Financial reporting is a necessary but time-consuming undertaking for most businesses. As an owner or finance manager, you likely spend numerous hours each month reconciling accounts, importing transactions, categorizing expenses, creating reports, and more. Given how hectic things can get, you’ve probably looked for ways to optimize these administrative reporting tasks so you can focus on more value-driving work.
The good news is that new financial automation technologies are making it much easier for businesses to streamline reporting. One category of tools to consider taking advantage of are bank and credit card statement converters. These platforms integrate with your financial institutions to automatically download e-statements or use optical character recognition to extract data from printed statements. Converters eliminate the need for manual data entry, automatically mapping key details from statements into formatted reports, even to upload to personal finance tools like YNAB, HoneyDue etc.
One bank statement converter I’ve had positive experiences with is Rocket Statements. I really appreciate how it automatically categorizes my various transactions using machine learning algorithms. This saves me tons of time manually labeling each expense. Additionally, Rocket Statements makes it very simple to filter and search for specific transactions across all my connected bank and credit card accounts. I can easily track spending trends, reconcile charges, and have key details at my fingertips. By handling so much of the busy work of downloading statements, entering data, classifying expenses, and generating reports automatically, Rocket Statements alleviates many of the headaches I used to deal with. I can now complete monthly reporting tasks in a fraction of the time and focus my energy on other finance priorities. While no tool is perfect, the time savings I’ve gained have made the small subscription fee worthwhile for my business. Solutions like Rocket Statements take a lot of the drudgery out of financial reporting.
Consider how much time you currently devote each month to collecting statement data, entering figures, labeling expenses with categories or subaccounts, generating initial reports, cross-checking for errors, and then finally analyzing the reports. Automation tools often reduce the hours spent on these tasks by 10-20 hours each period. Even if a subscription-based converter costs around $15 monthly, most businesses make back their investment very quickly given efficiency gains. Then the ongoing time savings drops directly to your bottom line.
The key is identifying areas in your current financial reporting processes that involve repetitive administrative work and researching automation solutions capable of taking those tediums off your plate. While bank statement converters represent one avenue to pursue in relieving reporting headaches, explore your full range of options. Cloud accounting platforms offer integration capabilities with business bank accounts. Business intelligence software exists to simplify data analysis after core reporting. Leverage solutions tailored to your unique pain points and workflow needs.
Every business leader manages the constant tug-of-war between focusing energy inward on daily operations like financials versus directing efforts outward on growth, innovation, and revenue-generating activities. Carefully selected automation tools tilt the scales in your favor, empowering finance teams to maintain excellence on reporting while unlocking capacity for you to drive strategic progress. The time and cost savings derived from technology make investing in automation for oft-overlooked back office tasks one of the most profitable moves an organization can make.