Does your Accounting Software have these 10 Features?

How to decide which accounting software to buy? Well, for starters you might consider one that cuts down a significant amount of manual operations. Pay for the features suited to your business and see if they could be customized on demand. Check if the software you choose allows maximum flexibility and collaboration. Can you navigate without too many hiccups? If you get a positive answer to that, maybe you have found the right fit.

Here’s a list of features you must look for in an accounting software.

Automation

Get an accounting software that simplifies operations by automating the bulk of data entry and accounting operations. Here’s how you can automate 90% of your bookkeeping with Surf Accounts.

• Seamless integration of bank statements with receipts and payments.
• Automatic allocation of receipts and payments (partly or wholly) through customer/supplier, product/accounts look up on bank feeds.
• Auto-populating rules for specific transactions.
• Automatic bank reconciliation.
• Summaries of GST-compliant business reports within specific dates.
• Automatic generation of receipts and payments which recur.
• Data lookup feature and auto-population of associated details while maintaining books.

Multi-currency transaction

Your accounting software must support multi-currency billing with provision for setting up currencies against customers to auto-populate the details during invoice generation. Multi-currency invoicing must have these factors:

• The retention of receipts and payment records in both the base and the foreign currency.
• Automatic update of exchange rates.
• For accounts receivable aging, reflection of balance as per transaction date and balance as per report date, at which the exchange rate might have changed.

Reporting

Is your accounting software equipped with end to end reporting? Even better if you are using a cloud-based accounting software, so that you can generate a report regardless of time and space. From invoices to GST summary, you should be able to get the status of cashflow and liabilities at your disposal with just a click. Here’s an image of a list of reports your accounting solution should ideally cover.

GST compliance

Make sure your accounting software is GST compatible. You should be able to

• Add GSTIN number to customer and state of supply.
• Produce GST compliant invoices and payments.
• Get access to new GST rates added to the software.
• File GST returns.
• Generate GSTR summary.

Cloud-compatibility

Gain a competitive edge with a cloud-based accounting software and be free of all the limitations of its on-premise counterpart.

Online means unlimited data access from multiple computers, better collaboration, no infrastructural cost and superior data security.

Scaling up an on-premise software involves the buying and deploying of new servers, purchase and installation of new hardware, paying for the maintenance of the hardware, addition of CPUS, memory or storage to a single computer etc. This is both hefty and downtime-inducing as opposed to a cloud-based service where the sole requirement of scaling up is upgrading your package to a higher storage capacity. All operations on the software end are taken care of by your remote server.

Quick Invoice and Credit Notes

You should be able to expedite tasks, especially when they come in bulk, like invoicing. A quick invoice and credit notes feature should allow you to fill in just the basic details to generate standard invoices. It should also allow you to split invoices and credit notes and allocate partial receipts and payments to customers and suppliers.

Billable Time Tracking

You may be working on one or more customer projects and need to log your time and mileages on the projects. An accounting software with time tracking allows you to set up customer projects, hourly work rates and mileage rates. You can also log the time and milestones achieved on project work.

Import features

In case you can’t download bank statements to your accounting software, you can import bank feed from your bank portal using a CSV file. Other types of data import should include product and customer/supplier details, invoice and credit notes details.

CRM and Sales

Customer relationship management and Sales are ideally parts of ERP and practice management. But an accounting software that exists in combination with these features can provide you a consolidated evaluation of your books in association with customer behaviour. You should be able to maintain customer log, track prospects at various stages of conversion, compartmentalize profit making products viz-a- viz customers, get comprehensive sales analysis, data mining and many more. This could be useful to both businesses and accountants. Accountants can create better budget for their customers based on sales trend.

Stock Management

Inventory management is a crucial part of accounting. Before getting a tool make sure it is equipped with auto features such as assignment of unique identification numbers to incoming and outgoing stocks and stock adjustments. It should also be able to auto-update stock figures based on purchase order, purchase invoice, sales order and the likes.

Look for these features before buying an accounting solution to accomplish tasks with ease.