Address Your Business’ Financial Concerns with Business Management Software

When using Protasker business management software , it is recommended that you use an external accounting or financial software to record transactions associated with each project, especially once you feel the pressures of a growing business. Your computerized accounting process can easily generate the basic balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement, yet, for all intents and purposes, you can’t seem to make use of these reports for more complex decision-making purposes. In fact, you have no idea of its other uses aside from knowing the worth of your assets, and how much you owe from external sources, as well as knowing how much you have earned as net profits at the end of the year.

You have certain questions about your financial conditions that need answers before finalizing your business decisions. Actually, what you need is financial and business management software that will furnish information about the drivers that shape your business. By this, it means knowing the factors that can cause your operating expenses to increase invariably from month to month and why your income shows little improvement from when you first started with your business operations. In fact, this software can help you identify such drivers and apply the controls that will streamline your business operations, making it more profitable and, at the same time, cost efficient.

Streamlined Accounting Processes

The paper-based process will be eliminated in order to lessen the risks associated with manual processing. Such risks include errors involving double and overpayments, manipulation of records to defraud suppliers, and/or customers and unauthorized transactions. Doing away with the use of paper documentation eliminates the costs of paper usage, and the manpower used to process, review, file, fax, mail and locate documents in a paper-based environment.

In streamlining the accounting process, the business management software has a central receiving or issuing point in which to capture the information contained in a transaction document. The software’s first objective is to strengthen the internal controls by embedding your firm’s policies and procedures. This should likewise observe best practices in controlling business expenditures and in optimizing the use of business resources.

The system pre-reviews the transaction documents, and will not continue with the processing unless the standard operating procedures and requirements are met. This reduces the review cycle required before a transaction is approved for issuance of payment. Segregation of duties is likewise observed as part of the control features, to ensure that documents will not be processed by a single employee; from the point of capturing the issuance or receipt of an invoice, through payment or collection of amounts due.

Aside from the general ledger and subsidiary ledgers, a special ledger that carries the same information, is maintained specifically for purposes of combining data imported from different software in any location. The special ledger integrates real-time metrics and interactive calendars to monitor the day to day deadlines or alert notices that must be observed for each account. The combined data in the special ledger is accessible to different users based on their roles and functions and as allowed by the collaborative features.

This way, the authorized users can have a clear visualization of what the business has actually acquired, accumulated, incurred, and realized within a particular accounting cycle. The special ledger functions separately from the official general ledger. The latter contains transactions that were recorded in accordance with standard accounting principles, for purposes of generating financial statements that are compliant with international financial reporting standards.

The special ledger presents data from all sources, recorded by way of modified cash and accrual basis. These are analyzed in terms of actual cost, rate of returns and gauged against key performance indicators (KPI). This allows the system to identify the cost intensive sectors and processes of the business and whether or not the projects undertaken stayed within their budget allocation. There is also the matter of determining which of the completed projects are actually bringing in the expected rates of return, as well as the product or services that have the most and least positive results, in terms of cost to benefit ratios.

Other accounting capabilities include the calculation of average daily balance for different accounts that make use of this data. Hence, the business management software‘s artificial intelligence has the ability to automatically calculate and generate up-to-date interest charges due on payables, as well as interest income on receivables and on bank deposit accounts. Such information provides insights about the cost of borrowing money and how it compares to the income earned by money that is invested.

Moreover, transactional data pertaining to cash collections and payments are exported to a data repository as a way of managing the business’ cash balance. Viewers and users of the special ledger can go over a consolidated view of the real time financial position of the business. An automated system of reconciling the recorded transactions is in place as it matches the latter to the related documents that are summarized and grouped into batches; hence, avoiding the time wasted in the process of locating discrepancies or exceptions that arise during the process of recording.

Plan, Forecast and Budget

The business management software provides support to authorized financial planners in carrying out the steps taken in the course of planning, forecasting, and budgeting the projected cash inflows and outflows of a particular project, and of the entity as a whole. Although it uses up-to-date financial information, the software allows implementation of adjustments, lest certain real time developments reveal changes that can significantly affect the estimated sales forecast.

Budgeting is prepared based on a bottom-up approach, in which employees are involved in the financial goal-setting purposes. The objective here is to motivate them into actual participation and involvement in the planning and forecasting of revenues and setting-up of the budgeted costs. Doing so gives the employees full awareness of their responsibilities, when performing actions that will allow or hinder the business in meeting its financial goals.

Tracking, Monitoring and Review

Financial management software has the capability to track and monitor users who have access to the information furnished by the system and by the other applications currently in use. The process involves a review of the users’ roles, their current employment status, their functionalities, and individual authorization to gain access to information. This process enables the system to automatically discern whether the user should be granted with access, or be barred from gaining access to the information stored in the system. The built-in review process also ensures that only the authorized users will receive timely and applicable alert notifications, reminders to take action and updates about the actions taken.

The financial management software’s monitoring and review process leaves an audit trail of users who accessed the entity’s financial information. Summaries of sign-in and sign-off histories are presented to the entity’s control officer. The said officer, will in turn, make an assessment if there are indicators about potential problems pertaining to compliance or security breaches. He will also validate if the automated review process is making the right decisions when accepting or rejecting requests to gain access.

The overall capabilities of financial management software present the exact solution to business owners and managers who are less analytically savvy. Although the reports generated by the system contain mostly statistical figures, these are presented in such a way that allows readers to understand the impact and implications of the statistical information. Actually, it takes on the role of a managerial accountant, who performs accounting work beyond that of the traditional accounting officer. Henceforth, business owners and managers are immediately apprised of the factors that influence the results of their business operations, which serve as a guide or basis when making critical decisions.