The accountants we see in popular culture — from lovable dorks to clever criminals — almost always share the same stereotypical relationship with their work. According to tv and film, accountants are chronically stressed, overworked, and seldom enjoy their jobs.
It’s a common thread through the narratives of on-screen accountants, but it’s not actually related to the profession itself. Rather, it’s about the dependency on tedious, manual processes.
- Human error.
- Poor visibility.
- Mundane and time-consuming low-level tasks.
It’s no wonder the accountants we’ve grown to adore from the comfort of our couch are so miserable, but while that makes for entertaining storylines, it doesn’t have to be the case in the actual lives of accountants.
In this guide, we’ll explore three common accounting pain points and how to alleviate them. We’ll demonstrate both how some of our favorite movies and TV shows depict these challenges, while also sharing the success stories of real-world Quadient Accounts Payable Automation by Beanworks customers.
It’s time to stop over relying on manual processes and, instead, embrace what technology can do for your accounts payable team. Let’s discuss.
Problem 1: Accounting Errors
The number one cause of financial mistakes is human error, representing 41% of all accounting inaccuracies. On top of that, 55% of leaders are not completely confident they can identify financial errors before reporting results.
Accounting errors are critical mistakes. Business owners and leaders can’t make good decisions for their businesses without good (and accurate) data.
When data is entered incorrectly, it can create a slew of issues for the business: Executives lose trust in the numbers, accounting must take on additional work to resolve the issue, and time is taken away from higher value tasks.
Let’s take a look at how this all-too-common accounting pain point played out in a beloved TV sitcom.
Pop culture predicament: ‘The Office’
The Scene: $3,000 is missing from the company books and Oscar, Angela and Kevin — Dunder Mifflin’s accounting team — are convinced the culprit is in their midst. They spend the episode hounding their office mates only to discover that the perpetrator is a member of their own team.
Angela — who is known to be meticulous not just in her accounting practices, but every aspect of her life — logged an equipment depreciation twice.
The Problem: Even an accountant with a severe perfectionist streak makes mistakes from time to time when relying on manual processes. Angela’s ledger is handwritten and, because of her high-strung personality, she doesn’t allow fellow accounts payable team members to review her work, making audits impossible.
The Solution: Automation reduces manual steps in the AP workflow, therefore reducing opportunities for human error. Additionally, Quadient AP’s technology tracks changes, comments, duplicates, and approval, which increases visibility and allows for full audit reporting. Had Dunder Mifflin enlisted the help of Quadient AP’s software, Angela, Oscar and Kevin would’ve been alerted to Angela’s duplicate entry the moment it hit the system.
Real-world success story: The Minikahda Club
When The Minikahda Club, a Minneapolis country club, adopted Quadient AP’s software solutions after decades of manual AP processes they were shocked by the financial implications of their old ways.
Prior to the change, documents lived inside physical filing cabinets and 15 different approvers shuffled paper-based invoices from one office to the next. Duplicate invoices and payments were an inevitable reality and an ongoing disconnect between the AP team and approvers caused unnecessary tension.
But once The Minikahda Club’s books moved over to Quadient AP’s system, replacing filing cabinets with club storage, many of their inefficiencies disappeared. Approvers could now review documents online and in real-time, making the AP process occur much more quickly and with less opportunity for invoices to get lost. Additionally, Quadient AP’s system flagged bookkeeping errors, identifying $10,000 in overpayments.
By moving to automated solutions, The Minikahda Club not only reduced accounting errors, but also increased efficiency for managers, while improving ledger visibility for its AP team.
Problem 2: Overworked Staff
These days, when it comes to attracting and retaining talent, culture is king. 35% of workers say they would pass on a job if the culture isn’t a good fit. And while we often equate office perks like flex time and social opportunities with the culture of a work environment, the tools, systems and processes that employees rely on every day also contribute to the cultural experience of a job.
When accountants and bookkeepers have the proper tools to make their jobs easier and more fulfilling they’re happier in their work. Sixty percent of larger accountancy firms share that technology is helping them retain staff. Additionally, 56% of accountants find technology increases their productivity, freeing them up to focus on more strategic work.
But with organizations that still rely on manual processes, the daily experience of an accounts payable team can be mind numbingly mundane. How mundane? To get a sense, let’s explore the 2006 dramedy, “Stranger than Fiction.”
Pop culture predicament: ‘Stranger than Fiction’
The Scene: Harold Crick, a lonely IRS agent, lives a life of monotony. Long ago, he accepted his fate: to live his droll, daily routine on repeat until he dies. Harold’s daily existence is filled not just with rote data entry, but an overwhelming amount of data entry.
He lives his life in a zombie-like existence, shortening his lunch breaks in order to get back to his desk and working overtime. His processes are manual and therefore slow.
The Problem: Many accountants relate to the monotony and burnout evident in Harold’s daily existence. For AP teams that still rely on paper and manual processes, data entry remains a large part of their daily job descriptions. Not only does this mean AP teams work long hours, but often these long hours are made up of unfulfilling work.
Instead of focusing on tasks that require critical thinking and contribute to transformational and meaningful change within a company, accountants are buried in their ledgers, focused on menial tasks that aren’t fulfilling. This leads to burnout and also turnover within companies, but also within the accounting industry as a whole.
