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How to Choose the Right Data Capture Solution
Businesses that seek ways to streamline their accounting and finance processes may have come across service providers offering shared or outsourced accounting services. Naturally, it makes one wonder about the differences between the two and their respective advantages or disadvantages. Most importantly, are they as effective as they claim to be in streamlining the accounts payable (AP) processes? Let’s take a look.
Manual back-office tasks can be a considerable drain on your business resources. They disrupt the business’ finance function and decrease the accounts payable efficiency. And while shared accounting services and outsourced accounting services differ from each other, they share a common goal - to expedite these tasks and eliminate redundancy.
Resultantly, both the shared and outsourced accounting models offer the following basic advantages:
That being said, let us individually take a look at shared and outsourced accounting services:
As the name indicates, shared accounting services acts as an internal business operation or function that serves throughout the organization. It operates on a shared delivery model wherein the shared services (finance and accounting, in this case) get distributed across business units. Apart from the service, the responsibilities and accountabilities are also shared amongst the teams and/or beneficiaries.
Unlike shared accounting services, where a service provider is an internal unit, outsourced accounting services deal with external vendors. In this model, all the finance and accounting tasks are handed over to an external organization.
In the long run, shared accounting services are a worthy investment. Since we have highlighted how shared accounting services possess a marginal advantage over outsource accounting, let’s examine the various opportunities offered by shared services accounting.
As per the popular advice on CFO.com, reliable shared accounting services must possess the following characteristics:
Docsumo offers all of the above and more! We provide AI-powered, cognitive, end-to-end automated shared services accounting that takes shared accounting to a whole new level. Our shared accounting services can eliminate inefficiencies in your finance and accounting processes in no time.
The centralized data processing center utilizes RPA to collect invoice data and make this information readily available in real-time. Resultantly, your AP teams are no longer caught in copy-pasting and manual data entering jobs. At the same time, the AI machinery processes these invoices, thereby reducing any human or clerical errors. The human component in the process is primarily for validating financial transactions.
It becomes apparent from the functioning explained above that such shared services accounting systems ensure higher data fidelity. Resultantly, all your accounting and finance operations are less prone to errors and miscalculations. The human intervention through the system of checks and balances also ensures that no errors creep into the system.