Microsoft 365 licences, as well as the IT and technology within their firm.
To find out how we can assist your accountancy practice you can book a free, no-obligation consultation with one of the team here.
Alternatively, here are a number of other resources you might find useful:
Our Microsoft 365 Services
Acronyms’ Work in the Financial Industry
Best Accountancy Case Study