How to Cut Tedious Tasks and Seize a Strategic Finance Seat

As a B2B SaaS company, it’s important to maintain a lean, but efficient financial operation. 

However, the day-to-day operations of your finance team can often involve a large number of repetitive, manual tasks.

While these tasks may be necessary, they can significantly hinder productivity and prevent your team from focusing on higher-priority initiatives. 

This is why you need to optimize your financial workflows to cut tedious tasks and seize a strategic finance seat.

To help with that, we’ve curated this guide to help you identify these tedious tasks and explore different strategies to optimize them.

Let’s get started!

What Counts As Tedious Tasks?

Before we get into the different strategies for streamlining your processes, you need first to identify what counts as “tedious tasks.”

These tasks are usually repetitive, time-consuming, and contribute only little to your overall financial goals.

Here are some tasks you can consider optimizing for your B2B SaaS business.

Manual Data Entry

Putting information from your general ledger, billing system, or CRM into your accounting system manually can be prone to error and take time.

It requires constant attention to detail to avoid typos and inconsistencies, especially if you have high subscription volumes.

Invoice Management

Generating invoices for clients on different subscription plans and payment schedules can be time-consuming. 

This becomes even more cumbersome as the volume of invoices and subscriptions increases.

Subscription Management

Processing subscription payments, handling renewals and cancellations, and applying prorated changes require extra care and time.

This can be tedious, especially if you handle numerous subscriptions.

Revenue Recognition

It can be time-consuming following complex accounting standards to recognize revenue, like unbilled accounts receivables, for your subscription plans and billing cycles.

More so, this requires prorating your accounting for upfront payments combined with handling multi-year contracts.

Report Creation

You need to carefully gather data from different sources, format it, and ensure it’s accurate to create reports for internal stakeholders and investors. 

This report can be for customer churn analysis, monthly recurring revenue, gross margin, customer acquisition cost, or anything else.

This process can become repetitive depending on how often you create these financial reports.

Financial Analysis

Conducting a financial analysis to assess your business’ performance and identify trends can take time. You need to analyze KPIs, conduct variance analysis, and even prepare ad-hoc reports.

Regardless, this task is needed to make data-driven business decisions.

Preparation for Audits

You need to gather and organize your financial documents and records to ensure you stay compliant with regulations like ASC 606. This requires attention to detail and coordination across different departments to get all the relevant information.

Doing this manually can be time-consuming, especially if your auditor needs extensive documentation.

How to Cut Tedious Tasks: 8 Technologies to Use for Strategic Finance

Since most of these repetitive financial tasks are important, you can’t remove them but have to streamline them.

Thankfully, technology can help you automate these repetitive processes, streamline your workflows, and improve your overall efficiency.

Here are different technological solutions you can use to cut tedious tasks and seize a strategic finance seat.

1. Revenue Recognition Software

You can automate your revenue recognition schedules to reduce the risk inherent in manual processes. This ensures you stay compliant with GAAP rules and pass your audits.

With a revenue recognition software solution, you can:

• Create and automatically apply revenue recognition rules in line with your ASC 606/IFRS 15-complaint revenue policy across all your contracts.
  
  
• Automate revenue schedules and use different revenue recognition methods to recognize revenue per your policies.
  
  
• Create revenue summaries that cover your invoices, line items, reported revenue, and customers.

You can also modify revenue recognition schedules for individual customers, transactions, or contracts. Additionally, you can compare your old revenue recognition schedule with your new one. Younium with its built-in revenue recognition capabilities, seamlessly aligns with critical accounting principles and standards, including the revenue recognition principle, ASC 606 revenue recognition, and more, ensuring your SaaS business remains compliant and clear.

2. Cloud-Based Accounting Software

With a cloud-based accounting solution, you get real-time access to financial data from any device with an internet connection. 

These solutions provide:

• Collaborative access for internal teams and external stakeholders and investors to work simultaneously on financial data, fostering transparency.
  
  
• Comprehensive dashboard for a detailed view of SaaS metrics like your churn rate and customer acquisition cost.
  
  
• Subscription management capabilities for invoicing, revenue recognition, and dunning management.

These features allow you to reduce costs by eliminating the need for expensive hardware and software licenses.

You also get enhanced security for protecting your financial data and since these features are scalable, they can adapt to your business growth.

To get started, determine the features and functionalities important to your business. Then, compare different cloud-based accounting software options based on their pricing, features, and user reviews.

Once you have a preferred choice, securely move your existing financial data to the new platform.

3. Subscription Insights for Data Analysis

Subscription management tool like Younium provide you with real-time insights like this:

Image via Younium

This allows you to:

• View important indicators that tell you how your business is doing so you can make quick, informed decisions.
  
  
• Build reports and group, filter, sum, and count different data points.
  
  
• Access subscription events and net changes, like TCV, CMRR, and ACV, from such events.
  
  
• View what MRR is milestone-based, usage-based, up for renewal, or committed.

Additionally, with these insights, you get real-time access to your revenue data. This allows you to monitor your ASC 606 and IFRS 15 compliant output. And, you get a better understanding of incoming payments using cash flow forecasts. 

4. Smart Automation

Most subscription management solutions like Younium offer automation capabilities. These allow you to automate billing processes like prorating, credit notes, and usage ratings. This helps you avoid any revenue leaks.

With smart automation, you can easily:

• Import your customer’s usage rate
  
  
• Calculate the price that should be billed for specific periods
  
  
• Implement flexible billing rules for specific billing frequency, timing, alignment, proration, and delayed billing dates
  
  
• Combine multiple subscriptions by a customer into one invoice 

You can also automate invoice processing and reminders for late payments. This, in turn, helps improve your subscription management process. 

