RPA for Finance and Accounting

RPA Use Case

RPA for finance and accounting is transforming the way numbers departments operate by automating reporting, bank reconciliations, tax provisions, reporting, and more.

RPA for finance and accounting is growing in popularity as more organizations are realizing the cost, time, and effort benefit of implementing process automation into their workflows. This is because of the repetitive, rule-based nature of these departments. Data entry, simple calculations, reporting—these tasks are so easy even a software robot can do it, and we’re going to show you how!.

The Problem with Manual Finance and Accounting Processes

The finance and accounting department is critical to the everyday operations of an organization. Chief Financial Officers are under constant pressure to optimize their department’s output. And yet, finance and accounting workflows are riddled with countless boring, objective tasks that hinder the department’s operations. Knowledge workers—who are capable of much more challenging duties—are stuck with humdrum activities. Errors, delays, inefficiency, and burnout are just a few symptoms of a manually-managed finance and accounting department. Robotic process automation (RPA) has been a key driver of innovation in finance and accounting departments, delivering a host of benefits including cost savings, accuracy, scalability, and better compliance.

Process Automation for Finance and Accounting Departments

Finance and accounting departments around the world are implementing RPA into their workflows. Robotic process automation is the use of software bots to eliminate employee’s tedious, repetitive tasks so they can focus on more valuable work. RPA software bots are onboarded to “learn” and then take over the mundane and repetitive tasks carried out by humans. In turn, this frees up the humans to perform more high-value duties. Robotic process automation can be added as an additional layer on top of existing infrastructures and applications. RPA can be implemented at an individual level or an organizational level (click here for more on RPA adoption strategies).

A step-by-step process module for the task to be automated is prepared by the managing individual. The actions specified in the process module can range from understanding what’s on a screen, completing the right keystrokes, navigating systems, identifying and extract data. In a finance and accounting department, these actions include data entry, calculations, and other duties commonly found in finance and accounting workflows. Let’s get into some more specific RPA use cases for finance and accounting.

RPA Use Cases for Finance and Accounting

Robotic process automation can be applied to several different areas of a finance and accounting departments, including invoice processing, bank reconciliations, tax provisions, reporting, and employee expense receipts.

RPA for Invoice Processing Automation

Handling invoices is one of the most monotonous, time-consuming, error-prone, costly activity in the finance and accounting department. All of these characteristics make it the perfect candidate for automation. RPA software robots are able to constantly monitor a dedicated folder where invoices sent. The invoice PDF attachments are downloaded and saved in a folder. Using optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, software robots can read and extract key info from each invoice. That information is then inputted into the company’s data base or ERP system. For invoices with business exceptions, like a past due date, the bot automatically sends an email to the managing knowledge worker with the affected invoice attached. At the end of the process, RPA sends a final report to the knowledge worker. RPA will help F&A professionals by ensuring invoices are processed accurately, quickly, and on-time. Check out this article on automating invoice processing to learn more.

rpa for finance and accounting

RPA for Bank Reconciliations

Managing different account types, institutions, payment times, and time zones makes bank reconciliation a huge hurdle for knowledge workers in the finance and accounting department. Rather than manually toggling between journals to match transactions, RPA can do it for you. Software bots can upload all the statements that they receive in paper, PDF, and excel formats onto a cloud-based statement processing system. Then a comparison is run to match payment details with bank records. All matching information is reconciled. If there are discrepancies in the data, like missing info or duplicates, RPA sends back the ledgers to the accounts payable team to investigate further.

Tax Provision Automation

Corporate F&A departments are responsible for setting aside capital in order to cover tax provisions. Manually calculating these estimates is quite cumbersome for knowledge workers. Nevertheless, the IRS will expect accurate expenditure each year. RPA can help improve this process. To begin the process, RPA bots connect to data source to create and export the trial balance data. Bots can cleanse the data against tax rules to make sure all compliances are met. Then, the bot can utilize visualization tools to showcase the forecasted tax provisions.

Financial Reporting Automation

Reporting and forecasting is critical aspect of the finance and accounting department. Major decisions are based off the past performance and future projections of the company’s financial health, so there is no room for error. Process automation can be utilized to enter queries in your data and analytics applications, extract data, save in a report, and send for your review. Bots can also be programmed to continually run analysis so you can constantly stay abreast of all the ongoing latest capital expenditures, investments, and financial statements.

Employee Expense Receipts

Automating the employee expense receipts can significantly improve the time, expense, and accuracy of the manual workflow. RPA bots will receive employee expense receipts via email, download the attachments, create a folder with the employee’s name, and save all the attachments in the corresponding employee’s folder. For an in-depth example, check out this article on automating your employee expense receipts, or watch the video below.

