Your sales team uses Salesforce, IT is using JIRA to manage internal inquiries, and your customer success team is using Gainsight to manage the influx of customer requests. But you? You’re stuck using decades old technology.
Email was never designed as an accounting tool. Using email to manage the inflow of communications and documents to/from customers and vendors may make sense on paper, but when managing multiple streams and questions from customers and vendors, email quickly outgrows its welcome for accounting teams. With a growing number of customers and vendors, and a larger volume of requests to be addressed, things can quickly become overwhelming for your team and seemingly impossible to organize.
Still not sure? Here are two sure fire signs, you need to find a dedicated tool to manage your accounting workflows.
Reporting and Data
How long does it take to resolve a dispute or invoice inquiry? How quickly does an activity move from creation to closure? With email you can dig for the timestamps on each response in a customer thread – but accumulating and analyzing this data requires significant time and effort. And once everything is collected, there is no easy tool to see trends without additional manual work.
A shared accounting inbox, like Lockstep Inbox, records this data automatically into a customizable dashboard, making it easy to track key data points, like open activities, time-to-close, and outstanding invoices.
Tracking activities turn into tracking down activities
Tackling an enormous, unorganized pile of emails everyday can be daunting. With multiple people working from the same email inbox, the likelihood that more than one or two messages might slip through unnoticed or get lost in the shuffle, is significant. When managing collections, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and a missed email can waste valuable time, adding time to your collection activity. And if it’s with a vendor? Your supply chain could be cut off at the worse possible time, costing you more than lost time.
With a shared, connected accounting inbox, organization by customer and outstanding activities are built right into the product. You can search through all your data quickly and easily. With a connected accounting inbox, email can be sent directly through the software, pulling in important details directly from your ERP.
Lockstep Inbox is designed exclusively for accounting and finance accounting email workflows. Lockstep Inbox is the only shared accounting email tool that connects to both email and your existing accounting software.
