5 Steps to Digitise Your Startup’s Financial and Business Processes

Each and every department of your business serves a unique purpose, one that defines how quickly you can succeed and how seamlessly you can scale your operations while you grow.

Those departments tend to complement one another, much like your marketing team will supply vital data to your sales experts to generate more leads, while your IT will keep your cloud and cybersecurity in check. 

All of these revolve around one segment of your operations, often considered the lifeblood of every business: your finances. It’s the key element to fuel all of your endeavors, keep your employees happy and taken care of, and provide you with the funds needed for your marketing and sales alike.

In the light of the pandemic, or simply because you’ve had to make adjustments to accommodate your team’s needs, greater automation and digital transformation are the best way to enable greater growth and internal stability. Here are a few tips to help you get started!

Automate Recurring Payments with Vendors

Startups often collaborate with numerous external partners, including vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, and digital agencies. Even if you’re just using a few digital tools that you need to subscribe for, you have regular, monthly payments your accounting team needs to plan for and worry about. 

To reduce their non-essential workload, you can automate these recurring payments with your bank and your e-banking platforms alike. Setting up such processes is fairly simple and straightforward, but it can save hours of your accounting team’s time for more vital assignments. 

Set up an Automated Accounting System

Employee-facing processes can be a burden on your existing financial system, but you can quickly upgrade your accounting with a few smart choices. For example, startups can integrate personalized employee income cards with their accounting platforms to automate salaries for each individual in the team. This is a simple way to reduce the costs of each transaction and eliminate unneeded waiting for employees to pick up their funds.

Moreover, you can add electronic signatures and digital contracts for onboarding and processing, so that your accounting team can have an easier time integrating new employees into your system. This eliminates paper use, giving you a greener accounting approach, and it reduces personal interactions, which helps in specific situations such as the current pandemic to reduce exposure to the virus. 

Use AI for Smarter Forecasting

Many entrepreneurs and future business owners need to understand the key differences between startup vs small business endeavors in order to embark on the right journey. Startups, for example, thrive on innovation and depend heavily on being able to lead the way. Yes, some level of risk is unavoidable when you run a startup, but smarter forecasts with the help of AI can make all the difference.

For example, AI-driven tools and algorithms can help your business spot gaps in your strategy and core processes, they can help you invest in the right trading opportunities, and they can help forecast marketing trends and other market-specific fluctuations. 

Predictive analysis has become the go-to tool for startups to be able to truly become pioneers in their field of work.

Move your Finances to the Cloud 

The impact of the cloud for various processes is undeniable, but with the right infrastructure at your disposal, you can safeguard your budget and all of your financial processes on the cloud, too. Why? Because strict cybersecurity protection that is built-in for many providers, paired with compliance and flexibility means you can safely store even the most sensitive data on the cloud.

This also helps with managing your accounts, ongoing banking transactions, recurring payments, investments, and monitoring your cash flow.

Remote Finance Experts are all the Rage

Startups often rely on smaller groups of financial experts for different investing purposes such as ETFs in order to invest their money.. With that in mind, and especially at a time like this, startups can benefit from hiring a remote accountant or an agency handling finances under a single roof. 

Much like virtual assistants, your financial guru can be on call during your work hours and behave just like any other employee. The main perk being that they use trusted tools of the trade, have ample experience in finances and can refine your processes more easily.

Perhaps a virtual assistant specializing in accounting can be a great addition to your team. 

Final thoughts

Digital transformation will reshape what the mainstream will be for startups in a wide range of industries. Since innovation is at the very core of your identity, this process should be as natural as possible, and it can help you introduce more cost-effective solutions, automate tasks to relieve your employees, and of course, focus on the most vital projects at hand. 

Digitalization will fuel your growth over time, so make sure you’re on the right track with digitizing all of your essential business processes and finances alike.