RPA for Finance & Accounting: 10 Best Use Cases

Are you tired of tedious and repetitive accounting tasks that take up most of your time? Do you wish you could focus on core business functionalities instead? Enter RPA, or robotic process automation – tiny robots designed to perform these routine tasks so you don’t have to.

But is RPA really worth it for finance and accounting processes? We say YES, and we have 10 use cases to prove it. From automating financial audits to speeding up account receivable and payable tasks, RPA is the way to go.

So, let’s dive into the top 10 RPA use cases for accounting and finance. Discover how you can streamline your business operations and boost efficiency with this game-changing technology.

 Top 10 RPA accounting use cases:

1. Account Receivable: 

Let’s start with accounts receivable, which is a great place to begin automating your finance processes. Unlike accounts payable, it’s less reliant on external documents, making it easier to automate.

One key metric that RPA can help with is Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), which can be impacted by human error on both the payee and recipient sides. For example, an accountant may forget to send an invoice, which can lead to cash gaps and impact liquidity.

With RPA bots as your digital workforce, you can automate invoice issuance and email distribution, ensuring a consistent cash flow. Additionally, RPA can input information and manage customer data, freeing up accountants from juggling multiple systems.

Here are some other accounts receivable tasks and processes that can benefit from RPA:

  1. Setting up and managing customer data
  2. Extracting customer information from various sources
  3. Generating sales quotations and entries
  4. Generating and distributing invoices
  5. Applying cash
  6. Monitoring customer credit
  7. Resolving disputes
  8. Sending follow-ups, reminders, and dunning
  9. Managing credit risk
  10. Handling chargebacks

2. Accounts Payable and procure to pay: 

Invoices and purchase orders can cause delays and inefficiencies in the accounts payable process. But with RPA’s optical character recognition technology, software robots can quickly cross-check and approve invoices, matching them with purchase orders and flagging any mismatches.

Here are some specific examples of how RPA can help in accounts payable and procure to pay:

  1. Verifying and setting up vendors
  2. Entering purchase orders
  3. Extracting data from invoices and purchase orders
  4. Processing vendor invoices
  5. Cross-checking invoices with purchase orders
  6. Preparing and performing payments
  7. Validating and reconciling payments
  8. Auditing expense compliance
  9. Monitoring for duplicates
  10. Responding to vendor inquiries

3. Intercompany reconciliations (ICR): 

It’s a stressful task that can cause headaches and even department paralysis due to invoicing mistakes or unrecorded transactions. But there’s a solution: RPA.

By using a bot, you can streamline the entire process of extracting, checking, and cross-checking transactional data from any source. The bot will automatically approve matching records and notify you of discrepancies. Here are some tasks and operations that you can automate with RPA:

  1. Retrieving data from files
  2. Searching for statements in ERP systems
  3. Comparing balances
  4. Searching for missing invoices and emailing customers
  5. Reporting discrepancies
  6. Directing reports to the business controller
  7. Creating journal entries.

With RPA, you can eliminate the stress and time-consuming nature of intercompany reconciliations and focus on more important aspects of your business.

4. Inventory management: 

When it comes to maintaining a constant product supply, inventory control is key. But it can be a time-consuming process. That’s where RPA comes in! RPA bots can handle everything from monitoring inventory levels to optimizing storage costs.

Here’s what RPA bots can do with ease:

  1. Keep an eye on inventory levels
  2. Send notifications when inventory is running low
  3. Order products automatically when stock levels hit a threshold
  4. Place and approve stock orders
  5. Forecast the best inventory levels
  6. Update ERP and WMS systems
  7. Generate reports and follow up on orders
  8. Track shipments to ensure timely delivery

5. Travel & expenses: 

RPA bots can can extract and analyze data from receipts to ensure they qualify as a business expense, and create accurate expense reports without any effort from the employees involved.

Let’s break it down further:

  1. RPA bots can enter expense records and check them according to company policies and legislation
  2. They can aggregate all the data into expense reports for easy tracking
  3. The bots can even create paychecks and manage benefits and reimbursements
  4. If there are any policy violations or data discrepancies, the bots can alert you immediately.

So, say goodbye to tedious expense management and hello to streamlined processes with RPA technology.

6. Payroll

Let’s talk about payroll – it’s important to avoid payment delays and mistakes. Luckily, bots can help! They take care of data entry, timesheet validation, and deduction calculations. They can even extract data from paper sick lists that some countries still use.

Here are a few ways RPA can make payroll a breeze:

  1. Extracting employee data
  2. Verifying data across different systems (like sick days and business trips)
  3. Generating and approving timesheets

7. Tax

Instead of manually gathering data for tax liability and creating tax basis, let the robots do it for you. They can also prepare reports, update tax return workbooks, and even submit reports to tax authorities.

By implementing RPA for tax processes, your finance team can save time and focus on more important tasks.

8. Treasury

Let’s talk about treasury management. Despite having advanced information systems, the initial data input is usually done manually. But with RPA, you can automate the process.

RPA bots can extract and transform data into a format that treasury systems can process. And that’s not all – they can also update the treasury systems, send out reports, and even update the general ledger.

In short, RPA can make treasury management more efficient and less time-consuming, so you can focus on other important tasks.

9. Financial Reporting 

By automating tasks like generating profit and loss reports, you can save time and ensure accuracy.

But financial reporting isn’t just about P&L reports. RPA can also be used for tasks like trial balance and balance sheets, income statements, variance analysis, financial close processes, and regulatory/management reports. With RPA, you can make your business processes more transparent and efficient.

10. Financial planning and forecasting

Bots can take care of tasks like loading balances to planning systems and creating variance reports, leaving you with more time to analyze the data.

Plus, with access to historic data, modern RPA platforms can also provide forecasts and improve financial planning.

But that’s not all – RPA can also revolutionize tax preparation. Many routine tax processes are still being done manually, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. This is especially challenging for organizations with disparate systems and finance processes, which can make it difficult to gather and reconcile tax-related data. RPA can automate these processes, making tax preparation faster and more accurate.

Conclusion 

Robotic process automation has come a long way since its introduction to the financial world. It’s now an essential tool for businesses looking to improve their in-house tasks.

To make the most of your RPA investment, it’s important to regularly analyze the tools and their performance. Once you know how to use the platform and drive value, you can confidently tackle complex and tedious chores with ease.