If the past six months have taught businesses around the world anything, it’s the importance of managing their cash flow.
A business needs cash to deal with unexpected expenses or situations, invest in infrastructure and expansion, hire new employees, purchase equipment and launch new products. A lack of cash means less investment and potentially missed opportunities. Late payments, delayed purchases and increasing debt could force the business into redundancies and shutting down some operations.
Managing cash has always been important, but all too often, the process fails due to poor financial management. There are two areas where businesses can significantly improve their cash flow management with the right automation tools – the monthly close and bank reconciliations.
NetSuite has added new capabilities to continue to help you do this with auto create posting transactions from bank imports and international banking integration.
Automating Financial Processes is Becoming Essential
Infrequent bank reconciliations can leave you with an inaccurate view of how much cash you have in the bank, which could have painful consequences for your business.
Automated bank feeds in your accounting system can reduce the manual effort in a few simple steps, vastly reducing the time it takes to match your bank data to your transactions.
The frequency with which you need to reconcile bank statements will depend on your volume of transactions. One hundred transactions per day is a good starting point to reconcile daily. With automation, the more frequently you reconcile your bank statements, the easier it is each time. A daily schedule will actually save you time and give you greater control over finances.
Cash visibility and predictability are vital for any business, especially fast growing businesses with limited access to cash and/or financing. Achieving this requires a cash management solution that minimises latency, reduces the risk of data entry errors and streamlines bank reconciliation.
NetSuite Cash Management Capabilities
Forward-thinking businesses are looking to automate and shorten the monthly financial close and take advantage of instant updates to financial accounts and data for immediate accurate reporting. Accelerating the close process helps leaders respond rapidly to changing business and economic conditions, and gives the finance team more time to focus on strategic activities.
NetSuite has extended the support for the Bank Feeds SuiteApp from the United States and Canada to now include Europe[1} , which allows businesses to link their bank and credit card accounts and automatically imports transactions and account balances from financial institutions directly into NetSuite, providing real-time access to cash balances.
The Bank Feeds SuiteApp provides users with automated updates to cash balances to help them monitor and manage their cash flow needs with better accuracy and predictability, and can be updated at any time with a simple click.
Once your banking data is imported into NetSuite, the intelligent matching engine matches your bank data to your transactions in NetSuite to automate reconcilation. The combination of system and user-defined rules automatically match the majority of your banking data with your transactions in NetSuite, leaving the user to match any remaining exceptions or create posting transactions using their imported bank data. Importing, comparing and reconciling your banking data is now faster and easier.
Watch the NetSuite On Air Now financials product keynote, Smart Financials for Today and Tomorrow, to learn more about new financial capabilities that can be found in NetSuite. Register at NetSuite On Air(opens in new tab).
1. The integration for European banks is covered by PSD2 Open Banking regulation.