Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is transforming the field of accounting and finance by automating repetitive and rule-based tasks, allowing professionals to focus on more strategic work. RPA is being used for innovative use cases such as automating invoice processing, streamlining payroll, and financial reporting. This technology is revolutionizing the way accounting and finance teams operate, leading to greater efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings. In this blog, we will explore 20 innovative use cases of RPA in accounting and finance and how it is reshaping the future of the industry.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an increasingly popular technology that is changing the business world. While RPA has been utilized in industrial manufacturing for years to automate the assembly of everything from cars to plastic components, it is now making its way into the back office. With software robots that can follow specific rules and sequences, RPA can automate processes that once required human workers to perform repetitive and tedious tasks. This innovative technology is transforming the way businesses operate, freeing up time for employees to focus on more strategic work while increasing efficiency and accuracy.
RPA can be helpful in a lot of different parts of a business. Two of the most creative ways to use these tools today are in financial processes and accounting practices, which are at the heart of any business. What is RPA in accounting and finance? Depending on the use case, RPA can mean different things, like automatically auditing financial statements or making it faster for accounts receivable and payable to finish jobs.
In this piece, we’ll talk about why RPA for accounting has become so popular in recent years and how your company can make sure it’s getting the most out of its investment. We’ll talk about the following:
- How RPA changes accounting and auditing
- Avoid Financial Process Automation Gaps
How RPA Changes Accounting And Auditing
Despite the widespread use of automation in various office workflows, many financial tasks have remained manual due to a lack of suitable solutions or organizational reluctance to entrust important tasks to robots. However, it is important to note that humans still have control over robotic accounting, and the right rule configurations ensure that there is always someone to double-check any potential exceptions.
Fortunately, with the emergence of new tools and a growing recognition of the value of automation, new use cases for RPA in finance and accounting have emerged in recent years. These use cases can lead to cost savings, improved employee morale, and increased productivity. In this post, we will explore some of the most common use cases for RPA in finance and accounting, highlighting the advantages that make RPA a worthwhile investment. By automating tasks such as invoice processing, reconciliations, and financial reporting, organizations can achieve greater efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings, while freeing up time for employees to focus on more strategic and value-added work.
How RPA is used in the finance
Managing a business’s finances often needs a variety of software systems, since one package can’t do everything. Because systems are often kept separate, there is often a lot of boring, repeated work. This is the kind of work that RPA is perfect for automating. What are some ways that companies have used RPA in this area in the past few years?
1. Processing Purchase Orders:
It can take a lot of time for staff to process purchase orders and send them to the right people for approval so that the business can buy important goods and services. You could set up a software robot with smart (or “cognitive”) data capture tools to scan purchase orders (POs) for important information, enter it into the right system, and set up a permission request.
2. Invoice Processing:
Like purchase orders, invoices are always a problem for the back-office staff, especially since they can come in a wide variety of formats. This process is easy for a robot to do, just like handling POs is easy for a robot to do.
When data is too different from what is expected or when the robot gives itself a low trust rating, it can mark an invoice for a human to look at. Outside of these situations, you can cut the number of “touches” each statement needs by a huge amount.
3. Basic Accounts Reconciliation:
A clerk’s day can be wasted if they have to log in and out of different systems to compare the amounts of important business accounts. For future reports to work, you need to be accurate. RPA robots can easily handle many of the basic parts of these jobs. Only when data doesn’t match up as expected do they need human help.
4. Improved Financial Reporting:
It’s important to give the people who make decisions in the company accurate information, which needs accurate and detailed reporting. When robots do more of the boring finance work in the office, people can spend more time getting the important data insights they need to make good decisions.
RPA can help with these tasks, but some companies may find that it isn’t a good fit for the way they do things because it is complicated or has many steps. Accounts payable jobs can be done better with the help of tools that automate the whole process. If you look at all of these ways to modernize finance departments, you can find the best one for your business.
How RPA can be used in auditing
RPA is one of the most important parts of doing accurate internal checks. Auditing should experience automation at a slower pace so you can assess its effectiveness and change as needed, but its effect can be impressive. With the right tools, you can streamline many of the most time-consuming jobs in auditing while improving data visibility and process outcomes. Let’s look at some of the ways RPA affects this area right now.
Revenue Audits: To keep your business on track every day, you need to make sure you have a clear picture of your cash flow and that your numbers are correct. Many of the comparison jobs that are part of general revenue audits can be done by robots. This saves you a lot of time and effort while keeping you in charge of making detailed reports.
Advanced Reconciliations: Reconciliation jobs can take a lot of time if there are questions about a chain of transactions or if you just need to do a periodic ledger reconciliation for compliance reasons. All the repetitive jobs you have to do for each entry can be taken care of by robots. This makes audits more productive.
