The financial services industry is complex. There are massive numbers and tons of data. Accuracy and error-free recording and management are essential. A single mistake in accounting can cost you millions of dollars. Therefore, the need for digital technologies to reduce human-errors, achieve efficiency, and deliver accurate results becomes imminent.
RPA in finance and accounting is now showing promising results. Implementing RPA reduces errors by almost 50% and increases the accuracy by 75%. RPA use cases in finance are going beyond traditional data entry tasks - firms use it to onboard customers, prepare financial statements, and much more.
This article will highlight the top 7 RPA use cases in finance and accounting. RPA services are the first technology that drives digital transformation in banks and financial institutions. Therefore, understanding the most significant use cases of RPA implementation in finance and accounting is necessary to achieve the best organizational results. But first,
Checkout 11 Use Cases and Benefits for Robotic Process Automation
What are the Benefits of RPA in Finance and Accounting?
End-to-end automation enables financial companies to automate processes without any human intervention. RPA in financial services allows accounting staff to focus on gathering insights rather than preparing documents.
RPA tools like Automation Anywhere, BluePrism, and UiPath offer separate accounting and financial bots for multiple activities. Before we look at their use cases, here are the few benefits of RPA in accounting:
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Cut down costs
Financial companies can cut down costs by investing once in RPA bots. The long-term investment is nothing compared to the cost of hiring accounting professionals for minor tasks.
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Higher accuracy
Can't find a mistake in your excel sheet? RPA solutions increase the accuracy by 50 to 70 percent and eliminate all the errors from your financial recordings.
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Increase in efficiency
RPA software installs bots that can perform operations much faster than human personnel. They are known to reduce the process completion time by almost 50%.
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Automate data
You can automate unstructured data and invoices from emails, pdf files, and more using Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Data extraction can help you with that.
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Assist employees
When RPA technology takes care of mundane financial processes like entering customer details in a form, employees can focus on high-value tasks that increase organization profitability.
Now that you understand how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) services can benefit the financial industry let's look at the 7 best use cases for RPA in finance and accounting examples.
Read more: 7 Step Guide of RPA implementation for Enterprise Digital Transformation
7 Best RPA Use Cases in Finance and Accounting
Finance and accounting have complex, high-volume processes. For example - it takes a lot of time for bank employees to enter customer details for the loan form. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can easily save this time. It can extract data and transfer it directly to the form by taking it from the centralized system.
You can find many such use cases of RPA in accounting and finance operations. We will look at the 7 most prominent use cases of RPA in operational finance and accounting. Here they are -
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Customer onboarding
- As KYC becomes an important part of onboarding customers, employees spend more time gathering information than managing the account. RPA bots easily solve this problem by automating the data collection process.
- Using Optical Character Recognition, the RPA software can feed client information from their documents and arrange it into a report. The manager can see the final report from the RPA solutions and make an informed decision. After receiving the manager's approval(a pre-determined trigger), the RPA bots will directly feed the data into the customer profile for final creation.
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Data recording
- One of the best use cases of RPA in accounts is data recording. Most of the time, gathering and entering data becomes time-consuming. It also leads to human errors that can result in companies losing huge sums of money.
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Robotic Process Automation (RPA) services enable companies to record data error-free and with complete accuracy. Financial transactions require a lot of care. With an RPA platform, you can add triggers for entering data and recording them in the right sheets. This way, you can save a lot of money by eliminating the need to hire personnel to check the transactions manually.
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Accounts payable & receivables
- Managing payments is one of the riskiest tasks in the financial services industry. By implementing RPA, you can streamline the receivables and payables process. There are strict timelines you need to adhere to and have proper amounts of payment.
- Through robotic accounting, you can automate the process of payments to vendors and receiving money from stakeholders. You can automate the timeline for sending and receiving payables. RPA bots can build approval workflows and process payments, receipts and ensure that all the transactions take place on time. It also ensures that you adhere to financial audit policies and regulations.
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Invoice management
- Whether it's a bank or a financial institution, invoices are a part of their everyday operations. Processing one invoice takes somewhere around 2 weeks as most of the process requires manual input.
- RPA in finance processes simplifies invoice management. Bots gather and extract receipts, collect data, send an invoice to vendors, provide notifications, and offer reconciliation - all in a matter of minutes. RPA bots are available 24×7, so there are fewer chances of missing an invoice. The RPA software directly extracts the data from the receipt as soon as it receives it.
- Investment management
- The use case of RPA in investment management is still in its infancy. While they cannot directly provide investment advice, they act as a support system for wealth management.
- When it comes to price comparison, RPA solutions deliver promising results. They provide real-time updates on the prices of stocks and mutual funds. By comparing them, you can choose the best options. Apart from that, it can monitor your portfolio and evaluate the fluctuations in your wealth. By understanding that in detail, you can make informed decisions.
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Financial closing
- One of the best RPA use cases in finance and accounting is the support in financial closing. All the expenses, receipts, and transactions from the year require to record maintenance from excels to sub-ledger. It is a time-consuming process.
- RPA technology enables companies to automate the process of data extraction and recording in the right sub-ledgers. There are hundreds of invoices, receipts, and documents that you need to account for. RPA in banking helps the employees with closing the yearly and monthly accounts by providing the right information at the right time to the right form.
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Financial planning
- Planning and forecasting financial outcomes possess several challenges for accountants. RPA in the finance department simplifies budgeting and planning the expenses for a period of time.
- RPA in finance and accounting provides data sets to systems that do financial planning and forecasting. Predicting results becomes easier as RPA bots extract data from internal and external sources, feed it into the predictive system, which then provides insights for making informed decisions. It provides up-to-date information so that complex processing is done easily.
Conclusion: RPA in Finance is Necessary
To cater to the growing complexity in financial processes and operations, RPA technology is necessary. Bots and software solutions automate financial transactions and management to the extent where the employees only need to focus on direct revenue-generating activities.
BoTree Technologies, a leading software development company, provides complete RPA automation solutions in the finance and accounting industry. Get started with RPA tools today and increase your efficiency by 50%.
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