Why Using a Dashboard is an Accounting Game-Changer
Imagine a business as a train, chugging along to new horizons and greater things. For a successful and uninterrupted journey, trains need certain parts and routine maintenance to run smoothly. Businesses operate similarly, requiring a toolbox of strategic sales pitches, marketing efforts, and accurate financial analyses to continue on the right track.
With each department of a business comes its own set of moving parts, which—if not managed or organized well—can create complications. For finance specifically, things can become messy without the appropriate technology to view, track, and report on KPIs.
When it comes to establishing an effective financial process, basic bookkeeping and balance sheets aren’t enough. That’s why dashboards are quickly becoming one of the most powerful and streamlined approaches to strong accounting.
What is a Dashboard?
Think of a dashboard as an accounting hub: all essential information pertaining to business can be found here. Dashboards act as an effortless way to save several hours of time on financial reporting, and offer valuable insights into business performance.
Good dashboards will offer core financial functionality, such as cash and order management and accounts payable and receivable. The best dashboards will typically also offer more advanced features, such as fully-automated allocation and AI-powered timesheets.
Ultimately, a dashboard allows entrepreneurs, executives, and financial teams the ability to track KPIs and access important details in seconds.
How Can a Dashboard Strengthen Accounting?
Dashboards improve accounting thoroughly—particularly by the ways listed below:
Accuracy
It is estimated that just 10% of small businesses have current, accurate, and reliable accounting information at their fingertips.
With all that accompanies opening and running a business, it’s easy to see why meticulous bookkeeping might fall through the cracks. Of course, businesses must use some type of accounting system to log and manage their financials, but it’s often a scattered and disorganized process, leaving too much room for inaccuracy and error.
By harnessing the technology of a dashboard, accounting becomes straightforward, routine, and up-to-date. All changes are logged to a centralized platform to reveal whether a business is progressing or regressing, as well as show how much money is available to funnel into company growth.
Efficiency
When it comes to good accounting practices, accuracy and efficiency go hand-in-hand. Without efficient systems in place to track revenue, gross profit, and other important KPIs, precision tends to suffer.
Dashboards rectify accounting inefficiencies, saving companies up to hundreds of hours with increased agility and streamlined operations. Rather than relying on multiple mediums for bookkeeping, or an outdated program that doesn’t have as many helpful features, a dashboard will give businesses the most bang for their buck, saving time as well as costly mistakes.
Visibility
Finally, one of the most important features of a dashboard is visibility. There are two reasons for this:
- Being able to clearly view all of a business’s financial metrics in a convenient, centralized location saves time (as opposed to hunting for data across various systems);
- Being able to access all financial activity at once allows stakeholders to more accurately gauge the health of the business.
In order for businesses to reach their full potential, establishing effective accounting practices is crucial. Contact us to learn more about Sage Intacct, a powerful software solution with dashboards that always keep finance accurate, efficient, and visible.