What Are the Key Features to Look for in Accounting Software for Accountants?

Key features to look for in accounting software for accountants include ease of use and features, as well as overall bookkeeping capabilities and the sureness of security. Finding the right accounting software to suit your daily working activities can be extremely beneficial for an accountant’s workflow and client management, as well as their ability to access the accurate financial information of their clients.

If you are an accountant who has been considering accounting software to improve your firm or is looking for a new product, below we’ll expand on some of the most important features we believe at Pulse should be a part of your software and how Pulse can provide them.

Real-Time Financial Insights:

Financial situations can change quickly, and that’s why it’s important to be able to access the real-time data of your clients’ latest numbers. Through them, you can help make informed decisions as you’ll have a clear view of their financial trends and can give advice based on that. Real-time insights will also allow you to track your client’s cash flow and expenses to keep on top of their revenue trends without having to wait for end-of-the-month reports or manual updates.

With our accounting software, Pulse, you can access information on your clients’ key metrics, including cash flow, profit margins, and expenses, and this will help you to stay on top of their financial health in real-time. This means you can use Pulse to address issues the moment they turn up, whether that is spotting a liquidity dip or an increase in your clients’ expenses that could mean a problem for them. Through the use of our intuitive hub, you can respond faster and help your clients make smarter decisions that will benefit the long-term growth of their business.

Automation and Monthly Management Accounts:

Another important feature that we speak to accountants about regarding accounting software is to be able to automate your routine processes, such as generating financial reports, to both free up your time and ensure your clients receive the important financial information that they need to keep their business running healthily. Automation also reduces the risk of human error on both your client’s end and your own firm, ensuring the reports you deliver are accurate and always delivered on time.

We have designed and built Pulse with these exact thoughts in mind, automating the generation of monthly management accounts, including income statements and cash flow reports, to help you and your clients stay up to date without the stresses of needing to complete frequent manual inputs. By using our tools, you can ensure your clients maintain the up-to-date financial information they need to make better decisions for their business.

Personalised Client Solutions:

It is not unusual for an accountant to be approached by clients who work in very different industries and business sectors, and each will have their own specific financial needs and challenges that reflect this. This is why an important financial software feature for us is the ability to tailor the software to meet the unique requirements of each of your different clients. Whether it is financial reports or loan structuring advice, personalised solutions are highly beneficial.

For our own software, we allow accountants to provide personalised financial solutions, and this is achieved through data-driven insights that reflect each client’s financial situation. We can use Pulse’s ability to analyse cash flow and profitability as an example, which you can use to customise your advice to suit your client’s business model. If one client is struggling in their sector with cash flow, you might advise them to reduce their expenses, or perhaps they are struggling with a loan that can be addressed. Every actionable insight that Pulse provides makes the advice you can offer more meaningful.

KPI Tracking and Benchmarking:

An accounting software’s ability to help accountants track key performance indicators (KPIs) should be a top priority for accountants, as it will help you benchmark a business’s performance against industry standards. From revenue growth to profitability, the more KPIs you can track, the more effective the advice that you can give to your clients will be. Benchmarking also allows you to compare your clients’ performance with their closest competitors.

With Pulse, you can track KPIs and access benchmarking tools, which help you measure and analyse your clients’ business performance. You can help them set realistic, data-driven goals, and if your clients are lagging behind industry standards, you can use our portal to identify the causes and suggest corrective actions before they become larger problems.

Integration:

Integration with existing financial systems is also a must-have feature for any financial software, as it allows your clients to integrate their Open Accounting and Open Banking software, granting you access to a much broader range of real-time financial data. Through these integrations, you can view everything from bank transactions and account balances to overall business expenses, eliminating the need for manual data entry and ensuring you and your clients always have access to the financial information that they need.

Our platform, with the permission of your clients, can integrate with their Open Accounting and Open Banking software, granting you x-ray vision into their finances, streamlining your workflow and ensuring that you and your clients are working with the most up-to-date figures. It means your advice is accurate, and the decisions your clients make with that advice are the most effective for achieving success.

How Can Accounting Software Benefit Accountants in Their Daily Work?

Accounting software can bring many benefits to accountants in their daily work, from time-saving thanks to automation to its ability to detect fraud in a client’s business finances. We are often contacted by accountants who are looking to lessen the stress of an expansive workload and figure out how they can work smarter. Our solution to this is Pulse, however, there are many great tools out there that can also be beneficial.

If you’re interested in looking deeper into how accounting software could benefit you and your firm, keep reading, and we’ll break down what we believe at Pulse to be the biggest benefits that accounting software can bring you and highlight exactly how our own platform can achieve this.

