ACCOUNTING SYSTEM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Building a good accounting system involves choosing the right software, defining responsibilities of personnel, putting in place controls to minimise risk of fraud or error, and implementing measures to ensure data is captured and information flows through the system efficiently.

At Wigepa, we specialise in helping businesses design, build and maintain systems to achieve their aims and provide the correct information to management and meet all compliance obligations.

Whether your business is established and looking to update, modernise or grow your existing systems, or you’re starting a new business and want to have the right system in place from day one, we can help!

As a business starts to grow, the accounting system needs to grow and develop at the same rate. This may mean finance staff are recruited, or the finance function is outsourced.

Typically, the volume and/or complexity of transactions will be ramped up, and this is often where we see business owners in most need of support. As the ‘money in, money out’ nature of the accounts starts to move on to something more complex, the need for specialist expertise increases quickly. At the same time, having easy access to good quality information to support management in running the business also takes on added importance.

Often, a growing business will find itself needing to develop their system, but not having the knowledge or skills to be able to do so in-house. Again, this is where Wigepa can step in and assist. Initially we would conduct a review of the current arrangements, look at what the business needs immediately and what it is I expected to need in both the short and medium term, and recommend a solution to meet those immediate needs as well as having built-in scalability.

Many businesses now have a need for more functions than cloud accounting packages can provide, and are therefore using third-party products to form part of their system. API technology allows multiple products to be integrated together, allowing the business to choose the ‘best of breed’ product for each core requirement. Typical areas where third party integrations are used along with cloud accounting software include:

• Online sales platforms
• Stock/inventory management
• Invoice / receipt entry (OCR)
• Payment collection
• Sales ledger control
• Cashflow forecasting
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Time recording / invoicing

Choosing the right add-on product(s) and then linking them to your existing system (or building into a new one) is crucial, which is something Wigepa can guide you through.

Sometimes, ‘off-the-shelf’ accounting packages do not quite meet the needs of the business. It is becoming increasingly viable for small businesses to build systems with bespoke integrations through API technology, and products such as Zapier.

Systems like these can allow access to benefits which have in the past only been available to big businesses with big budgets, allowing data links and logical programming to be put in place between systems, such as generating an invoice in MIO  CRM  when a sale takes place online, or creating a workflow task in a CRM system when an email is received.

We have experience of building integrated systems for clients, as well as developing systems for use in our own business.

Management of a finance team in a larger company can be very challenging, both in terms of implementing systems and managing staff (and sometimes staff turnover).

At Wigepa we have experience of managing accounts departments, and providing project-based consultancy services for example to conduct a system migration, train staff or carry out specific reporting assignments for directors.