Why Use Professional Services Automation?

Professional Service Automation (PSA) is a solution that enables services organizations to manage their projects and resources better. PSA helps bring together disparate systems and make them more efficient; i.e., if the organization’s data is stored at different locations and is not consistently updated in all systems simultaneously, consolidating and reporting it can be challenging – PSA addresses this issue.

With PSA, a company can have a clear picture of all the related activities and jobs being undertaken with the advantages of efficient Management Information System (MIS), timely reporting, and quality output, hence eliminating possibilities of errors due to manual feeding of disparate data at multiple locations. Also, by switching to automated data entry, the levels of data accuracy and trust increase along with on-time access to information to support critical decision making. All service-based organizations and departments benefit immensely with implementation of professional services automation. As it provides a comprehensive view of available resources, it helps them to accurately assign resources to projects and track progress and all other parameters transparently and easily.

Thus, PSA can impact all aspects of the business. Benefits are in terms of improved business performance, streamlined operations, and faster integration of new businesses. PSA also helps maintain tight control of processes and information, streamline accounting structures, and share information to help ensure that teams adhere to corporate policies.

Further, PSA software can directly help in increasing revenue because one can automate numerous processes depending upon the nature of the business such as:

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  Time and expense entry and subsequent billing without loss of time.
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  Reconciling project and financial accounting and reporting the status.
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  Finding client, contact, employee and project information at one location.
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  Project and resource management across the company.
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  Reconciling financials for multiple currencies or projects or companies.
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  Centralizing management of operational processes.

A business can focus on growth and core functions as PSA efficiently handles all non-core and peripheral tasks. Automation of non-core functions reduces workloads and hence, helps the company to grow faster. Employee productivity is also positively impacted with PSA as employees are now able to concentrate on more productive activities.  Effective resource utilization and retention is another great benefit that the usage of the PSA software confers. Along with effective resource management, the usage of PSA software also guarantees complete client satisfaction with faster and better work. Some PSA providers like FinancialForce.com also provide a groundbreaking accounting systems which integrate seamlessly with the PSA application. Research shows that those organizations with integrated PSA and Accounting are more profitable and have higher utilization of billable employees. design that is not only easy to integrate with the current system in use but is also easy to use. This saves the employees and the organizations a lot of time which would have been otherwise used up in extensive training programs.

Professional Services Automation (PSA) delivers a complete, end-to-end solution that elevates operational performance to new levels. It increases profitability and offers unmatched client service that sets an organization ahead of the competition by integrating the financial, human, and intellectual capital aspects of project-based organizations.

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Things To Know Before Company Should Consider Accounting Outsourcing

communication and technology opens a lot of different opportunity to companies of different industries. It is because of the new way of communication that outsourcing was introduced making way for different companies to move non-core business services to third party companies located in different parts of the globe thousands of miles away. By means of this, companies can have more time in order to concentrate on the more important aspects and lessen the burden of accounting intricacies. These can be a solid base in increasing profits and hastening the growth of the business.

Accounting outsourcing is considered to be a big help to many accounting firms and different companies regardless of size and industries. It is said to be an advantageous effort and at the same time a wise choice that provides assistance and services at a very low rate yet with a remarkably productive workforce. By outsourcing accounting services companies can find assistance in managing their work efficiently and avoid unworthy expenditures.

Why outsource accounting services?

Aside from reduction of operational costs, there are several reasons why companies are outsourcing accounting services.  Some of which are provided below:

•    Accounting requirements can be handled easily by third party outsourcing providers through their expert accounting professionals.
•     Your company has the option to hire only the services that your company needs and only those that are applicable to your business. You will also have more flexibility when it comes to managing projects and number of staff.
•    You can stay away from the hassle of recruitment, hiring and training. Since accounting services are outsourced, you also don’t need to retain in-house accounting staff. All these things will be taken care of by the provider.

Indeed by means of accounting outsourcing services, companies can move freely without sacrificing the quality of services. Many companies are now opting to outsource. In fact, whether or not to outsource is no longer an issue. The real challenge is finding the right outsourcing provider that will handle your business.

