Finance and accounting professionals play a vital role in driving business growth and strategy, but most businesses underutilize this important resource because their finance teams are bogged down in inefficient finance processes.

What is Finance Process Improvement?

Finance process improvement involves making changes to your finance workflows to increase efficiency. Process improvements can be as simple as creating more formalized guidelines for employees to follow when completing tasks such as submitting expense claims. On the other hand, using technology to automate your finance processes can have a significant impact on consistency, speed and accuracy, making it easier to meet your business goals.

Finance Process Improvement Tips

Audit Your Existing Processes:In order to improve your finance processes, you first need to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the system(s) you currently have in place. Focus on identifying areas that can be made more efficient and cost-effective, and decide which issues you will tackle first. You’ll want to prioritize the areas that will deliver the most significant gains for your business first and roll out additional improvements over time.

Get Your Team Involved:It’s vital to get your team’s buy-in before making any major changes to your finance processes. Build support for the changes you wish to implement across your business, showing senior management and finance staff alike how the improvements will benefit them and make their jobs easier.

Train and Develop Your Team:One way to improve your finance processes is to offer your team members some cross-functional training. This way, you can always have personnel on hand who are knowledgeable in at least the basic workings of your accounting software and finance workflows. Perhaps more importantly, teaching staff the correct processes and how they will benefit and free up time will make them more likely to comply.

Set Clear Deadlines:Establishing mandatory deadlines can do wonders in terms of encouraging employees to turn financial documentation over in a timely manner. Team members are far more likely to submit expense claims and invoices on time if they know that payments will be delayed if they don’t submit them by the cutoff date. Setting up automated messaging reminding individuals to submit their documents can help enforce this, and dynamic forms with rules can help to ensure that they complete all the fields and submit all the supporting documentation required.