Do You Have The Financial Data Analytics And Controls You Need For The Future?

As the UK economy begins to gradually pick up again, providing businesses with a more positive outlook for the months to come, there is a great opportunity for business owners to invest time into thinking about the future and how they might improve certain aspects of their business. The recent crisis has forced many business owners to think laterally and implement innovative initiatives to see them through the storm, such as click and collect, enhanced health and safety procedures/social distancing, increased use of online teleconferencing/video tools and remote working. As we hopefully start to settle into something that looks a little more like normality, there is an immediate need to think about what further strategies can be adopted to help businesses adapt to a new and fast-evolving economic landscape.

CV-19 has obviously been at the forefront of all news reporting and has taken over many aspects of our everyday lives, to the extent that some may even welcome back the monotony of media coverage on Brexit. Although some of us may have forgotten, challenges in the business landscape have existed and cropped up many times over the last few years. While these have always been managed and overcome, the current situation might seem considerably more insurmountable and daunting than previous crises. This is prompting business owners to completely re-think how they run and manage their operations, as they realise they need full transparency of financial data analytics, business performance in real-time, adequate financial controls to ensure their information is correct and maximum staff productivity to allow them to come out of the other side more resilient than ever before.

Financial Data Analytics for Business

At 4PointZero, our bread and butter is to ensure that our customers benefit from a relatively low-cost, integrated accounting solution that delivers all they could possibly need, including finance data analysis, purchase ordering, scanning, accounting, reporting, and payments, plus any bespoke dashboard that will ensure all the elements of their business work in complete harmony. Only accurate, real-time data can power informed and agile decision-making, which will be essential in maximising business performance and profits. Below are some examples of how this can be achieved:

Purchase Ordering through to Payment:

To make sure budgets are considered more strictly in purchasing, you could introduce or upgrade your purchase ordering software. Using 4PointZero, you simply upload all your suppliers and catalogues of products into a PO system with respective departmental budgets so that staff users are fully aware of how much budget they have for each period. If further budget is required, it is requested electronically and authorised by the appropriate personnel. You can also reconcile the delivery of products and services to POs and match this to the invoice. If there are differences, credit notes can be requested, tracked or items reordered. All of this is done electronically and through the cloud. Notifications are also sent via email or to your mobile phone meaning you don’t even need to log in. When the PO, delivery and invoice are reconciled the accounting transaction will be automatically posted into your accounts with all the analysis of financial data.

Reconcile Petty Cash/Credit Cards payments to Item Receipts and/or;

Till Cash vs Sales Totals:

A key area for fraud can be the reconciliation of expenses, petty cash, and credit cards to individual receipts or between a cashed up till and the daily takings, which can include petty cash withdrawals.

It can often be tricky to reconcile this area as you do not want to post receipts and expenses or cash individually, so you end up just ticking receipts off against the statements which is very time consuming. This very rarely reconciles either, as receipts go missing or numerous emails go back and forth to the point that items get forgotten. Plus, there is often very little tracking if there is a recurring issue with an individual or specific team. 4PointZero has specific reports that will prepare these reconciliations and match the amounts, so you can instantly identify differences and follow up and monitor them on a daily basis across all departments.

Monitoring Forecasting Accuracy:

When CV-19 broke out, Cash Flow Forecasting became an instant buzzword. But a forecast will only ever be as good as the accuracy of your accounting data and budgets. This applies for other types of forecast too, such as profit and loss, staffing requirements or sales. If you don’t have accurate real-time processing/data, this is going to limit the accuracy of your forecast. What’s more, businesses often fail to monitor or review the accuracy of their forecast, which is crucial for improving future forecasting and budgeting based on past errors. Our solution can help you automate your budgeting with sophisticated coding that uses real-time data and the assumptions you choose, to automatically create forecasts on a daily basis. These forecasts are ever-changing based on actual trends and give you a higher level of accuracy than if this was performed manually on an irregular basis.

If you would like to improve your financial controls and make sure all your financial data is real-time, please get in contact with us as www.4pointzero.co.uk.

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