Some of the guidelines when choosing a third party business partner to handle your company’s accounting services are as follows:

•    Length of operation. The length of time that the company operates somehow determines its competency. The longer the company operates means the more experience for the company. These experiences make the outsourcing firm more knowledgeable about the business.
•    Technical background. This is very important. Outsourcing providers should be technically competent. This will have an advantage in putting together a task force of competent and efficient accountants and also in providing services.
•    Financial stability. Outsourcing providers should be stable enough especially during a recession or financial hardships.
•    Security. Third party providers should ensure that there will be no pilferage of data. Tough security and confidentiality measures should be imposed properly to guard the sensitivity of your company’s accounting information.
•    Staffs’ strength of the outsourcing firm. Determine if the outsourcing providers have the pool of talent that can deliver the kind of services that your company requires.
•    There should also be political stability of the country where the outsourcing vendors are located.

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Online CRM From Salesforce

Customer satisfaction is an essential element for running a successful business. If you are wondering how to manage the relationship with your existing as well as potential customers, customer relationship management, commonly known as CRM, is the apt solution. CRM helps you manage your customers by combining customer-oriented business processes with technology. CRM also allows you to oversee and manage many other crucial aspects of your business such as company financials.  One of the most popular online CRM solutions is developed by salesforce.com.

Salesforce offers an online CRM, also known as “hosted CRM”, “SaaS (Software as a Services) CRM”, or “on-demand CRM”. It has become the order of the day with more and more companies looking forward to reap the wide range of benefits it has to offer. Salesforce CRM can be integrated with existing systems very easily without disrupting ongoing activities. The quick deployment is an important factor contributing to the success. Salesforce CRM also allows for easy customization with the point-and-click interface. It also eliminates the need to buy, deploy, maintain and upgrade hardware and software as everything can be done via Web. This independence is one of the most powerful pull-through factors convincing organizations to switch to an online CRM solution.

Accentuate the success of your business by implementing CRM solutions and use the different facets of it in multiple areas. In the sales and marketing area, you can manage a plethora of activities. Generation of leads, marketing through different channels, optimizing lead management and conversion of leads into customers can be effectively done through Salesforce CRM software. Keeping  a tabs onf all account and sales related activities, improving the productivity of the sales reps and eventually increasing the revenue of the company are some of the important functions of CRM solutions.

Another area in which CRM plays an important role is Activity Management. Each and every activity related to customers including transactions and information about customer interaction can be easily maintained and viewed with a click. This allows you to easily manage the various tasks and follow-up activities, which help you to deal with customers more confidently and ensure repeat orders.

Operations like Channel management, Web communities and a lot more has helped the CRM solutions from Salesforce.com gain market share globally. Web CRM solutions have reached new heights with easy to use interfaces, point-and-click customization and flawless CRM integration.

By leveraging Salesforce CRM, you can offer your customers exemplary service and support. You can collect customer requests and queries, assign them to the appropriate agents and thus provide the best solutions matching your customer’s needs. It also helps in escalating issues whenever required and tapping areas for service improvement. With CRM implemented, providing better service and so, keeping your customers happy and satisfied has become easier.

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Paper Overload? Steps To Transition To A Paperless Office For Your Financial Records

Computers were meant to cut down on paper but it seems we feel some sense of security by having piles of paper around or can it just be hard to break those old habits of printing everything.





Can a paperless office be in your future? Yes it can and here are a few steps that can help get you on your way.

1.         Switch to online bill pay and receiving paperless billing statements. Using your bank’s online bill pay, you can process your vendor bills online – which will also save on postage costs as well as check stock. What is great about online bill pay, you can schedule your bills in advance, which is a huge time saver, and by scheduling your payments it will save you those late fee penalties. You can also take it one step further and set up automatic payment directly from your checking account through your vendors.

 

2.         Download your monthly bank and credit card statements. At the end of the year, burn the statements onto a CD and file with your tax returns. While you are downloading those statements each month, you can email your virtual bookkeeper the statements for reconciling your accounts.

 

3.         Client invoices. Instead of printing and mailing invoices – pdf and email them. Also in QuickBooks did you know you could email your invoices directly to the client? When creating the invoice in QuickBooks, check mark at the bottom email invoice. Once you are completed with the invoice, go to File – Send Forms, you can edit your message and then click Send. For organizing these invoices, set up monthly folders on your computer and save your client invoices in the respective monthly folder. At the end of the year, burn to a CD and file with your tax returns.