RPA Use Cases for Finance and Accounting

Benefits of RPA for Human Resources

Leveraging the emerging tech concept of robotic process automation will help finance and accounting departments work smarter not harder in several ways: higher employee and customer satisfaction, more productivity, fewer errors, higher retention rates, rapid ROI, scalability, and better compliancy to name a few. While the RPA bot works around the clock to complete the administrative, logic-based jobs without error, knowledge can pursue more interesting an interactive work. This will mitigate burnout and raise their satisfaction levels. RPA for HR will also delight new and existing employees as they are getting more attention from their human resource colleagues. RPA system can be scaled quickly and easily when the workload spikes, all the while keeping perfect compliancy. Last but certainly not least, The Institute for RPA estimates that process automation solutions can deliver an immediate savings of 25% to 40% in labor costs alone. McKinsey Digital also found that automating business processes can result in an ROI of between 30 and 200 percent in the first year. These are just a few of the sprawling list of benefits of RPA for human resources.

Higher employee satisfaction
New and existing employees receive more attention from HR representatives, meaning more of their needs are being met.

Knowledge workers are more fulfilled
Boring work is replaced with more interesting and in-person work which reduces quit rates.

Higher retention rates
With more satisfied HR specialists and employees, fewer individuals will seek alternative employment.

Higher productivity
RPA bots can complete tasks 24/7 while knowledge workers can add value to the company elsewhere.

Higher Accuracy
Human error is the cause of many HR discrepancies. As long as they are programmed correctly, software bots can deliver error-free workflows.

Scalability
RPA system can be quickly scaled to handle large volumes of data when the workload spikes.

Higher Compliance
Software bots can be programmed to follow required compliances with 100% accuracy.

Cost Savings
ROI for RPA is a major driving factor for adopting automation.

Elevating Finance and Accounting with Process Automation

The future is automated, but finance and accounting departments are stuck in the past. Now, robotic process automation is being introduced to help alleviate knowledge workers of repetitive, boring tasks. From payroll to employee training, RPA is helping HR sectors put their focus back on their workforce by automating these boring jobs. As a result, companies are realizing higher retention rates, more satisfaction, better accuracy, and more. Together, knowledge employees and digital workers can collaborate for a truly efficient and powerful workforce. Gartner reports 80% of finance leaders have implemented or are planning to implement RPA. Will you be among them?

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RPA for Human Resources

RPA Use Case

RPA for HR can help transform human resource departments by automating payroll, recruiting, training, onboarding, and more.

Robotic process automation for human resources is an increasingly-popular solution to address the boring, paperwork-driven nature of HR departments. RPA for HR can significantly impact the speed, accuracy, and productivity of the business sector. Let’s explore HR department problems, how RPA can help, some RPA use cases for human resources, and benefits of RPA for HR.

The Problem with Manual HR Processes

Between payroll, onboarding, training, compensation changes, reporting, and more, human resource departments are bloated with monotonous, rule-based tasks. The very essence of an HR department is humans, but these boring jobs hinder HR specialists from adding interpersonal, creative, and critical value to their workforce. What’s more, these humdrum assignments can lead to knowledge workers experiencing boredom, burnout, and even the urge to seek a more challenging job. With nearly half of HR tasks having the potential to be automated, it’s time to put the “human” back in human resources with the help of robotic process automation.

rpa for hr

Process Automation for HR Departments

HR departments around the world are implementing RPA into their repetitive, dull processes. Robotic process automation is the use of software bots to complete redundant, logic-based tasks so often found in human resource job descriptions. These tasks include payroll, employee onboarding and training, expense receipts, and other work that require a significant amount of manual and repetitive labor. RPA can complete these functions 24/7 with zero errors. In some situations, RPA for HR is reported to have slashed processing time by 85% and reduced the time of onboarding a new hire by 90%.

RPA Use Cases for Human Resources

Robotic process automation can be applied to several different areas of a human resource department. Wherever there are monotonous and objective duties, RPA can be deployed. A few RPA use cases for human resources include payroll, recruiting, onboarding, reporting, training, and expense reports.

Payroll

The payroll process is tiresome and time-consuming. Assign this task to RPA bots for speedy, error-free compensation distribution. A robot can pull salary data for each employee, automatically transfer funds on a scheduled date, and send a final report once the process is complete.

Recruiting

Spend less time sourcing and assessing candidates and more time engaging them in person with RPA for human resources recruiting. RPA bots can search through data bases and professional listing sites for employees that meet certain pre-determined criteria like education, skills, and experience. They will then automatically pull qualified individuals and add them to your HR/recruiting system or Excel sheet for the recruiter to review.

rpa for hr

Training

Training is a time-consuming and repetitive process for human resource representatives. RPA can be implemented to identify the role of the new employee and automatically send appropriate login credentials, training modules, and employee handbooks for that specific position straight to the new employee’s inbox.