The Solution: Accounting automation technology increases staff engagement and raises morale. Solutions such as Quadient AP’s auto capture feature reduces data entry, so accountants spend less time entering numbers into the ledger and more time analyzing metrics to inform business decisions. Additionally, features like smartcode retains department and general ledger account information, making it easier to sift through data and pull out the metrics that matter.
These, along with a plethora of other features, not only alleviate AP teams from the dreaded overtime by making their jobs more efficient, but also frees accountants to spend less time on low-level tasks and more time on higher-value tasks such as vendor negotiations and forecasting.
As a result, accountants are solving their burnout issues from multiple angles: eliminating hours of data entry so they can focus on meaningful work.
Real-world success story: Elemental Energy
Elemental Energy, a Portland-based renewable energy company, was drowning in paperwork when they first adopted Quadient AP’s accounts payable software.
The company operated on a slow and time consuming paper-based process. Many payment threshold approvals had to pass through the CEO for approval, which made moving quickly challenging. Their processes consistently took five or more days to complete and accountants were often bogged down by arduous follow-up emails, especially if and when managers requested backup records.
But Quadient AP’s automations proved to be a game changer. With features such as automated approval routing; the ability to approve documents via Quadient AP’s mobile app; and sharing capabilities that provide instant access to all documents across multiple entities, Elemental Energy managed to cut their five day processing times down to one to two days.
Not only did this make the organization as a whole more efficient, but also the automations gave some breathing room to its accounting team and allowed them to refocus on high-value tasks.
Problem 3: Delayed Vendor Payments
Cash flow can make or break a business, especially a small business. When suppliers are left waiting to receive payment for their goods or materials it can put a lot of strain on working relationships.
In the U.K. alone, small businesses are owed more than £23 billion in outstanding payments, setting off a chain reaction where companies can’t pay off their debts. And while some businesses who fold as a result of poor cash flow do so because of poor business decisions, other organizations are victims of delayed payments as the result of outdated systems or processes.
Not all vendors are paid late because a business doesn’t have the cash on hand to make good on their agreement. Some vendors are paid late because a physical invoice sits on a desk amidst a stack of papers waiting to be logged into the ledger. Others are paid late because a tedious approval process takes days to complete. But with today’s accounting technology, there is no excuse for lagging vendor payments.
While delayed payments don’t typically result in life or death situations, we can certainly still learn a thing or two about the importance of paying vendors on time from the beloved “Ozark” anti-hero, Marty Byrde.
Pop culture predicament: ‘Ozark’
The Scene: It doesn’t take long for the drama to pick up in Netflix’s hit drama, “Ozark.” In the very first episode we see Marty begging for his life as Del, a member of the Navarro Cartel, furiously demands his missing $5 million.
The Problem: Marty’s business partner has been skimming money from their nefarious client, resulting in a delayed payment. To say there’s strain on the working relationship between the accounting firm and client is an understatement.
Unlike our other scenarios, this one isn’t quite as commonly found in the real world (phew) — however, the strain that can come with late payments is certainly real. And while most strain between relationships isn’t the result of skimming fraud, late payments can cause serious tension between the business and client. This can lead to vendors canceling services, late fees or circumstances where a business rushes into overpayments.
The Solution: Accounts Payable automation offers visibility, creating a system of checks and balances to reduce errors and fraud. (Marty certainly would’ve caught his business partner’s shady behaviors had he been able to view every client invoice.)
In addition, payments can be scheduled with an auto-release feature so businesses never need to worry about paying a vendor late for recurring services or orders.
Real-world success story: Magnum York Properties
Magnum York Properties, a Canadian property management company, noticed a significant improvement in processing invoices quickly and efficiently after moving to Quadient AP’s accounts payable system.
Prior to adopting the system, Magnum York frequently lost invoices, resulting in delayed payments as much as 40-50 days. This put strain on relationships with their vendors and exposed the company to risk of accounts payable fraud. But by adopting new technology, the organization turned around their financial reputation — not only processing invoices in just a week, but also submitting owed money with vendors’ preferred method of payment.
The automations improved visibility and made their financials more accessible, allowing increased accountability, reduced risk of fraud and improved vendor relationships.
Banishing Pain Points With AP Automation
While both real and fictitious accountants experience many shared challenges in the accounts payable world, many are avoidable with the right tools.
Quadient AP’s AP solutions streamline processes, allowing businesses to focus less on avoidable accounting errors and more on what matters most.
Benefits of automating accounts payable include:
- Auto capture — Reduce time spent entering invoices while also lowering the risk of errors. Quadient AP automatically reads invoices and captures important information, entering it into your general ledger account.
- Custom approval channels — Set up rules so that invoices are automatically sent through the correct approval channels. This allows you to spend less time tracking who needs to sign off on a payment, while also cutting back on needing to send so many emails and reminders to your company’s approvers.
- Custom filters and global search — Find invoices instantly. Quadient AP’s digital filing cabinet is easy to filter, search and organize for instant access to your business’s financials.
- Auto-generated reporting — See all of your invoices in one place with detailed and hyperlinked auto reports.
- Mobile app — Review and approve on the go. Approvers no longer need to sift through physical invoices to move a payment through the AP process. Those who need to approve payments now have the most pertinent details from an invoice at their fingertips and can approve or reject a payment request with the quick click of a button.