Time-Saving:

Possibly the largest benefit that accounting software brings to an accountant and an entire firm is the freedom that automation delivers, eliminating the necessity of most manual tasks, which means you can focus more on either getting new clients in or having the time to give more attention to your current clients. Once things like your monthly management accounts and financial reports are automatically consolidated, it also removes any chances of human error finding its way into your clients’ numbers, so any advice you give will be based on accurate numbers.

Pulse is capable of automating routine but important tasks such as the creation of balance sheets or profit and loss statements, allowing you to shift your focus away from data entry and onto more useful tasks for your clients, such as analysing their financial data trends. In all, it means you can handle higher volumes of work more efficiently and with half the stress.

Better Decision Making:

Because good quality accounting software can integrate with Open Accounting and Open Banking software, it means your firm will have access to the real-time financial data of your clients, and this means that, instead of working with outdated reports or having to wait for monthly client updates, you’ll always have access to the most up to date information. It means the advice you give and the decisions your clients make based on it can be delivered much faster and more accurately thanks to it being up to date.

Using an example from our Fintech, Pulse, you’ll be able to view instant updates to your clients’ cash flow or revenue trends, as well as numerous other KPIs, making it easier for you to offer important and timely advice. If a client’s expenses are suddenly and unexpectedly rising, our software detects it, and through analysis and reports, you can alert them and suggest the corrective actions they need to take before anything gets worse.

Improved Client Relationships:

The better you can serve your clients with useful information and advice, the better your relationships are going to be, as well as customer feedback, helping to spread the name of your brand and ultimately bring in more clients. Through accounting software, you can also help deliver more personalised advice to your clients thanks to the access you’ll have to their business accounts and numbers.

Pulse delivers on this by providing tailored insights into your client’s financial data, generating actionable feedback that is specific to the situation of each of your clients. If, for example, one of your clients is struggling with their cash flow, through our analytics hub, you can assess what is causing the struggle and then offer personalised advice based on that specific hurdle. It is well known that happy clients are more likely to stay with their accountants over the long term, and using our tool, you can deliver the actionable insights that they need to maintain a healthy business.

Risk Management and Fraud:

You can also use accounting software to help clients manage any financial risks while protecting their businesses from fraudulent activities. Pulse, in particular, is effective in this because our service will continuously monitor your client’s financial transactions, flagging unusual activity to help both you and your clients detect any potential fraud early. You can also use Pulse to identify financial risks, such as liquidity shortages or overspending, that your client may be unaware of and then take that data to present solutions for them before they worsen.

Across the board, you should aim to find accounting software that will streamline your processes and automate manual tasks, so you’re free to build better relationships with your customers. Pulse can help you achieve these things while improving your access to accurate, real-time data and accounts that are protected against potential fraud. We’ve built our fintech from the ground up with these things in mind to enable accountants and other professionals to work more efficiently and confidently during their workdays.

What Are Some Top-Rated Accounting Software Options for Accountants?

The main features that make accounting software so useful are its ability to access real-time data, automate financial reporting, and help maintain financial security for the user. However, it is also the ease of use that will set one brand apart from its competitors.

When we built Pulse, our aim was to create a robust yet intuitive platform aimed at SMEs across all industries and sectors and individuals within those sectors, whether that is a small business owner, an accountant, or a business advisor. Our Fintech can integrate with both Open Accounting and Open Banking software and, with permission, access key financial data to generate actionable insights that are invaluable to both an advisor and a business owner.

Below, we’ll break down why we believe Pulse is currently one of the top-rated accounting software available on the market, and to keep things balanced, we will also discuss some other brands that we know are solid choices for both accountants and their clients.

Pulse:

Our software can provide you with real-time insights into the financial health of your clients and has the ability to bring you instant access to their key financial metrics, such as cash flow and revenue trends. These are all centralised through our intuitive visualisation boards, which we have designed with simplicity in mind. With this, you can make informed decisions for yourself and your clients and offer them advice at any time, rather than having to wait for manual updates and end-of-the-month reporting. The real-time data we can deliver will also benefit you when you are working with multiple clients, as it means you can react quickly to any changes in their finances and offer them timely advice if things change.

Pulse also excels in automation, which is beneficial for both accountants and business owners when it comes to creating monthly management accounts. Through the automation of important metrics like balance sheets and cash flow reports, you can focus on other areas of your workload, analysing your clients’ data or offering them advice. With automation, Pulse’s AI-driven insights also remove any chance of human error, so the advice that you offer will be accurate and reliable, helping to develop your client relationships further.

