How to Automate Your Company's Accounting
· 6 min read
Manual accounting is still the norm in many mid-sized companies. Finance teams spend hours entering invoices, reconciling journal entries, or preparing monthly reports that the ERP could generate automatically. Automating these processes is not just a matter of efficiency: it also reduces errors and speeds up decision-making.
Starting point: invoice digitisation
The first step in accounting automation is eliminating paper. Tools like LucIA Scann, integrated into ERPCloud, automatically read supplier invoices — PDF, image, or email — and extract the key data: supplier tax ID, amount, taxable base, VAT, and date. The result is converted directly into a proposed journal entry that the accountant only needs to review and confirm.
Automatic journal entries
Once the posting rules have been configured — which account applies to which type of invoice, from which supplier, for which concept — the ERP generates journal entries automatically. This eliminates dependence on individual judgement and ensures consistency in accounting treatment over time.
Automatic bank reconciliation
ERPCloud imports bank movements daily and reconciles them automatically with the payments and receipts recorded in the system. What used to take an entire morning each month becomes a review of just a few minutes: the system highlights the items it could not reconcile automatically for the team to review.
Accelerated monthly closing
With all data integrated in the same system — sales, purchases, treasury, payroll — the monthly close ceases to be a painful process. Profit and loss reports, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement are generated automatically with up-to-date data.
Assisted tax declarations
Accounting automation also makes it easier to prepare quarterly tax filings. By having all invoices correctly classified and journal entries generated without errors, VAT returns (303), withholding tax returns (111, 115), and corporate tax returns can be prepared with data directly from the ERP, reducing the risk of errors and reviews with the tax advisor.
Where to start
Accounting automation does not require an overnight revolution. The most effective approach is to start with the process that consumes the most time — usually digitising supplier invoices — and move from there towards bank reconciliation and reporting. Within three to six months, most companies that work with us have automated more than 80% of their routine accounting tasks.
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