Falling out of nowhere, the pandemic has to create havoc across all the sectors of the industry, similar to the recession that loomed in 2008. While 2008 was only a financial crisis, this pandemic had been global health and socio-economic crisis whose impact is yet to be discovered and measured fully.
The pandemic, and the lockdown that followed delivered a jolt to small and medium businesses, even large businesses found themselves facing a challenge of once in a lifetime. Every industry had to leave behind the lethargy and find new ways to stay afloat during a pandemic. The gradual lifting of lockdown due to the vaccine helped businesses recover and there are many industries like hospitality which is only beginning to breathe fresh air.
The past year has been a challenge that every industry had to conquer, the accounting industry is no different. The massive disruption meant we had to work overtime to help our clients at Outsourced Bookkeeping recover; be it with assistance in leveraging economics and tax provisions of the CARES Act or helping with accounting and financial management post-lockdown.
Working closely with our clients during this pandemic and carefully paying attention to the trends that ensued we learned 4 lessons about the future of the accounting industry which we are going to discuss in this blog today. Read on:
Expert Accounting is indispensable when in crisis: COVID-19 global business crisis has shed light on the importance of having expert accounting services on board for businesses. When a crisis of this magnitude has hit the world, the business quickly turned to accountants to understand the complexities and discover opportunities to help them safely navigate the crisis.
At Outsourced Bookkeeping we have been first responders of the global business crisis perpetuated by the pandemic. We reached out and helped our client navigate through complex federal stimulus programs be it preparing the groundwork for small business loans, PPP programs or advising on various alternatives based on the options available.
As an expert remote accounting firm, Outsourced Bookkeeping also catered to the on the fly accounting requirements providing outsourced accounting services for business growth post the peak of the pandemic. The indispensability of the accounting industry to the business world is the first lesson we have learned during this pandemic.
Automation will continue to rise: The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of automated accounting solutions and advanced technology stack to improve the AP, AR, booking and regular accounting functions. Many businesses were left with no choice but to embrace cloud computing and automation to faster and real-time financial processing, fewer errors, and improved efficiency.
Given the improvements automation has brought on the accounting world, businesses moved-on and will continue to move-on form the manual accounting procedures. Automation and the need for accounting services that provide automated accounting will continue to rise.
Importance of Data and Security:
The rapid adoption of automation over the past year reinforced two things for the accounting industry:
- Almost three-fourths of the accounting tasks can be automated making manual accounting is no longer the go-to way for businesses.
- Avoiding the adoption of automation is detrimental to the business holds the accounting department from achieving better accounting performance.
Both the above factors reiterated the importance of data in making the right accounting decisions. Naturally, this increases the cyber-security risks for business and data security has and will become key for every accounting department.
One way for businesses to stay prepared is by implementing training for CPAs and accounting resources. As for small and medium businesses they can either assess and revamp the current security stack or outsource their accounting to remote accounting firms that offer state-of-art security protocols for both physical and online work spaces.
Outsourcing will continue to prosper – Remote Accounting is the way ahead: Automation technologies and their improved performance, the importance of data security and the indispensability of having expert accounting services on-board meant improved adoption of remote accounting services.
The past year has served as a testament to how cost-effective and convenient remote accounting services can turn out to be for small and medium businesses looking for the best accounting services at a cost-effective price. At Outsourced Bookkeeping we have already noticed a great year-on-year growth and we can certainly say that the remote accounting services will be widely adopted by businesses of all scales and sizes.
Pandemic has once again reinforced the importance of experienced and expert accountants or accounting services that can help them not only navigate through the crisis but also help them grow post one. Increased automation, improved data security and access to expert accounting services in cost-effective way gave rise to the rapid adoption of remote accounting services.
If you are small and medium business looking for outsourced accounting services for improved business growth at an affordable price point, you can contact Outsourced Bookkeeping here: https://outsourcedbookeeping.com/