 

4.         Purchase a good shredder. For sensitive files containing credit card information, bank account numbers, old vendor invoices with account information or old client project files – safely toss in the shredder. If you have a scanner, you can scan these files and toss and/or shred the paper copies. Remember though if you are saving these files to your computer to be sure to back up your computer.

 

5.         Stop unwanted junk mail. Register with Contact DirectMail.com to be removed from receiving junk mail.

 

6.         Business receipts. Travel receipts, credit card receipts or vendor invoices received in the mail can be scanned and stored in your monthly financial folder set up on your computer.  If you do not have a scanner, NeatReceipts is a mobile scanner and digital filing system. You can scan receipts, business cards, and also documents. The software included with the scanner identifies and extracts the important information from the receipts and automatically organizes it for you.

 

If you institute just a few of these steps, you will soon gain control of your paper overload plus gain some valuable desk and drawer space.

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10 Steps To Better Manage Your Bookkeeping Records

Do you cringe when you open up your QuickBooks file? You have receipts in the car, crumbled receipts in your purse or briefcase, and vendor invoices buried in the papers on your desk or email inbox. Here are 10 easy steps you can put in place today to better organize your bookkeeping records so the next time you open up QuickBooks, everything will be nicely organized for you.



1. When vendor invoices are received, enter into QuickBooks as soon as you can. Try to set up time on your calendar once a week to handle this task. Don't wait until the end of the month and most likely find yourself scrambling to locate the invoices and fitting it in to your busy schedule. By handling this task frequently, you will pay less late fees and perhaps take advantage of those vendors who offer discount pricing if paid within 10 days.



2. A simple way to manage those vendor invoices, purchase an accordion file A-Z and use this to file your vendor invoices. No need to set up individual file folders that take up valuable file space. As soon as the invoice has been paid, just file the invoice in the appropriate letter slot. If you need to locate a past invoice, all you need to do is go to that letter and you'll soon find what you are looking for. If you are converting to a paperless office, set up a file folder on your computer for Vendor Invoices and store the paid invoice in this file. You can set up a file - Vendors A - L and Vendors - M - Z. At the end of the year, copy these files onto a CD and store with your business tax files.



3. Bookkeeping rule #1: do not co-mingle personal and business expenses. Sign up for a credit card exclusively for business and one for personal expenses and get in the habit of using the correct cards. This will certainly save you a lot of headaches if you are ever audited by the IRS. It will also make it easier when the credit card statements are received and you are only looking at business expenses and not both personal and business and spending more time sifting through the charges.



4. Use online banking for bill paying. With most major banks this is a free service and the beauty of online banking, you just enter the amount of the invoice and schedule the invoice for payment before the due date. Just don't forget to enter the transaction into QuickBooks. The benefits of online bill pay - saves you postage costs and also by scheduling before due dates, saves on those late fees.



5. Reconcile your bank statements monthly. Try setting up time on your calendar the week the statement is received. If you have been disciplined to enter your transactions each week, this should not be a time consuming process.



6. Credit card purchases need to be entered into QuickBooks on either a daily or weekly basis. When your credit card statement is received, you reconcile the statement similar to how you reconcile your bank statement.



7. Keep your chart of accounts simple. If you have multiple income streams you may want to set up income accounts for each product or service. This will allow you to monitor sales each month when you review your Profit & Loss report. For your expense accounts, keep it simple. Remember the more accounts you have, the more time you will spend in deciding which account to use.



8. When hiring new employees or contracting with new subcontractors, make sure they submit a W4 or W9 form. Establish a procedure to receive the forms before their first payment is made. Remember to enter their tax information into QuickBooks when the form is received. This will make preparing W2s and 1099s a less stressful task in January.



9. If you have a PayPal account, you need to create a bank account for PayPal similar to how your checking account is set up. This account will need to be reconciled each month as well. PayPal allows you to download monthly financial reports for reconciling the account.



10. If you find you just do not have the time and you are still stressed with your bookkeeping, contract with a virtual bookkeeper. This will allow you time to do the things you excel at and pass the task on to some who enjoys bookkeeping. If you do not know where to find a virtual bookkeeper, contact your accountant and ask if they can recommend a bookkeeper or ask other business owners who assist's them with their bookkeeping.

