Accounting

Modernizing Your Accounting & Finance Operations From the Close to Controls

Accounting is the operational backbone of a company. Sadly, the accounting and finance departments can be a grueling place to work without the right tools and resources, with nearly 90% reporting that they’ve experienced burnout!

At that intersection comes the clear need for modernizing operations. With accounting being so critical to the business and the finance and accounting teams under so much pressure to do the job quickly without making errors, a better approach is a must-have. 

Recently, FloQast Senior Sales Engineer (and former accountant) Hugh O’Neill sat down with Yoav Har-Esh, Finance & Business Operations Manager at Israeli eCom marketing platform Yotpo to talk about how they’ve modernized their own operations to help the team operate more efficiently. Here are a few quick takeaways from our conversation, which you can watch here:

Technical process improvement is just one-half of the challenge. You also have to overcome the human element. People have been working the same way for years, or even decades. And they may not love having the job changed on them or being told the way it’s always been done isn’t good enough anymore. So, how do you help them make the change?

A streamlined process is crucial to getting the job done in a remote setting and key to work-life balance and job satisfaction for your team. As compliance has become more complex and work-from-home has become the standard, it’s too easy for your team to be “on” 24-7. Beyond just the tools to do the work, they need a process to help put boundaries on that work and get it done in a balanced way. 

Whether you’re a public company trying to stay in audit compliance, a private company sticking to an audit routine on your own, or a private company preparing for an IPO, the right process and tools make everything easier. For Yotpo, FloQast provided all the checklists and collaboration and reconciliation tools they needed to improve the process greatly. Are there tools you need to add to your current stack, and do they play nicely with Excel, your ERP, and your other existing software?

SOX is changing the game for a lot of companies. If you’re navigating that right now, like more than half the companies we talked to who report increased hours to stay compliant, we’ll take a peek inside our newest FloQast module designed to help wrangle SOX compliance tasks. 

SOX, the monthly close, coordinating the accounting department with a remote team…they all have at least one thing in common; they’re pulling finance and accounting teams away from doing strategic work. These tasks tie up resources and burn up hours, so your team can’t spend meaningful time contributing to the real mission of your organization. And that, ultimately, is the real purpose of modernizing your accounting and finance operations. When you streamline your process and empower your team to do the work more quickly and efficiently, you give them back the time and brain space to have a real impact on the company’s success. 

For a deeper dive into all these issues and more (and an inside look at some of the tools that can help eliminate the biggest common problems), head over and check out the full conversation between Yoav and Hugh here.

John Siegel

John Siegel is a Corporate Communications Manager at FloQast. Prior to joining the company, he wrote about Los Angeles-based tech companies for Built In LA. You can follow him on Twitter @JVNSiegel.