Do you have limited access to real-time actionable data? Is your accounting team less productive than it should be? Are you overstaffed compared with industry benchmarks? Are poor methodologies leading to higher costs in your accounting department?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it's time to rethink how your accounting function operates.
The Productivity Problem in Accounting
Many accounting teams are trapped in a cycle of manual processes that consume time without adding strategic value. Month-end closes stretch for weeks, reconciliations require painstaking verification, and report generation demands hours of formatting rather than analysis.
The Real Cost of Low Productivity
Low productivity in accounting isn't just about wasted time, it has cascading effects:
Strategies to Boost Accounting Productivity
1. Automate the Repetitive
Identify tasks your team performs repeatedly, bank reconciliation, invoice entry, intercompany eliminations, and automate them. Modern cloud accounting platforms handle these with minimal human oversight.
2. Centralize Your Data
Data scattered across spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected systems is a productivity killer. A unified ERP platform gives your team one place to find everything they need.
3. Standardize Processes
Document your workflows and establish standard operating procedures. Consistency reduces errors and makes it easier to onboard new team members.
4. Implement Real-Time Dashboards
Replace monthly report packages with live dashboards that update automatically. Your team spends less time creating reports and more time analyzing them.
5. Invest in Training
Ensure your team knows how to fully leverage your financial systems. Most organizations use only a fraction of their software's capabilities.
Measuring the Impact
Track these metrics to gauge your productivity improvements:
Exafort helps organizations transform their accounting operations through technology modernization and process optimization. Our consultants bring hands-on experience with leading platforms such as Oracle NetSuite and Salesforce to help your team work smarter, not harder.
Compare yourself to published benchmarks, not to last year
Productivity claims need an external reference point. APQC publishes cross-industry benchmarking data on the cycle time to perform the monthly close and on accounts payable performance, including cost per invoice processed, first-time-error-free disbursements, and receipt-to-payment cycle time.
Pull your own figures for those measures first. Staffing conversations go differently when they start from a benchmark instead of an impression.