Exception Flagging: If staff members don’t notice problems until it’s too late, the business could lose money or get into trouble. RPA is highly based on rules, which makes it a great tool for finding when certain business parameters are broken. The robot can then send the problem to the right person or group to be fixed.
Risk Assessment: Robots can also help with ongoing rules-based risk assessment, which is an important way for companies to make audit experts’ jobs easier. When possible risk violations happen because of certain transactions or changes in the company’s financial status, the system can send out a warning.
The Advantages of Using RPA
Businesses find RPA technology exciting because it can automate tasks in accounting, finance, and auditing for faster work. While there are risks involved in automating, such as process errors and reduced employee morale, many tasks can be taken out of human hands, either partially or completely, resulting in increased efficiency and accuracy.When you properly deploy it and thoughtfully construct it, however, RPA has the opposite effect, providing advantages such as:
- Having the chance to “work smarter, not harder.” Every employee has complained about things like having to copy and paste formulas and results from one program to another. RPA makes workers more productive and happy at work.
- It’s important to be accurate because mistakes can cause delays and cost money. When set up correctly, RPA makes sure that each step of a process is done correctly. Getting rid of mistakes made by people saves money for the business and keeps important processes going quickly.
- By putting RPA into place now, the business has a foundation for growing its automation reach in the future as technologies improve. As new ways to automate come up, an investment you make today could pay off in ways you didn’t expect.
Avoid Financial Process Automation Gaps
“Mind the gap.” Originally a warning by London subway station attendants, this famous phrase is now a mantra for automation implementation.
Even if a company has successfully implemented technology, there may still be things that need to be fixed. Filling these gaps can help your teams see more interesting improvements.
Automating procure-to-pay, record-to-report, and order-to-cash procedures is the most typical business digital procedure makeover. Most of these processes are automatable. Human error and cumbersome manual processes can still cause 50% to 90% improvements.
When computer systems must collaborate, automation gaps occur. Retyping data between applications is a popular example. Ledgers and spreadsheets are further examples. RPA can close these gaps.
Let’s examine some of the most typical instances where accounting and finance can benefit from greater RPA.
Automation Gaps in Procure to Pay
Supplier onboarding: Onboarding new suppliers is crucial to procuring important commodities, yet clerks still do it manually. You might easily configure a robot to check suppliers, including tax data, credit records, and more.
Portal queries: Many companies utilize digital portals for supplier management in a software silo. Why make employees manually copy and paste data into your main software? RPA can link portals and define workflows.
Price comparisons: Your company may only buy things at the best pricing. Use a robot to track pricing changes and flag the top vendors at pre-set intervals.
Market intelligence: Suppliers don’t always meet your criteria long-term. Manually analyzing these credentials is time-consuming and easily delayed. Use a robot and get regular reports.
Contract terms: Do you validate vendor contract details on every invoice? Automate this onerous compliance requirement.
Quote-to-Cash Automation price discrepancies:
To satisfy customers, you need precise quotes. Instead of worrying about this time-sensitive operation, use a robot to acquire data.
Order exception processing: Robots can automatically check price holds on orders.
Delivery reconciliations: Checking orders against shipments prevents duplication. Software robots can check POs against shipment receipts and highlight exceptions.
Master data maintenance and customer onboarding: As with procure-to-pay providers, use robots to screen and onboard new clients.
Records-to-Report Automation Gaps
financial assistance: Closing subledgers, preparing financial reports, and submitting regulatory filings can require lengthy data transfer between Excel and computer systems. RPA can simplify it. Watch software robots copy, paste, and validate Excel data.
Data extraction for accounting close: Each business department or division keeps its own log of transactions. It can be hard to match up these notebooks, let alone combine them. To handle this job, set up a robot to work within your ERP.
Data management: How can you correctly put together all the financial and performance data that your business makes? It can be a Herculean task to keep up with all of this information. Robots make the work of your staff easier and give the C-suite the information they need to make decisions.
To fill these gaps properly, you need to do more than just recognize that they exist: Invest in advanced software tools that can give you the structure you need to fill automation gaps. With Kofax RPATM, any business can get help to use automation in a smarter and faster way.
When you combine it with other process changes, like trying to automate accounts payable, Kofax RPA is your straight link to a lower error rate, more work per employee, and improvements that can be measured. This RPA platform gives you everything you need to close the gap, including options that require little or no coding.
Conclusion:
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a valuable tool for businesses looking to save time and money. However, it’s important to continuously analyze and improve results rather than “set it and forget it.” Advanced tools like Kofax RPA can help identify gaps in automation. But RPA is just one piece of a larger puzzle. Intelligent automation (IA) offers a unified approach that combines RPA with AI, machine learning, OCR, and more, leading to true digital transformation. Kofax is a leader in this space and offers an intelligent automation platform to support businesses’ transformative efforts.
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