RPA in Finance and Accounting: 10 Robotic Process Automation use cases in Fintech

Utilize business automation to help you develop reports, conduct assessments, and perform credit checks. The efficiency of the purchase-to-pay (P2P) process affects satisfaction rates, costs, and influences your company’s ability to achieve wider business goals. The wide-reaching nature of the process means there is a huge incentive for companies to optimize it. Understand the right places to deploy finance robotics, proven methods for tracking and assessing its benefits, and techniques for handling the integration of finance robotics with team design and structure. With an RPA implementation, your financial institution can have customer behavior data automatically sent to specific people in the organization. ML models help group customers into categories based on their behavior, so the most appealing products or services can be recommended to them.

rpa in finance and accounting

Software robots perform tasks such as collecting bank statements and entering critical financial data into the A/R system. Before businesses will introduce automation, some look to other solutions to help revamp processes. The UiPath process mining solution provides insights on how the order to cash (O2C) process is performing and gives you the opportunity to verify the root cause of any issues. When combined with RPA, it leads to huge leaps in efficiency, cost savings, and overall customer satisfaction.

Here are a few key benefits of RPA implementation in finance and accounting:

It’s important that the accounting processes are broken down into steps beforehand, following business rules. Those responsible for implementing RPA can identify improvements in the process by trimming repetitive tasks and selecting which steps can be optimized using RPA. A Deloitte survey found robotic process automation (RPA) in accounting improved customer compliance 92 percent, accuracy 90 percent, productivity 85 percent, and reduced costs 59 percent. If ever there was talk of a transformative technology for accounting firms, robotic process automation would rank near the top. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is estimated to have an automation potential of 44% in Finance and Accounting by reducing manual repetitive tasks.

  • For instance, RPA can identify inconsistencies between systems by utilizing multiple rules to ascertain the source of the inconsistency.
  • Robotic process automation is answering the ever louder call of accounting firms–efficiency.
  • It is well-known as a business function for repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as data entry, reporting, cross-checking, and record-keeping, which is ideal for RPA bots.
  • As to fears that the robots are coming for the finance teams’ jobs, it’s important to include those teams on RPA projects both to allay fears and to find new opportunities, Gannon said.
  • Issues in different invoice formats, quality of images, and other languages result in errors & pose challenges to efficient invoice processing.
  • IA offers the clearest path towards a true digital transformation for businesses.
  • Your data will be correctly collected, transformed, and stored for forecasting purposes through bots.

Those who embrace RPA will empower employees, bolstering their capabilities and freeing up their days by removing repetitive administrative processes. Research shows that the skills within finance are becoming more valued, predicting that finance leaders could soon play a key part in organisational transformation for the companies where they work. This mindset is exactly why at The Access Group, we employ lots of former accountants who believe in the potential that automation could bring to the industry, pushing the sector forward into exciting new realms. To understand the shifting landscape of the industry, we first must look at how many businesses in the UK actually invested in digital technologies. In December 2021, the government revealed that 2021 was a record year for UK tech investment, with over £29.4bn invested – figures that back up the predictions from our 2020 financial pain points report.

PO processing

While the benefits of implementing RPA in financial reporting processes are many, accounting leaders still face perceived roadblocks. To overcome them, leaders should first understand the root problems and then take action to remedy them. Automate tedious, manual finance processes like onboarding and help your new customers with manual tasks by getting them set up in your system. Our robots help fuel your growth by reviewing and accepting applications, managing terms and conditions, contracts, and even negotiating pricing for you.

rpa in finance and accounting

HPE’s accounts payable team processes a considerable volume of paper invoices each month and is responsible for recording vendor invoices for subsequent payment processing. Issues come in the form of multiple invoice formats, a range in the quality of scanned image invoices and the use of multiple languages. The company used a combination of OCR and machine learning modules from WorkFusion to mitigate image format and quality challenges. As the digital landscape shifts and grows more complex, more advanced tools – and a unified strategy – become necessary.

Intelligent Automation & RPA in Finance

In an accounting firm, that can mean CPAs leveraging the full breadth of their professional skills and training for insight and intelligence. One of the greatest benefits of RPA for organizations is building an ongoing effort to continuously improve. Automation enables consistent, repeatable performance, allowing you to minimize errors and issues over time. What’s more, a well-designed RPA makes adjusting processes relatively straightforward. Robots also have privileged access to resources, systems, and data, meaning a reduced risk of unauthorized exposure to sensitive or protected information. They can also be configured easily to improve redundancy, such as by creating archival copies of the data they handle.

rpa in finance and accounting

With its accounting and procurement divisions, finance satisfies both of these criteria. It is well-known as a business function for repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as data entry, reporting, cross-checking, and record-keeping, which is ideal for RPA bots. RPA is an effective solution in many areas of finance and accounting since it reduces processing times, minimizes entry errors, and lowers costs. Accelerate sales order processing, new customer account setup, and invoice creation. Discover immediate time and cost savings with automation that eliminates billing delays, shipping errors, and manual reporting. Over the course of the past two years, cultural shifts brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have made finance, and many other industries, hurtle towards an automated future faster than anyone could have expected.

Expense reporting

Financial statements and data must be properly input to predict the future accurately. By using historical data automation solutions can put together a complete picture of what you can expect the future to hold. With this information, you can create a financial forecast and then also benefit from conducting variance analysis seamlessly. The revenue from the global robotic process automation market size is expected to grow to $11 billion by 2027 compared to $1.40 billion in 2019.

rpa in finance and accounting

Another of our customers, a leading Swiss medical and pharmaceutical company, needed to manage 1,800 invoices per month. While the process involved predetermined rules and decisions, it also relied on unstructured information and paper documents. The process rpa use cases in accounting required the efforts of three full-time employees across three departments, using four desktop applications including MS Office and email. A sharp, analytical mindset will still be needed to act on the figures that software processes can present to you.

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With the implementation of intelligent automation for our billing portal, we’ve increased our efficiency and production, decreased processing costs, and scaled for the future. Apply intelligent automation to streamline cashflow forecasting, treasury operations, and withholding management. Automation provides significant gains, delivering increased productivity, accuracy, and speed. Not only does RPA bring hard cost savings, but it also relieves companies of much of the time spent manually moving, collating and posting data between systems. An AA-rated trade credit insurance customer active across Europe dealt with credit limit request underwriting, a key process for the organization. The company’s team of underwriters collected the information from more than 20 screens and external sources before actually starting to assess it.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of public accounting and auditing, internal control audits, IT consulting, and information systems auditing. Otero previously worked at Deloitte & Touche, LLP, for more than 10 years and attained the position of senior manager. His research interests include the areas of financial audits and internal controls, information systems auditing, accounting information systems, information security audits, and risk assessments.

The evolution of RPA in finance

By optimizing your office for data-driven decision making, you’ll be running smoothly, giving your team back time for the work that matters most. Gartner for Finance provides insights, advice and tools to help finance leaders make the right decisions to drive business results. Only 37% of finance functions have a clearly defined digital technology investment https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ strategy for the next two to three years. 5 min read – Learn how to more effectively manage your attack surface to enhance your security posture and reduce the impact of data breaches. In fact, a McKinsey case study showed that after unlocking the full power of automation, the month-end closing processes lasted two days instead of two weeks.

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