3 Reasons to Invest in Your Financial Tech Stack Now

How Do You Scale Efficiently?  

3 Reasons to Invest in Your Financial Tech Stack Now 

When you first start a business, financial and human resources are precious commodities. Every business decision must run through a cost-benefit analysis to ensure your company can realize a positive ROI. This includes the technology stack you invest in. In “Tech Stack Part I”, we’ll take a closer look at how investing in a financial Tech Stack can save your company time, avoid costly mistakes, and help set your firm up for future success.

“When you use an appropriately sized and scaled Tech Stack, you improve every aspect of your business.”  One 8 Solutions’ Tracy MacLachlan, Project Specialist, Bookkeeper

Tech Stack, Part I 

First, what is a Technology Stack? A Technology Stack or Tech Stack is the collection of tools, coding languages, platforms, apps, pieces of software, etc. that a company uses to build its products, carry out its business operations, and monitor its performance metrics.  

Why should my company invest in a financial Tech Stack?

1. Efficiency 

Many business leaders make the same mistake when starting out. They have a tight budget and try to bootstrap building solutions, or worse, creating manual processes in-house for tracking and processing their financial transactions rather than investing in software or an SaaS platform. The risks here are prolific – expense receipts get lost, bills can get misplaced, deposits can go unrecorded, and keeping track of matching payments to bills or receipts to invoices becomes a nightmare of paper and manual effort. Although it may seem less expensive initially, this is a recipe for disaster and ultimately can prove much more costly in late fees, reconciliation costs, damaged relationships with both vendors and customers, and can create a situation where you cannot easily see the financial state of your business at any given time.   

One of the other things to consider is the time it costs your team to execute and track manual functions and processes – time that could be otherwise be spent focusing on your core business goals and growth. According to the Harvard Business Review, research shows that companies innovate nearly 20 percent faster when they license existing technologies instead of building them internally. “When you use an appropriately sized and scaled Tech Stack for receiving, paying, tracking and monitoring your financials, you improve every aspect of your business from the ease of working with you, to your ability to know at any moment the financial health of your company, to preparing and supporting your tax returns,” says Tracy MacLachlan, One 8 Solutions’ Project Specialist and Bookkeeper.  “Good financials are the key to accessing credit, gaining investors, and to being able to make decisions around growth.  They are the foundation everything else is built on. It only makes sense to use technology to ensure they are managed properly, and the best part – when scaled for your business needs – it can end up saving you far more than the cost of the investment.”   

2. It’s customizable

A good financial partner will help you choose your Tech Stack according to support features, performance, scalability, and security needs. For instance, if you’re already using QuickBooks, you can seamlessly integrate receipt/bill capture and a payment system to not only cut down on the time it takes, but that will automatically track the activity and transmit the backup data into your QuickBooks account. Plus your Tech Stack can seamlessly integrate with QuickBooks, Melio for check paying, and other accounting systems. Melio is a 3rd party application that fits the need of bill pay which is a worthy addition to any accounting Tech Stack. Melio is built into QuickBooks® Online and can easily integrate with QuickBooks Desktop. There is almost no reason to print or mail physical checks when you can give the option to the vendor to get paid via ACH, or have Melio print a physical check and send it out on your company’s behalf for no cost. This Tech Stack highlights how easily your time and accuracy can be streamlined.  

3. We’ll Onboard You

Did you know that tax and accounting firms have about a 10 percent client adoption rate of new technologies and tools? Why? Mostly because business leaders don’t know how to use the tools required. At One 8 Solutions, one of our superpowers is educating clients 1:1 for about seven days on how the Tech Stack works so they are completely in the know. Even better, One 8 Solutions manages the tech stack so our clients are freed up to focus on the business.  

In conclusion 

Don’t try to save money by solving problems with a DIY fix. It’s rarely either. Invest in a first-rate technology stack early on, and let your team focus on their real priority– improving the value of your core product and the future of your company. You’ll need more than a Tech Stack as a baseline for doing business. This migration will become part of your culture, your brand, and may affect the trajectory of your company. Stay tuned next month for Tech Stack Part II where we’ll dive into how your Tech Stack can get you paid faster along with more effective cash flow forecasting.  

Contact Us 

One 8 Solutions has your business Tech Stack covered from the first step until the last. Click here to schedule a Zoom consultation at no cost to you.