Is Cloud Accounting Software the Answer to Finance Office Bugbears?

UK finance workers have revealed their top 10 pet hates about office life, with lack of flexible working, “out-of-touch” management and poor technology and software all ranking among the biggest bugbears about life as an accounting and finance team member in UK businesses.

Perhaps harshly, the majority of finance workers said they were most annoyed at being made to work with unskilled co-workers (more than a third – 35% – cited this as their biggest daily issue).

The results are part of a new report which we commissioned examining the big issues facing accounting and finance teams today, particularly when it comes to the impact technology is having on their jobs.

Along with out-of-touch management at (27%) finance workers are particularly peeved at being forced to regularly work outside their core working hours, linked to not having access to technology that would enable them to work more flexibly.

Keeping up with constantly changing regulations (32%), an over-reliance on manual processes (30%) and poor standards of software and hardware (26%) are also proving to be regularly annoying for finance teams.

There is some relief to be found however, in the things that finance teams believe their company has prioritised to fix.

Implementing new technology (34%) streamlining operational processes (32%) and improving staff training and development (31%) all rank high on the priority list.

Reducing reliance on paper-based processes (31%) implementing flexible working (21%) and introducing mobile working (20%) also rank highly among businesses according to finance team.

Is cloud accounting the answer?

While workplace annoyances differ from person to person, what the theme of this research has shown is that cloud accounting software actually holds many of the answers to the biggest issues accounting and finance teams have.

Looking specifically at the problems and prioritising of mobile and flexible working, or keeping up with regulations, streamlining processes and removing a reliance on paper and manual processes – cloud-based accounting software solves all of these problems.

By automating the accounts processes and removing the need for manual data entry or interpretation, teams can greatly increase the efficiency of their processes and give employees the things they are asking for.

By moving the accounting software into the cloud you can also solve the problem of flexible and mobile working. Because the software can be used on any device with internet access, teams can access work and information wherever they are, whenever they want.

It also helps to promote better collaboration among teams because they are not reliant on having access to a fixed server in an office and can access and work on client projects at the same time.