Why Your Bookkeeper Must Be Tech-Savvy in the 21st Century
The old days of entering financial transactions by hand into giant journal books are long gone. Now, bookkeepers are expected to be able to use a variety of efficient software tools in their work.
Accountancy programs come with enormous benefits – including up-to-date accounts and reports, custom reporting, instant business snapshots and improved accuracy. And that’s not to mention the time and cost savings they provide!
As well as accounting programs, other useful tools include secure payment programs, work management tools and communications software applications.
Bookkeepers need to be adaptable, so that they know what programs to use in which situations, and can keep up with upgrades and new versions.
At Bookit, we use a wide variety of programs in our day-to-day work, not only for accounting but for workflows and other purposes.
Here’s just a sample.
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XERO – a cloud-based software accounting platform designed for SMEs (small-to-medium enterprises), and one of the most popular programs of its kind. XERO’s features include bank connections and daily feeds, automation, real-time collaboration, and substantial integration with other apps.
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Dext – this one was formerly Receipt Bank, a data extraction app designed to capture data from images of receipts and bills for auto-entry into accounting software programs. Dext still does data extraction through Dext Prepare but has launched into other areas as well. These include Dext Commerce that collects sales data from third parties, and Dext Precision for data insights.
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Hubdoc – a program that extracts key information from bill or receipt images and scans, saving masses of data entry. It also stores all your documents in one hub for convenience. We encourage our clients to use programs like Hubdoc rather than sending in hard copies of documents (check out this article about how we helped a client sort out their paperwork with Hubdoc).
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Leap Legal – we are legal bookkeeping specialists, so we make use of Leap Legal which is a cloud-based program designed for legal practice management.
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Bank institution software – we need to be familiar with banking software from multiple financial institutions to process online payments and connect client bank feeds to accounting software.
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Asana – a work management application, used for managing teams and projects.
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Stripe – an online payments platform that enables secure credit card and bank transfer payments.
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Shopify – popular e-commerce platform for buying and selling of products.