Do you want your small business to grow quickly when the economy rebounds in 2024? Now is the time to get ready. Analyzing and upgrading your accounting systems will set you up for future success when opportunities arise.
Why 2024 will be a Year of Business Growth
Leading economists predict stronger economic growth starting in 2024 as we recover from recent challenging years. Higher consumer confidence and more discretionary income will bring surging demand across many sectors.
There will be an abundance of new opportunities for prepared small businesses to expand. However, outdated accounting systems full of manual processes, fragmented data, and limited scalability will make it hard to seize growth potential.
The businesses who assess their accounting technology stack and business processes now – and make needed upgrades – will have a competitive advantage when expansion accelerates in 2024.
Common Shortcomings of Outdated Accounting Systems
Most legacy accounting software and processes present major limitations, including:
Too Much Manual Work
Older programs require manually entering purchase orders, invoices, bills, payroll, and other financial data. As transaction volume grows, more employees get stuck in this tedious and error-prone work – increasing labor costs without driving growth.
Siloed Information
When sales, inventory, accounting, HR, and other systems don’t integrate, data gets fragmented across operational silos. This hampers leaders’ ability to access accurate real-time insights.
Difficulty Customizing
Monolithic legacy accounting platforms with rigid workflows make it hard to customize invoices, reports, billing processes and other elements to how your business operates as you scale.
Poor Scalability
Entry-level accounting tools aren’t cloud-based, so they require costly on-premise servers to support more transactions, users, and system integrations as you grow. Expanding is difficult.
The Benefits of Assessing Your Accounting Systems
Conducting an accounting system analysis with external experts is the best way to identify current platform constraints and find better solutions tailored to your growth plans.
Key benefits of an assessment include:
Pinpoint Inefficient Processes
Advisors can spotlight manual efforts that waste employee time on low-value work – making great candidates for automation to reduce costs.
Evaluate Software Gaps
You can determine where existing software is falling short in areas like reporting, inventory management, and custom invoices to select better alternatives.
Map Future Needs
Experts can ensure you have accounting systems with flexibility and scalability to painlessly accommodate 20% year-over-year growth.
Maximize Investments
For expensive enterprise accounting platforms, an analysis verifies you are fully utilizing licenses and capabilities – or identifies redundant costs.
Essential Accounting Capabilities to Support Growth
Here are key accounting software features and infrastructure to drive expansion in 2024 and beyond:
Process Automation
Automating repetitive manual tasks like data entry and report building frees up employees for more strategic work that grows the business.
Real-Time Data
Integrated systems across accounting, inventory, POS, ecommerce, and more make accurate, up-to-date data readily available to users company-wide.
Custom Reporting
Easily build custom real-time reports on cash flow, profitability, inventory levels, and other metrics for faster insights without IT help.
Omnichannel Order Management
Unified order management and inventory data enables efficiently fulfilling orders from the optimal warehouse or retail location to meet customer expectations.
Simple Scalability
Cloud-based accounting systems make it easy to fluidly scale your infrastructure, storage, and computing power up or down to smoothly accommodate business growth.
Future-Proof Your Accounting Now for 2024 and Beyond
The time is now for forward-looking businesses to future-proof accounting infrastructure for accelerated expansion when post-pandemic economic growth unlocks new opportunities.
Firms that proactively assess existing accounting solutions – and address identified limitations around automation, integration, reporting, and scalability – will be primed for fast growth when markets improve.
Conduct an accounting system analysis and make necessary upgrades as soon as possible to maximize your competitive readiness when 2024 arrives! Reach out today to start future-proofing your business.
Conclusion
Outdated accounting systems restrict visibility into real-time data, drain productivity through manual work, and limit the ability to scale smoothly.
Now is the moment to work with experts to analyze current solutions against growth plans – identifying automation and integration opportunities while evaluating new platforms.
Taking action today future-proofs financial operations and technology to enable fast expansion when favorable conditions return in 2024. Don’t leave growth on the table due to accounting limitations!
FAQs
Top capabilities include real-time data through system integrations, custom reporting, process automation, and omnichannel order/inventory management – all underpinned by simple cloud scalability.
Costs vary based on company size and scope. But the investment often pays for itself many times over through increased efficiency, better data, and scaling without pain or platform limitations.
Most accounting advisory firms offer free initial consultations and technology capability assessments. They will benchmark your systems against growth goals and industry best practices.
The project timeline depends on complexity, but many companies transition to new accounting platforms and processes in just 3-4 months to maximize time-to-value and growth readiness
