Essential Accounting Features for Financial Services

If you’re a financial services provider, delivering effective financial insight and management hinge on both expertise and your accounting tool. But how do you choose from so many accounting platforms and ERPs available? Which one will help you distinguish your level of service and optimize how you meet customer demands? The answer lies in whether the platform has key features best suited for financial services.

Key Features Financial Services Need in an Accounting Platform

Accounting technology is pivotal for modern financial services operations. As organizations grow in their use of cloud-based technology, their demand for faster, more actionable data is also increasing. To remain competitive, you need a platform that’s equipped to handle bulk transactions and provide real-time data for your customers. As you explore solutions, these are features you’ll definitely need.

Quick Consolidation Features

Time is money. When you’re dealing with many different customers you need to be able to close the books fast to prevent delays. Systems that utilize automation, particularly click-through steps instead of complicated code, highly expedite core financial processes. This allows your staff to maintain an efficient workflow and not fall behind! Besides delivering consolidations in record time, this helps provide time-sensitive financial insight immediately when customers need it. 

Audit Trail Functionality

Audit trail features give the entire accounting process enhanced accuracy. You’ll be able to pinpoint and analyze all the details surrounding customer finances. This solves problems faster and helps you provide better financial insight. Everything from consolidations to financial reporting becomes enhanced because you have a way to access specific information right away. It’s a built-in quality assurance device. If issues do happen, you can easily retrace your steps to resolve them. Audit trail is also critical for many compliance regulations and holds many other benefits.  

Flexible, Multi-Dimensional Reporting and Dashboards

Many accounting programs offer core reporting features but lack the flexibility in how you can collect, organize, and analyze data. Flexibility is important because every successful company utilizes custom financial reporting. You need to be able to control and modify every reporting dimensions for each customer. 

Look for reporting features that let you dictate rows and columns to compare and analyze finances in a way that fully addresses how the customer operates. Adding custom calculations and formatting lets you target specific data for both financial and management reports.Your system should also offer highly visual, customizable dashboards for you to examine data.  

High-Level Automation

In addition to flexibility, automation is going to help you streamline the bulk of your workload. This also helps you get results to your customers faster! Accounting Seed utilizes click-not-code automation that enables you to do multiple functions with just a button click. Features like this let users accomplish multiple tasks more efficiently. Automation also helps data remain error-free due to the reduced need for manual entry. Additionally, you should also be able to automate billings and other operations on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis as you choose.  

Multi-Currency Feature

If your clients have international customers, your accounting system should be able to work with multiple currencies to bill customers and receive payments from abroad. This is critical for paying foreign vendor invoices easily. You should also have functions that let you record gains or losses based on fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates for accurate accounting. 

Advanced Ledger Management

As a financial services business, you need an accounting system that can enable multiple ledgers so you can manage multiple customer’s finances. To save time validating information, choose a system with a ledger account inquiry feature to help you find exactly what you need. If you work with nonprofits, make sure the ledger can support trust accounting.

Security and Control

Financial data security must be top of mind after your customers have entrusted you with their accounting and sensitive data. External and internal threats are rife with cloud-based accounting. While outside hackers are usually first to mind when considering security threats, In 2016 alone, 60% of all cyber attacks were conducted by employees. Security also prevents errors made by staff not authorized to make changes. 

Choose the accounting solution with highly secure infrastructure and encryption options to protect your data from hacking. For example, Native Salesforce solutions like Accounting Seed inherits the highly resilient features of Salesforce. Your solution should also provide internal control features to let you manage system access. This prevents any data corruption and theft from within your own organization. 

Accounting Seed for Financial Services

Accounting Seed, combines flexibility, detail, and automation to provide a solution that’s optimized for financial services. Our solution was even designed by a CPA with experience working with various solutions and saw a better way to manage your accounting! With Accounting Seed, you’ll manage multiple ledgers and billing cycles without ever leaving the platform. Forget having to flip through various programs and tabs, or relying on spreadsheets.

 All your accounting data can be seamlessly and securely managed in a single interface. Our platform lets you monitor profitability, account transactions, and manage profit and loss in one system that lets you customize every facet of your individual accounts. Our reporting features let you capture every detail needed to make key decisions and effectively pilot the financial management of your clients.