As our world advances through the 4th Industrial Revolution, many companies are realizing that they can utilize technology to automate manual processes. With COVID-19 forcing all of us to do more with less, using technology such as robotic process automation (RPA) helps create opportunities to devote more time to value-added work. Let’s explore some of the ways in which RPA can help take the robot out of the human as it relates to financial processes.

Processing Invoices

Many employees spend countless hours entering data from invoices into a system for additional processing. Further, errors in transcribing this data from paper to system may result in delayed or incorrect payments. In order to have a more seamless and accurate process, RPA can help by automating the input of data, preparing reconciliations, and even making certain decisions for processing the invoices. Your digital workforce will follow all the same rules any human would, but without any of the errors for the repetitive tasks – thereby allowing the human workforce time to focus on analyzing and managing your cash flow.

Running Payroll

Reconciling data is a critical component of a successful payroll run – and that’s a perfect application for RPA in that it avoids the painful efforts to compile and compare spreadsheets and reports. “Fat-finger” errors are also avoided as data can be easily validated and transferred between interfaces – automating as much as 65% of manual processes involved in payroll processing. 

Month-End Closing

Any accountant will likely attest to the fact that the month-end close requires manual verification and reconciliation of account balances in order to generate financial statements. Further, these time-consuming tasks require diligent attention to detail at the same time that other work typically stops – resulting in stress and frustration. Using RPA to automate some of these repeatable tasks enables a shift towards more value-added analytical work.

Nearly any rules-based process presents as a good candidate for applying RPA. As businesses look to become more efficient, RPA can help by freeing up time spent on repetitive tasks to work on value-added activities. Remember the old school Excel Macro? RPA is that – but it works across everything on your computer.