A round of applause, please! The time has come to celebrate another year of one of the most forgotten back-office operations—finance and accounting.
The Institute of Finance and Management’s very own Finance and Accounting Appreciation Week is September 23-27, 2024. IOFM knows that finance and accounting are incredibly important to a business’s success, and it’s here to give endless high-fives.
To keep the wheels turning, businesses require checks and balances in finance. While many might celebrate Finance and Accounting Appreciation Week with wine and cheese or cupcakes, most CFOs and Controllers prefer to celebrate with something that truly matters to them: measurable efficiency and cold hard results.
To echo our “hoorahs!”, here are six fiscally responsible ways to celebrate F&AA Week 2024:
1. Eliminate Mundane Tasks
Automation removes human hands—which are error-prone devices—from moving money around.
There’s just too much risk in subjecting finances to human error. From vendor onboarding to keying in invoices and cutting checks, costs at this level drain productivity, auditability, and profitability.
Instead, use those valuable resources on more constructive and strategic efforts—and leave the busy work to the machines.
2. Accelerate Financial Close and Reporting
Accelerating financial close is paramount—gaining back three-to-four days allows employees to focus on more mission-critical initiatives. They also earn back the work-life balance they need and deserve.
The extra time leads to increased visibility that informs decisions and planning efforts for the next quarter. Now, finance teams have more time to breathe and think about what they will do on their freed-up weekends.
3. Reduce Payment Errors
When you make a supplier payment error, suppliers take notes on your recovery time.
Returned checks, failed wire transfers, and more bring with them a process of deciphering and investigating errors, notifying the supplier, working with the bank to recover funds, and so on. It’s a painstaking process for finance teams and a frustrating situation for suppliers.
For a cross-border payment, finance teams are going through the weeds of turmoil. Delays in different time zones, language hurdles, and repayment are hectic and stressful. The end-to-end hiccup robs finance teams of valuable work hours and derails them from daily workflows.
4. Lockdown Accounting Systems
Manual workflows can easily create a hectic atmosphere, leaving finance teams to run around like headless chickens.
Who approved that invoice? Who authorized this transaction? Who has access to make a payment? These are just some of the questions finance teams deal with daily.
Controllers and CFOs are reliable and trustworthy corporate officers who achieve the impossible. But everyone in an organization should be able to complete an auditable payables-related activity. Keeping up your financial guard is critical to the part of the business that sends funds out.
5. Strengthen Vendor Relationships
How do you get in your vendors’ good graces?
Beyond overpaying, you can pay them quickly and effectively. With the right payables solution, you can secure relations with your suppliers and ensure they keep coming back for more.
6. Cultivate Your Employees
It’s no secret that COVID-19 radically changed how people work, and finance is no exception.
When finance teams started working from home, new challenges quickly stacked up, leaving them to work far beyond 5 PM. The lockdown made new standards ring loud and clear: businesses must safeguard their employees with a proper work-life balance. And this is no exception for the finance team. After all, finance is what keeps your business running.
Leading businesses conquered COVID conditions by cultivating their employees’ skills and talents. To achieve this, you need to have your finger on the pulse of industry trends and ensure your business is moving forward by leveraging new technologies.
With the Great Resignation persuading individuals to leave their long-term jobs and partake in more self-fulfilling opportunities, employees have made it clear that they now work on their own terms. To ensure employee retention, your business should provide educational development, such as industry conferences and workflows, to boost professional skills.
Finance employees have a reputation for working themselves to the bone, and they need time off. To give thanks, companies are increasingly offering more mental health and personal days. Additional PTO shows that you value and prioritize your employees’ work-life balance.
Gratitude in Finance
With the world becoming more and more digital, so are businesses. This year, we celebrate Finance and Accounting Appreciation Week by walking the walk: putting finance teams front and center to drive the best results.
