The finance department is the most crucial group of people in making your business thrive. They look after budgeting, allocates funds, assess investment qualities, and find a better use of the company resources. It allows the establishment to continue operations even if it faces a sudden unfortunate setback. That is why large scale companies strongly rely on their expertise to promote sustainability.
These individuals also play a vital role in saving the company from making a risky deal. They run background checks on clients and investigate their claims to see if everything checks out. That ensures if the company can trust them to uphold their end of the bargain.
Besides that, they help evaluate the potential of every business proposal. The financial analyst’s cross-reference expenses, review the market potential for returns and examine profit margins. That lets the company obtain realistic figures from every venture and plan activities thoroughly. It shows how they contribute to every critical stage of business.
The importance of this job motivates many companies to reinforce their departments with support from outside. Like in New Zealand, the stakeholders often hire external entities’ services to review their work and prepare reports to refine their practices. These maneuverings are especially famous. There are many accountants in Auckland available to offer these unparalleled services. You can either reach out to them for assistance or outsource the job entirely. Either case guarantees desired outcomes for your business.
But, if you already have a full-fledged finance department that fails to deliver, you might need more than outside help. Here are some tips to improve their efficiency and optimize their productivity.
1) IMPROVE YOUR TRAINING WORKSHOPS
Starting from the ground up, work on refining the training workshops for your old and new staff. Introducing the promising practices you want in the system might be a textbook method to overcome their mistakes. It will permit them to get used to the procedure and adapt to their work. Besides, it will also help your staff to perform at the same level.
Your finance department can upgrade their old skills and foster new ones through this training. And you have the option to check how you deliver these lessons. You can make them part of educational conferences and seminars, invite guest speakers, or go for one-on-one sessions for them. These should help to maximize their proficiency in managing your accounts and finances.
2) IMPOSE STRICT WORK REGULATIONS
Besides teaching your finance department the right practices, you can impose departmental regulations to hold them accountable. These will be policies that every employee must follow while working as part of the team. You can add multiple processing and review steps for every transaction. Demanding a proper timeline while registering them might also help track issues with their practices.
Using this model will improve your accounting and finance registry and the company cash flow statements. Regulations make it easier for the staff to remind clients about their payment schedules. That will allow them to have all the collections by a set date, which leaves less room for error in their work.
3) CONTROL PROCESSING TIME USING BATCH PAYMENTS
The added processes for improving efficiency might slow down the work pace, so prefer batch payments. Typically, your finance team will collect invoices, and payment slips one at a time. It means that they will process them individually, which might worsen the state of affairs.
As opposed to that, batch payments will call for a designated hour to make these submissions. That should allow your employees to process all transactions without a lapse. It will let you integrate all the new practices without compromising on time.
4) ENHANCE DEPARTMENTAL COLLABORATION
Gaining second-hand access to all the financial information and data might be more time-consuming. Plus, random filing and arrangement of records can take longer to process. And on top of it, this method has a greater probability of mistakes.
Instead, using a shared online network and database might be more efficient. Companies moving to the cloud often research NetSuite Cost and how its services can help them. It allows the finance team to obtain transaction data from the servers without any delays. Besides, they can digitally cross-reference it against the financial history available online and point out problems. That makes it easier to correct them and improve departmental collaboration to strengthen the company’s finances.
5) AUTOMATION OF PROCESSES
Technology has granted us numerous useful alternatives to make our lives easier. Many of them are in the fields of business. Now, there are software and machines with the computational capabilities of several employees. They can perform tons of operations on the financial data in a matter of hours without making any mistakes. Just feed them the information and initiate the process.
Some of the tasks they perform include automated invoices, calculating profit margins, generating reports, recording transaction details, and taxes. Doing these things would take days, but automating them save time while maximizing efficiency. Plus, it gives your finance department the room to focus on other duties.
6) COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY
Sometimes, what hinders the performance of a team isn’t the members but the individual leading them. If you or your finance department manager struggle with interpreting instructions, they can never meet your expectations. Additionally, it is difficult for your team to respond adequately to your ideas and make useful suggestions.
Avoid that from happening by using effective communication and establishing a one-to-one relationship with your team. Be more open to discussions and listen to their concerns attentively. Turn them down with good reason, and don’t forget to encourage them on their excellent performance.
7) DIVIDE RESPONSIBILITIES
There are several duties to perform within the finance department. It is unwise to deem every employee capable of handling all of them as best as the others. Some are more comfortable managing the software end of things, while others would want to crunch numbers and data. That’s why having the same expectations from all of them is a wrong assumption.
You can counter that by making smaller groups within the department to divide responsibilities. That will allow the team members to narrow their scope of vision and focus on the tasks at hand. Plus, with fewer things to manage, the chances of error are even less.
SUMMARY
These were some helpful tips to improve the efficiency of the finance department of your company. Try to start integrating them gradually to give your team the time to adapt to them. Ensure that all of them are on the same page on this subject and effort towards self-development. That will guarantee their collective growth and maximum productivity to benefit your business.
