Why financial activities during COVID-19 need to be more efficient

As a business owner, you likely already know that efficiency is key to maximising profits and keeping a trustworthy reputation. But what is more important than ever is increasing the efficiency of the financial activities that you’ve likely been doing for years. During a time when your business has likely taken a financial hit, it is necessary to reopen its doors with a smart approach that brings you optimal revenue.

To help start you on the journey to improving efficiency, below are top ways to tweak internal financial activities.

Automate tasks

To stay competitive in the business world today, your organisation must be ready to automate many money-related activities. For example, send out pay stubs automatically to employees rather than distributing them manually. Invest in cloud payroll to streamline processes, reduce costs, and, above all, improve efficiency. Managing your valuable employees just got a lot easier with intuitive software.

Provide training

While spending time on training employees might sound counter-productive, it is helping to increase your organisation’s profits over the long run. When your team understands how best to use accounting software and what are the optimal financial policies, then they are more likely to improve in their performance. There are many training options, from virtual conferences to one-on-one conversations on Skype, and the outcomes are beneficial to everyone in the organisation.

Improve communication

Provide clear expectations for your accounting team. Doing so is essential as only then will they know what their goals are and how to act in line with company policies and procedures.

Also, be open to hearing their suggestions about how to improve the organisation as they know finances the best. You might even start the dialogue yourself to get their advice on how to increase efficiency; your intelligent team might come up with ideas in their home offices that you hadn’t thought of yet.

Bolster the dialogue between departments

To be at their best, your financial experts need data from across the organisation. Asking for numbers from other teams can be a process that takes significant time. To help improve communication between departments, and, in turn, boost their efficiency, host an interdepartmental meeting monthly.

During this meeting, encourage departments to speak about their current projects and how other departments can help them. It will likely be a virtual meeting, of course, when you have a remote workforce and are looking to reopen business doors.

Creating policies that work well

Many companies lose money yearly by having ineffective policies. Thus, it is integral that your business has clear policies that work well when it comes to payments, especially during COVID-19 when many people are working remotely. For your staff, it’s imperative too that they process contracts within a reasonable time.

From the customer perspective, if they are late making a payment, then have a policy in place about when and how to send reminders to them to pay the outstanding amount. Be gentle about these reminders as it is a sensitive time for many during the pandemic.

Increasing efficiency from a financial perspective during COVID-19

While change is not always easy, it can bolster annual revenue and spur growth, which makes it well worth the effort. The suggestions above are great ones for a business to use to improve their speed of financial activities, from automating procedures to increasing the level of communication between departments.

Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for improving operations as each business is unique. However, you will find what works for your organisation and also how to customise the activity over time.