Which Business Processes Should You Be Automating?

There are a lot of business processes that can be tedious and time-consuming when carried out manually. Finding ways to automate these processes can allow you to spend more time on the fun aspects of your job. Just which tasks should your business be automating? This post lists a few examples of processes that can benefit most from automation.

Subscribe to Accounting Accidentally on Substack. Get links to new content on accounting, personal finance, and humor/ short story topics.

 

Bookkeeping

Maintaining accurate financial records is a legal requirement for all businesses. It ensures that you are declaring the right amount of tax and proves that you are not doing anything dodgy. Manually recording every transaction can be very dull – and for some companies that  deal with many transactions per day it can be borderline impossible. By using accounting software you can automatically record each transaction, calculate expenses and calculate how much tax you owe. It’s recommended that every company uses such software. Take the time to compare accounting programs online and find the best suited one for your company.

Inventory tracking

Keeping track of inventory is important for guaranteeing inventory accuracy. Fail to keep track of stock, and items could go missing or get forgotten about without you realising. While some companies do this manually, it can increase the chance of error. Automating tasks like data entry and order fulfilment can help you to keep accurate records of what you’ve got and what needs to be processed. Shipping companies, warehouses and retailers can all benefit from automating this task. You can compare various industry-specific inventory software programs online.

Invoicing/billing

It can also be beneficial to automate invoicing and billing – especially if you have lots of clients to keep track of. Regular bills can be automatically sent to clients so that you don’t forget to send invoices. You can also use software to automatically keep track of what you owe – including payments that are nearing their deadline and late payments. On top of this, it may be possible to automate the process of chasing up payments. This all ensures that you’re getting the money you’re owed.

Time tracking

A lot of companies hire teams of employees that all work different hours. Accurately keeping track of every employee’s hours is key to making sure that each employee is paid correctly. Traditionally, a lot of companies would use a manual timecard system. Nowadays, most companies use automatic time clocks. Employees still need to manually clock in and out (usually using a machine on a wall or an app), however the data of each employee’s hours is automatically stored digitally, rather than having to manually sift through time cards. There are many time tracking software options that you can compare online.

Paying employees

On top of automatically recording employees’ hours, you can also automatically send payslips to each of your employees and pay them the amount they are owed. This can save many employers a lot of time – especially those with large teams of employees. There are payroll software solutions that can be integrated with time tracking software and accounting software. Take the time to compare different payroll applications.

Confirmation emails

There are many types of email that your company can automate. One prime example is confirmation emails. When a customer buys your product online or signs up to your service, a confirmation email can verify that their payment has gone through. Confirmation emails can also be automatically sent when booking appointments, shipping an order, cancelling an order or cancelling a subscription.

Reminder messages

Another type of email that is worth automating is reminder emails. These can be used to remind a client of an upcoming appointment, payment deadline or upcoming policy change. Such reminders may also be possible to send to clients via text message. It’s worth noting that it is not just your clients that you can send automated reminder messages too – you could also consider setting up automatic reminder messages to employees, as well as potentially messages to yourself.

Content scheduling

While AI programs have made it possible to automate various forms of content, there are still issues when it comes to fully automated images and blog posts. However, that doesn’t mean that automation has no place at all in content creation. When it comes to scheduling certain content, automation can be very useful. You can create content in advance and schedule it to post at the right time when most people are going to engage with it. It may even be possible to post certain content based on certain triggers (such as sending birthday messages to email subscribers on their birthday).

Ken Boyd

Author: Cost Accounting for Dummies, Accounting All-In-One for Dummies, The CPA Exam for Dummies and 1,001 Accounting Questions for Dummies

(amazon author page) amazon.com/author/kenboyd

(personal finance book/ self-published) 34 Stories That Explain Personal Finance