Our Fintech’s robust software also makes it incredibly effective at fraud detection and risk management, as it will continuously monitor your clients’ finances and transactions, offering real-time alerts for any suspicious activity and adding an extra layer of security to any business.

Other Top Software:

We have full confidence that our own software can offer businesses and their advisors everything they need to achieve growth and maintain ongoing financial stability; however, for individuals who may wish to shop around for different options, we suggest you check out our blog, which explores the best accounting software currently available on the market in 2024. In it, we take a look at some of the biggest names in the industry, including Quickbooks, Crunch, Xero and Sage, to get a better idea of what they do and what their pricing is.

Why Pulse Stands Out:

What we believe sets Pulse apart from our peers is our focus on providing all the tools you’ll need in a single, easy-to-navigate financial analytics hub, enabling you to provide personalised solutions to your client while maintaining robust risk management. Other platforms in the market may also offer general accounting functions, but our fintech has been built to go further, tracking KPIs, generating reports, and offering real-time, data-driven insights, covering the unique needs of each of your different clients.

Industry Specific Benefits:

Our insights, reports, and benchmarking tools can be used by accountants to help clients across all industries and sectors, providing a specialised experience that can be tailored to suit whatever is needed from your clients. With our benchmarking capabilities, you can also compare your clients’ performances with industry standards, offering insights into how their financial health compares to their competitors and, using that information, provide actionable recommendations that go far beyond basic financial reporting.

There are many great accounting software brands currently on the market, and accountants have many options to choose from; whether it is Pulse or other brands like Quickbooks or Xero, we advise that you take some time and research which will be most suited to your personal needs. With our focus on generating secure, data-driven advice presented through our intuitive analytics portal, we believe we can offer the best solution for accountants to help their clients grow and succeed.

How Does Cloud-Based Accounting Software Enhance Efficiency for Accountants?

Cloud-based accounting software has enhanced the efficiency of how accountants can perform in many ways, from the way they can access key financial data to their ability to scale the size of a portfolio and how they interact with their clients with this data. This shift towards cloud-based accounting and the financial technology that drives those software has meant accountants can now automate a lot of their workload to increase their own productivity. It also grants accountants access to information that means the advice and feedback they can give to their clients is far more reliable and accurate.

To expand on this subject further, we’ll cover the main key areas where we believe cloud-based software has vastly improved how efficiently accountants can operate within their firms and also how our own fintech, Pulse, can provide these benefits.

Accessibility and Flexibility:

Since the advent of cloud-based accounting, accountants no longer need to be restricted to a single space and computer where they have historically needed to work. Cloud-based technology now means that a client’s financial information can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection and at any time, bringing the flexibility of remote work to both you as an accountant and your clients.

Pulse also functions through the cloud, meaning our data portal will remain accessible to you and your clients at all times, so if a client has an urgent financial question or needs real-time advice based on our insights, you’ll have access to the necessary financial reports and can give them the help they are looking for. Through both our intuitive hub, and the ease of access to use our services, we aim to be both accessible and flexible for you and your clientele.

Up-to-Date Collaborating:

Traditional accounting methods meant there were always delays in the passing of available information between accountants and their clients. As touched on above, because that data is now accessible from anywhere, and if you have a connection, cloud-based accounting software means that you can reliably collaborate with your clients regardless of either’s situation, but more importantly, with up-to-date financial information, keeping both parties on the same page.

The centralised analytics hub we offer through Pulse means you can easily share financial reports, insights, and other recommendations with your clients in real time. If, for example, one of your clients contacts you asking for advice adjusting their cash flow strategy, you’ll have a clear picture of their finances through our portal, with KPIs broken down into easy-to-grasp infographics that can be used to present solutions to your clients that they can understand. Using Pulse to improve your real-time collaboration abilities will also improve the relationships you have with your clients, as they will know your reliable advice is available to them around the clock.

Software Updates:

Cloud-based systems are always connected to the internet, and it means that software updates become seamless and routine, ensuring platforms stay up to date with not just the technology that makes them so efficient at analysing financial data but also the security that keeps that sensitive data safe from potential cyber-attacks. With systems where updates are automated and happen in the background, it also means that you’ll always have the latest version of the software you choose to use, and as an accountant, that means you won’t have to worry about staying up to date with newer software versions, or more irritatingly, face downtime due to a system being outdated.

