5 Expert Tips On Moving From Manual Bookkeeping Process To Cloud Bookkeeping Software In the UK

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Manual bookkeeping has become a traditional, and obsolete practice. Spending hours and money on bookkeepers to maintain general ledgers, journals, and accounting numbers for the day of audit and filing taxes, but it all goes in vain due to obvious human errors. 

For a very small business with just a few transactions daily, it can maintain a manual bookkeeping process, but again there are better options for them too without spending too much money on a bookkeeping software. The bookkeeping software for accountants allows businesses to manage their bookkeeping numbers easily, along with other automation features, which makes it accurate and increases productivity. 

There are various reasons to switch to cloud bookkeeping software from the manual bookkeeping process:

  • Increase in the business transactions
  • Client’s requirements
  • High accuracy 
  • Automation in accounting
  • Storing and maintaining accounts without any physical space or monitoring

But, shifting to a cloud bookkeeping software is a technical and strategic decision that should be taken by consulting with experts. Here, we shall learn those expert tips on moving from manual bookkeeping to cloud bookkeeping software in the UK.

1. Choose The Right UK Bookkeeping Software

You must take a considerable amount of time to select the right UK bookkeeping software for your firm. There are various questions to consider for this:

  • How tech-savvy are your employees and clients?
  • Do they need some advanced software or some easy-to-learn software for their tasks?
  • Is there any existing bookkeeping software familiarity within the accounts department?

The answers to these questions will help determine the basic features of your bookkeeping software. Also, you must take into account some technical requirements too like, how will the daily workflow function by the employees? Whether you want to move towards more of an advisory-focused service to the clients, or you just want to automate your internal bookkeeping process? This way you can ascertain the major areas your UK bookkeeping software will address. 

With cloud bookkeeping software, you get the major benefit of data storage cloud space, which will help in the audit and taxation purposes. Also, you get the benefit of online bookkeeping, which helps in scaling your business easily, and also allows you to focus more on business operations, rather than calculating numbers already earned or lost.

2. Prepare Your Employees

Upgrading to any software technology is not just a big investment decision, but also depends on the employee-preparedness. You need to strategically prepare your employees for shifting to the UK bookkeeping software. There are a few tips to keep in mind:

  • Ask them to study available bookkeeping software options
  • Provide them courses, or training for the software work methods
  • Enlist the employees from being the least tech-savvy to the most
  • Conduct meetings for deciding the future course of action

This way your employees become part of the changing work environment, and such an inclusive step will lead to a low learning curve and higher employee satisfaction.

3. Calculate Budget Allocation

You must have already planned for this shift months or years before, as shifting to cloud bookkeeping software technology may be a huge investment. Though, the cost varies depending on if you’re going for a basic cloud bookkeeping software, or an advanced cloud bookkeeping software. 

Also, you must ensure that there are many cloud bookkeeping software providing a one-month free trial, during which you can test and decide on the right cloud bookkeeping software according to its alignment with your business requirements. But, the free trials have limited features, and you will need to buy the software for experiencing it fully. You can also go for a monthly subscription service of cloud bookkeeping software, which allows you to test the software for a huge investment. 

4. Review Data Shifting Accurately

The major issue that businesses face while moving from manual bookkeeping to cloud bookkeeping is the shifting of data to the cloud. You need to feed in the physical accounting data to the software, which will then be stored in cloud storage. 

An important tip you must follow here is, to review the data while shifting for 100% accuracy by auditing trial balance, and reviewing charts of accounts. You may also escape this by using only the new and opening balances while setting up cloud bookkeeping software.

5. Prepare For Transition

In the end, you must ensure a smooth transition to the cloud bookkeeping software. Basically, from closing current balances and accounting sheets with the manual excel spreadsheets, to shifting all data and training employees. But, you should also consider the costs associated with transitioning, which is negligible with UK bookkeeping software as it provides easy onboarding and shifting of data.

Conclusion

Cloud bookkeeping software is the new culture of bookkeeping. Manual bookkeeping restricts the businesses with many flaws, which are eliminated by the UK bookkeeping software along with added features. Shifting from manual bookkeeping to cloud bookkeeping software is easy with these above expert tips. 

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