Now and then, a business must upgrade its technological capabilities to keep up with the world. Think about how we moved from typewriters to computers and manual accounting on paper to accounting platforms like Xero and Quickbooks.

Today, the world is quickly adopting a comparatively smaller change and one that also costs far less to catch up with. Bookkeeping software is the new must-have for businesses in the UK. Early adopters have been enjoying improved productivity and profitability for a few years now and companies yet to jump aboard, are losing out.

Still, looking for a good reason to adopt bookkeeping software? We’ll give you 7! Here are 7 indications that it’s time to upgrade to bookkeeping software or to upgrade your existing bookkeeping software:

Long faces around heavy reporting days

Can you almost slice the bad vibes in the workplace with a knife around the data around deadlines for expenditure and reimbursement deadlines, month-endings, quarter-endings, year-endings and other accounting reconciliation moments? This is a clear sign that your people are ailing from a common corporate illness known as data entry burden.

UK Bookkeeping software can minimise the data entry burden on your team. It achieves this by its receipt scanning feature that allows it to extract data from uploaded scans, photos (yes, smartphone photos will do) and PDFs, even online versions of bills, receipts and invoices. What you get in the end is a digitised data entry. Even daily business transactions can be easily and automatically recorded by linking in your business bank account.

Sloppy, tardy invoicing

Are your invoices often late? Are they sometimes sent back because they have errors? Are they unstandardised and therefore lacking in professionalism? This is a huge indication that you need to upgrade your bookkeeping software. Late invoicing can affect your profitability, by creating cash flow issues, for instance. Error-ridden and unstandardised invoices make you appear inexperienced, small-scale or in a best-case scenario, unprofessional.

UK bookkeeping software can provide you with:

• Alerts around invoice deadlines
• A client dashboard so that they too get reminders to pay on time
• Notifications, when invoices are opened, paid
• Alerts when invoices become overdue
• Invoice templates that can be customised to your brand
• Standardised, automatically generated invoices

Feeling the pinch of tax and tax errors

UK bookkeeping software can help you sort your suppliers according to tax and add taxes correctly to your invoices.

In addition, some brands can help you navigate taxation more effectively. You might not, for instance, need to absorb – as additional costs – an additional tax. You could pass it on to your customers if you knew about it ahead of time and could change your pricing model to coincide with the new tax’s rollout.

Cash flow hiccups

Do you feel like if you fixed your supply chain spending and plugged leaks, you might be able to improve cash flow and profitability? Do you try poring over times of data, but come up with little or nothing?

UK bookkeeping software can fix this by spontaneous business insights that have high useability.

Outdated data, fairly often

Company bosses and decision-makers should always have access to the most updated version of the company’s financials and KPIs. Unfortunately, businesses traditionally have their accountants work on monthly or fortnightly, or at best – weekly, accounts updates. Moreover, one might have to ask the accountant to email the latest version quickly, amidst a meeting or before a key decision.

UK bookkeeping software gives you an accounting dashboard that lets you access a selection of KPIs relevant to your company such as inventory, or accounts payable and receivable, revenue and expenditure, and so on.

Moreover, the dashboard can be accessed from an app that you can download on your smartphone, for on the go access.

Mistakes in data

The element of human error can be dramatically reduced due to the automation in data entry that we talked about earlier. Digitised entries retain a copy of source documents for vetting and verification.

Additionally, UK bookkeeping software can merge and purge duplicate data entries and it is also able to spot errors and anomalies in your data.

Haphazard data

Is your data haphazardly saved? Is it a challenge to track down files and data? UK bookkeeping software solves this issue by sorting entries by type and date, grouping suppliers and segregating them based on tax. You can also set up a manner of filing or filing system that suits you, and thereafter, the software will follow your instructions automatically.

Additionally, bookkeeping firms might also call it time to upgrade if

• You have trouble negotiating: UK bookkeeping software’s health checker tool can tell you the exact state of a client’s books before onboarding.
• You want to judge/incentivise your team fairly: UK bookkeeping software tells you which of your people are ploughing through more.

Conclusion: Don’t ignore the signs. If you said yes to even one of the indicators on this list, spend just GBP 20 per month and solve the problem right away? Yes, that’s how little it costs! Check out https://dext.com/uk for more details.