Automating Accounting & Bookkeeping in Construction
Automating accounting & bookkeeping can be an absolute game changer for your construction business. Having access to up-to-date, accurate information at your fingertips allows you to make real time decisions that keep your business running smoothly. Instead of your bookkeeper or accountant spending time (billable hours) doing journal entries, and reconciliations, or other tedious low level tasks, they can spend their time in more impactful ways.
Time Saving
Automation frees up time from mundane tasks like reconciliation or other manual data entry tasks. If you’re paying someone by the hour, this is a game changer. AI powered software is only getting started. It can already do things like:
- Generate invoices
- Account reconciliation
- Process payments
Real Time Insights
Software that generates reports is nothing new. However, software that can generate real time reports down to the penny or latest transaction is pretty impressive. Having insights and variance alerts allows you to tweak your business and find profit slippage immediately. Use the insights to identify variances using your own historical data. Some examples include:
- Labor costs: Example: If labor is up 30% from your estimated hours it should have taken to complete a project
- Material costs
- Overhead
- Tax burdens
Integrate With Project Management
Manually tracking, balancing and updating jobs between 4 or 5 different software platforms can be a nightmare or even impossible. Incorporating your accounting / bookkeeping software into project management can make life a lot easier. If you build an estimate with your accounting software, you can accurately track all of your job costs at a project level. This can help you eliminate redundant software and centralize all of your data.
Compliance Assurance
Keep all of your compliance records in one place that’s accessible to everyone on your team. Things like:
- Certificate of Insurance
- Workers Compensation
- Permits
- Licenses
Create checklists that ensure you have every record on file and also alert you if anything is going to expire.
Profit & Loss Statements On a Per Project Basis
One of the most important uses of automating your bookkeeping and accounting software is having a profit & loss statement on a per project basis. If a bookkeeper isn’t reconciling every transaction instantaneously, then your profit & loss statement isn’t very accurate. Every day you can access a fresh and accurate report!
Saving Time With Automation
Using software to automate your business is a no brainer. Relying on manual human interactions to update tasks increases risk to errors, and time constraints. Using automation software can help you gain instant insights and reporting to maintain health and grow your business!
References
Pymnts. "Automation Does the Work Accountants No Longer Want to Do." Pymnts, 17 Nov. 2022, https://www.pymnts.com/back-office/2022/automation-does-the-work-accountants-no-longer-want-to/.
Ramp. "Accounting Automation Software." Ramp, 2023, https://ramp.com/accounting-automation-software.
Dataconomy. "Artificial Intelligence in Accounting." Dataconomy, 9 May 2023, https://dataconomy.com/2023/05/09/artificial-intelligence-in-accounting/.
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