Four Signs It’s Time for a New Accounting System

Get Rid of Those Excel Spreadsheets!
There comes a time for every business, as it expands in both size and scope, when a bunch of Excel spreadsheets or a basic accounting system are no longer enough to meet its day-to-day financial management needs. But, how does a company know when it’s really ready to upgrade to a more robust and sophisticated solution?

Recognizing the signs that it’s time for your organization to consider purchasing a new accounting system can be tricky. Below are the four main indicators that you may have outgrown your current accounting system.

The Emergence of Information Silos
As companies expand, accounting and financial information tends to proliferate quite rapidly. Over time, it will often end up in various disparate locations throughout different departments across the business. For example, sales reps will keep their forecasts in spreadsheets on their individual desktops, and human resources staff will maintain their own payroll applications, while inventory information will be kept in yet another separate system.

This lack of data integration and centralization – one of the clearest signs that you need to find a replacement for your current accounting system – can significantly hinder your ability to collect, compile, and analyze critical financial information in a timely manner.  As a result, it can prevent you from truly optimizing enterprise-wide operations, cause you to miss out on potential business opportunities, and put you at significant risk of regulatory non-compliance.

An Increase in Manual Activities
Have your financial professionals and other employees begun resorting to manual activities in order to effectively perform their jobs?  If so, then you’ll need to begin evaluating new accounting systems as soon as possible.

As financial transactions, and the tasks and workflows associated with them, become more complex, simple accounting systems may be too limited to properly handle them.  So, employees often find it increasingly difficult to avoid data entry and other types of “by-hand” administrative work. Without a more powerful accounting system in place, this type of manual labor will not only waste money and valuable staff time, it will negatively impact the accuracy and integrity of vital financial information.

Growing Dependence on Technical Staff
When your existing accounting system is no longer satisfying your company’s changing requirements, you may begin leaning heavily on your IT teams to fix integration, reporting and analysis, and other issues.

While addressing these problems is certainly very important, it can put a tremendous strain on already over-worked resources, and bring other critical corporate technology initiatives to a screeching halt. If your IT staff is spending a significant amount of effort addressing accounting-related technology issues, then its time to make the switch to a more full-featured accounting system.

System Performance Problems
Smaller-scale accounting systems provide support for only limited user capacity, and are primarily designed to meet the needs of just a handful of staff members residing in the same office. As more and more users are added to the application, or as remote workers, such as those in branch offices, begin trying to access it, you may notice significant slow downs and performance issues.

Article was sourced from IRIS Exchequer Accounting Software. For more information, visit www.irissql.com