Smart automation also allows you to automatically pull important data from different sources. This includes receipts, invoices, and even bank statements. 

5. Data Visualization Tools

Data visualization tools help you transform raw data and metrics, such as committed monthly recurring revenue (CMRR) or burn rate, into visually pleasing charts, graphs, and dashboards.

Younium, for instance, offers numerous data visualization options to help you draw insights from complex data sets. Here’s an example:

Image via Younium

Data visualization tools like Younium can help you:

• Create performance dashboards for a comprehensive view of cash flow, profitability, expenses, and revenue.
  
  
• Identify trends and patterns in data to make informed financial decisions.
  
  
• Compare actual financial performance against your budget or forecast to identify deviations and understand the reasons behind them.

With data visualization tools, you can improve transparency within your organization by making financial data readily accessible.

Additionally, you spend less time interpreting data and focus more on strategic analysis and decision-making. Watch our product video to learn more how Younium supports you with our SaaS metrics and SaaS data. 

Plus, it helps improve collaboration between your team and investors or stakeholders by providing a shared visual understanding of your financial data.

Here’s how you should use such tools:

• First, define your data needs to identify the specific types of data you want to visualize and the insights you hope to gather.
  
  
• Next, explore different data visualization tools, both free and paid, with different levels of technical expertise. 
  
  
• Then, train your teams on how to interpret and use data visualizations better.

6. Subscription Management Software

These tools take away the need for multiple spreadsheets to organize your subscription. They help you create structured subscription data for a streamlined quote-to-cash process.

Additionally, you can capture every detail of your subscriptions. This includes usage fees, pay-as-you-go, renewal terms, discounts, ramp-ups, recurring fees, one-time fees, and more

You can also build your product plans and prices, whether you have flat fees or a complex tiered pricing structure.

Subscription management tool like Younium allow you to:

• Handle subscription changes like additional users, renewals, plan upgrades, or add-ons
• Track all subscription events
• Schedule billings and send reminders
• Monitor your customers’ daily billing activities to catch any unexpected changes fast

In addition, these tools allow you to create an automated approval workflow. You can route requests to designated personnel and notify them for approval. This eliminates delays and you can manage the lifecycle of your subscriptions more effectively. When picking the solution do your research right, and try a few demos before you make a call. This is essential as business are different and not every solution will fit your needs. Younium is for example, purpose built subscription management for B2B SaaS and it handles complex scenarios. It also acts as a single source of truth, what is very important for SaaS companies. 

7. Reporting Tools

Subscription management tool like Younium also offer numerous reporting tools. You can use them to create comprehensive reports with just a few clicks. 

These tools connect all your customers, invoices, payment details, revenue, and contracts within a single platform.

Such tools allow you to:

• View and analyze your customer’s billing and subscription details 
• Make calculations with up-to-date invoicing and billing records
• Group your financial data based on invoices and customers
• Produce accurate, reportable revenue projections
• Identify how individual transactions affect your recurring revenue metrics
• Highlight the drivers of expansion or contraction
• See a list of your top customers by invoices, revenue, ARR, or MRR

With these reports, you can keep track of your business and make more strategic, informed decisions.

8. Cash Flow Management Software

Subscription management tools like Younium allow you to automate your cash flow processes. These tools integrate with your CRM to speed up subscription billing and payment collection.

You can use real-time payment tracking and reconciliation solutions to streamline your cash flow operations. This allows you to reduce the likelihood of errors and navigate case flow challenges better.

In addition, you can see a clear picture of cash inflows and outflows. And, you can easily track metrics like:

• Free cash flow
• Credit losses
• Operating cash flow margin
• Cash conversion cycle
• Invoices overdue
• Days sales outstanding
• Cash flow coverage ratio
• Forecast variance
• Days payable outstanding

You can also transfer funds and manage liquidity seamlessly by integrating these tools with your banking platform.

Such software solutions also generate dynamic subscription forecasts based on real-time data. This allows you to identify potential cash shortages and surpluses.

FAQs

Q1. How can finance processes be improved?

You can improve your finance processes using technologies like RPA, AI, and cloud-based software to automate tedious tasks. 

Also, streamline your workflows by identifying and eliminating unnecessary processes.

Q2. How is subscription management used in finance?

Q3. What are the key success factors in a finance department?

Key success factors for a finance department include implementing effective processes and technologies to ensure accurate financial reporting and analysis. 

It also includes strong risk management, strategic collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Q4. What are the key factors affecting financial performance?

Financial performance can be affected by factors like economic trends, interest rates, and competitor activities.

Operational efficiency, financial management strategies, and regulatory compliance can also affect your financial performance.

Q5. How do you automate finance processes?

You automate your finance processes by integrating accounting, billing, and payment platforms. Then, set specific rules for tasks like generating invoices, applying late fees, and collecting recurring payments.

Q6. How is Younium used in finance?

Younium is a purpose-built SaaS tool, serving as a comprehensive subscription management platform utilized in finance to automate and streamline subscription billing processes. It offers features such as subscription creation, pricing flexibility, invoicing, revenue recognition, and analytics. By leveraging Younium, finance teams can efficiently manage subscription-based revenue, gain real-time insights into financial performance, reduce manual errors, and adapt to evolving business models with ease. It empowers businesses to scale their subscription offerings while maintaining financial control and compliance.

Wrapping It Up

Cutting tedious tasks helps improve your finance team’s productivity and frees up time to focus on more strategic decision-making.

But first, you need to properly identify those repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Then, you can leverage different technological solutions to streamline your workflows. Do you want to learn more? Our experts are ready to support you with finding the right fit for your business and if you are in SaaS landscape you will learn how to use Younium for your day to day operations. Book a meeting.