Enhanced Security in The Cloud:

It is likely due to the idea of how vulnerable something that is always connected to the internet is that has made the security around cloud-based accounting software so robust and strong. Most products on the market today have multiple layers of enhanced security features that ensure all the sensitive data being shared is encrypted at each end and during transit. Together, the security measures that fintech firms are required to adhere to provide their users with an extremely high level of protection against potential data breaches.

Pulse is no different, and we also use multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls to ensure that only authorised users can access any information that integrates with our fintech, offering peace of mind to our users who can work knowing their client’s financial information is fully protected.

Scalability for Growing Portfolios:

We are often approached by accountants and other advisors who have a growing number of clients and need a solution that can provide for that, and due to our connection with the cloud, Pulse can offer the ability to scale with your needs. Our infrastructure provides unlimited storage and processing power, meaning you can handle an expanding client base with certainty. You can centralise your client list in our portal and, from a single place, offer each of them the unique financial insights they need to continue growing their businesses and succeeding.

The financial technology that is available to accountants is continuously evolving and getting better, and cloud accounting, in particular, has been enormously beneficial for both business owners and professionals across all sectors of finance. Our tools have made particular use of cloud-based computing, and our continued mission to empower accountants and any other Pulse users is at the forefront of our development.

What Security Measures Should Accountants Consider When Choosing Accounting Software?

The protection of client information from data breaches, fraud, or unauthorised software access is important not just for an accountant’s reputation with their clients but also for the developers of accounting software who are required to meet a minimum standard of security by law.

Beyond the legal requirements that ensure third-party developers encrypt and secure sensitive data, there are also functions within accounting software that accountants should be aware of that actively work to detect potential fraud and discrepancies within a client’s account activity. Below, we’ll cover the primary security measures that make accounting software reliable and secure, as well as the protections that Pulse can offer.

Encryption and Data Protection:

It is through end-to-end encryption that accounting software protects the financial data of your clients, ensuring that if any data is intercepted, it remains unreadable and unusable by any unauthorised parties. We use industry-standard encryption here at Pulse, ensuring all sensitive data is completely protected both during transit through the cloud and when at its destination. Whether it is stored data or transmitted, our robust data protection software will ensure your client’s data is safe.

Multi-Factor Authentication and Access Controls:

Another important part of data security for accounting software is multi-factor authentication, or MFA, which was touched on in the above FAQ. MFA means that anyone using an accounting platform is required to verify their identity through two or more forms of authentication, and that could be anything from a password or a verification code. Adding this extra layer of protection adds a human element to data access, where even if an individual has managed to access login details, they will fail due to MFA.

Complying with Industry Standards:

Although it is a legal requirement for third-party fintech providers to meet the standards set out by organisations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), at least for countries in Europe, it can still be worth doing your due diligence on a brand before you try their products. At Pulse, we’ve built our software from the ground up with security in mind and adhere to industry standards in that regard, ensuring any sensitive data that comes through our systems is secure and encrypted, with any additional necessary updates being made to keep our security to the highest standards.

Backup and Disaster Recovery:

Another important security measure for accounting software is to ensure that any data used by third-party providers is protected in case of system failure or disaster, which covers anything from hardware problems and data deletion to cyber-attacks. All developers should have a recovery plan in place and built into their software to ensure no sensitive financial data can be lost. Another step we take at Pulse is to ensure automatic backups of client data so that in the event of a system crash or breach, all records are safely stored and can be quickly restored. By using accounting software of any kind, both accountants and business owners can be certain that their data is safely stored and protected, with no chance of it being lost or intercepted.

Monitoring and Fraud Detection:

Pulse offers its users real-time monitoring of the financial activity of your clients by analysing transaction patterns to detect anomalies that our algorithms consider indicative of fraudulent activity. This security measure is continuous, ensuring that each of your clients is protected against potential cyber threats, and anything abnormal will send an alert to both you and your client immediately. We have developed this proactive approach to fraud detection to help ensure any of our users are first protected from potential financial losses but also made fully aware of any threats, as and when they occur, to transparently reinforce the overall security of our platform.

Security measures are important for all cloud-based accounting software and for most brands, thanks to the legal regulations required of them to ensure the highest measures are taken to protect sensitive financial information. This means as an accountant, you can be certain that whichever software choice you make, your client’s data will be safe. With that said, we still think it’s important to look at what additional tools different brands offer on top of the standard protocols, such as encryption and MFA, with our real-time monitoring and fraud detection being an example. Pulse offers you and your clients comprehensive protection from the ground up, and we believe that makes us a standout option for SMEs, their accountants, and advisors.