In recent years, RPA, or “robotic process automation,” has become one of the most exciting prospects in the finance industry. In 2019, the RPA market was already valued at $1.4 billion. By 2027, it’s expected to reach $11 billion.

So, what is RPA and what does it mean for your accounting business? In this article, we’ll examine the many uses for RPA in accounting and finance spheres and explain why implementing RPA in finance could result in substantial amounts of saved time and money for your business.

What is RPA?

RPA is a type of technology designed to automate human processes in an accurate and efficient way. RPA uses advanced code and software bots to replicate digital human processes in the blink of an eye.

Find out more about the history and functionality of RPA technology.

How can RPA be used in the accounting industry?

RPA has huge potential to transform the finance and accounting industries. In fact, for many companies, it already has. Here are a few of the functionalities of RPA accounting.

Invoice automation

Processing invoices can be a time-consuming, painstaking process. Typically, upon receiving an invoice, the accounting department needs to cross-check the items on the invoice with the services received. This may involve sending the invoices to various other members of staff or examining a series of spreadsheets.

With RPA, the entire process is automated. Invoices can be cross-checked, sent to the relevant members of staff, and even paid by a software bot.

Client onboarding

When performed manually, client onboarding can take hours. To abide by compliance regulations, your company may need to examine countless documents to verify the client’s identity, complete background checks, and develop an understanding of the client’s history.

With an RPA finance bot, this process can be performed automatically. An RPA bot will crawl through all relevant documents in a matter of seconds to create an automatic report for your compliance manager.

Tax reporting

Compiling the necessary documents and figures to calculate your business’s taxes payable is another lengthy process that can easily result in errors and mistakes.

RPA has the power to gather your tax data and prepare a tax report that’s 100% accurate based on your documentation.

Preparation of financial statements

Most companies aim to track their finances on a regular basis to monitor their profits and losses and make adjustments accordingly.

With an RPA bot, this process can be done at the click of a button, which is especially useful for companies that like to check their performance in real time.

Expense processing

Your company’s expenses can include everything from client lunches to business trips. When an employee files an expense, processing can involve cross-checking the figures, times, and dates to ensure accuracy before filming the information into your system.

With advanced RPA technology, a bot can pull the information from each expense form to ensure its accuracy and even test it against your company’s unique expense policies.

Financial planning

Forecasting for the next financial quarter or year can be a painstaking process involving analyzing the previous year’s data across all departments and coming up with reasonable goals based on these metrics.

An RPA bot can take the admin work out of planning by compiling the necessary data and generating a plan based on variables and algorithms set by your company.

The benefits of employing RPA as a business

Automating your accounting processes such as those we listed above can quickly save you both time and money. According to Gartner, RPA can save teams up to 25,000 hours of work every year. But it can also come with other benefits:

• A bot always eliminates the human error factor.
• RPA will increase the efficiency of your employees, giving them precious time to focus on high-value tasks.
• Employee satisfaction - associates who focus on value-add activity are happier than those who copy and paste for a living.
• Cost avoidance - save thousands as you scale your accounting department by growing your digital workforce as opposed to human capital.
• An automatic process gives you total visibility and traceability for audit purposes.
• You will improve your customer service by speeding up wait times and providing process visibility.

How Thoughtful can transform your accounting department

Thoughtful is dedicated to providing RPA technology designed for your workforce’s needs. With regular RPA bots, payback on your investment can take up to five years. With Thoughtful, you’ll begin to see payback within six months—at a lower cost.

Here are just a few of the benefits of using our RPA accounting bot technology:

• Reduce the expense of your processes by an average of 87%.
• Remove repetitive tasks from your employees’ workloads.
• Access our IT team to monitor and assist with your bots.
• Experience faster, Python-coded bots that scale with your needs.

Ready to get started? Request a demo with one of our experts to find out more.