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Reducing Time To Close With Accounting For Salesforce

Accounting is a complex, statutory activity for all organizations – small or medium, single or multi-company and local or international. Currency conversion, taxation, regional compliances and legal obligations add to the multitude of accounting tasks, increasing effort and time to close accounting activities and year-end operations.


Using a cloud accounting system that works seamlessly with your CRM, such as Salesforce, can help manage the differences between local and international statutory requirements. Conversion of currency, taxes, and duties are a breeze, helping faster global roll-outs. This distinctive and powerful application helps organizations gain unparalleled visibility of their businesses across global locations. All the business data is accessible in real time with all the necessary financial reports.


Your cloud accounting app can work as a perfect complement to Salesforce CRM and together they offer end-to-end CRM to accounting solutions leading to excellent efficiency and economies of scale.


What to expect

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  Real-time global visibility:Access to global business data in real-time gives top management visibility and control.


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  Streamlined processes: Smooth and easy flow of all processes accelerates cash flow.


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  Financial automation:Automation in accounting considerably reduces account closure time.


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  Control over multiple currencies: Support of multiple currencies and their management maintains currency exchange rates to arrive at sales roll-ups.


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  Improved cash flow:Tracks financial data through the entire business lifecycle.


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  Full-accrual accounting in the cloud: Enables 100% native, full-accrual accounting in the cloud.


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  End-to-end accounting: General ledger, billing & cash receipts, accounts payable & cash disbursements, and project accounting done.


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  Savings in cost: All back-end operations can be consolidated in one location using cost-efficient resources with the help of real-time access to global business data.


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  Personalization:Role based user dashboards allow personalization and design of resource planning, time and expense, and financial reports by the user.


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  Instant access to operations:Drill-down feature allows instant access to transactions.


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  Bridge accounts and sales: Connect sales and accounts through automated billing.


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  Business metrics: Leverage analytics to measure and monitor business activities and transactions.

Start working smarter, not harder – minimize backend efforts and increase efficiency with cloud accounting for Salesforce.


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FinancialForce Accounting is a comprehensive and innovative financial management system that takes a fresh approach to a traditional business function. This online accounting application combines the power of the Force.com cloud with a groundbreaking accounting system design. FinancialForce Accounting is native to Salesforce CRM.

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How An Affiliate Feed Can Help Begin A Internet Shop

Starting a web store is easy if you have the right internet marketing strategies and have garnered and online presence to gain online consumers. For beginners in the online businesses, a great way to get your online business working is by having an affiliate feed. Having one makes it easier to market your products or services online because your products and services, even your website is being promoted by an affiliate feed.


Most online businesses entrepreneurs do not know about data feeds, which is why they have a hard time gaining consumers and online presence. These can be used by anyone; these are online merchants that will sell your products to contacts and consumers that are within their sphere of influence. An affiliate feed is important to help make an online business work. Most buyers or consumers who are looking to purchase online products search data feeds. These affiliate data feeds help people find the products that they are looking for and the merchant who is selling these products and or services.


A good thing about an affiliate feed is that it can build its data feed into individual pages. So for entrepreneurs, your products and services are well promoted because people who want to view your and purchase your products can simply check the pages or the data feed of an affiliate feed and simply view the specifications of the product prices and even reviews-if the dealer allows reviews to be posted about the product. This is why an affiliate feed is important to most online merchants.


Gaining online presence in the cyber world with millions of users and entrepreneurs is a hard business. There are online social networking sites that may aid you in selling your business to people online but with all the competition, your worst competitor is anonymity. Businesses that are well-known that start online selling won't have that much problem inquiring and starting their own internet marketing strategy-for one thing they have made a name in the business and it is easier to engage people that are well aware of your company than for those who will start out anew. This is why there are affiliate sites to help beginners. Most data feeds have the capability of promoting your products and services to millions of consumers. Another good thing about an affiliate feed is that consumers trust these feeds.


For new online businesses, online internet marketing may cost. Businesses that decide on purchasing their own domain name for their website shells out money for the rights of their website and more likely a web programmer to make the site interactive. Good thing an affiliate feed can cost nothing. Most affiliate feeds are free and do not cost anything for entrepreneurs who do not want to spend too much on the marketing of their products. It is wise to choose free affiliate feeds because these free affiliate data feeds since work the same way as a paid affiliate data feed the only difference is free affiliate sites have millions of products, which makes it a little harder for users to come across your product from the other choices available.

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