Onboarding

Using RPA to administer new employee paperwork can quickly and easily be done by a software bot so the HR rep can spend more face-to-face time with the person. Automatically distribute necessary paperwork, utilize OCR technology to extract the new hire’s information, and input it into the employee database with robotic process automation.

Reporting

Performance reviewing is an important part of human resource departments. Robotic process automation can be utilized to enter queries in your data and analytics applications, extract data, save in a report, and send for your review.

Employee Expense Receipts

Automating the employee expense receipts can significantly improve the time, expense, and accuracy of the manual workflow. RPA bots will receive employee expense receipts via email, download the attachments, create a folder with the employee’s name, and save all the attachments in the corresponding employee’s folder. For an in-depth example, check out this article on automating your employee expense receipts, or watch the video below.

rpa for HR

Benefits of RPA for Human Resources

Leveraging the emerging tech concept of robotic process automation illuminates new business possibilities for HR departments: higher employee and customer satisfaction, more productivity, fewer errors, higher retention rates, to name a few. While the RPA bot works around the clock to complete the administrative, logic-based jobs without error, HR specialists can pursue more interesting an interactive work. This will mitigate burnout and raise their satisfaction levels. RPA for HR will also delight new and existing employees as they are getting more attention from their human resource colleagues. These are just a few of the sprawling list of benefits of RPA for human resources.

Higher employee satisfaction

New and existing employees receive more attention from HR representatives, meaning more of their needs are being met.

HR workers are more fulfilled

Boring work is replaced with more interesting and in-person work which reduces quit rates.

Higher retention rates

With more satisfied HR specialists and employees, fewer individuals will seek alternative employment.

Higher productivity

RPA bots can complete tasks 24/7 while knowledge workers can add value to the company elsewhere.

Higher Accuracy

Human error is the cause of many HR discrepancies. As long as they are programmed correctly, software bots can deliver error-free workflows.

Elevating Human Resources with Process Automation

For years, human resource departments have been bogged down with menial tasks that take away from time that could be spent strengthening employee relationships and building company culture. Now, robotic process automation is being introduced to help alleviate knowledge workers of repetitive, boring tasks. From payroll to employee training, RPA is helping HR sectors put their focus back on their workforce by automating these boring jobs. As a result, companies are realizing higher retention rates, more satisfaction, better accuracy, and more. That is the power of RPA for HR.

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rpa use case facebook data scraping problem statement (1)

RPA Use Case: Facebook Data Scraping

RPA Use Case

We take you through an example of how RPA can be used in social media data scraping workflows for faster, more accurate information retrieval.

Problem

Business teams and marketers keep a close eye on social media activity to monitor their brand via posts and comments from the public. They retrieve information including number of posts; frequent times of activity; user-generated content; and demographic information like location, age, and job title. This data can be used to better understand your audience for business gains or for sentiment analysis. While there is value in this information, the process of recouping it is tedious and boring. In order for it to be worthwhile, business teams and marketers need to speed up the process. Let’s see an example of how a software robot can be utilized here and can save time and efforts for the business.

Solution

Data scraping is the perfect candidate for robotic process automation because it is repetitive and rule-based. A software bot can be programmed to crawl social media pages or groups for several different types of data. The bot automatically saves the information in an Excel sheet for your business or marketing purposes. Let’s look at an example using UiPath Studio and Facebook.

Here’s how it works: Once the bot is triggered, it will automatically crate a folder with the run date. Next, it will open the Facebook application and navigate to the group you want to investigate. The bot will then scrape all post data from the last 24 hours. Once completed, the data from the group will be copied into a spreadsheet inside the folder. This process will be repeated for all groups assigned in the process.

rpa use case facebook data scraping problem statement (1)

Impact

Implementing RPA for data scraping can have a positive and wide-spread impact on the process. Replacing humans with robots to sift through Facebook groups to check for new activity and record it will significantly speed up the process. Not only that, software bots are 100% accurate if programmed correctly, so they won’t get distracted or lose their train of thought during the boring task. This will increase the accuracy of the data scraping process. In turn, businesses will gain a better understanding of how social media users behave online and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly. Implementing RPA into this process will also free up business users and marketers to complete more creative and valuable jobs like customers service or content creations.

rpa use case facebook data scraping problem statement (1)

Conclusion

Data scraping is a popular task carried out by many business users and marketers for things like demographic studies and sentiment analysis. But the manual process is riddled with errors and very laborious. Social media is becoming more and more prominent, so organizations would be wise to expedite this process. Software bots can be programmed to open applications and crawl groups for activity. This can be applied to Facebook business pages, or any other social media feed where user data needs to be collected.

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robotic process automation for invoice

RPA Use Case: Automate Your Accounts Payable Workflow

RPA Use Case

Robotic process automation for invoices can rescue your employees from boring tasks, save your company from expensive mistakes, and deliver a fast and efficient workflow solution to your organization. Here is an example of how it works.

Problem

Businesses of all shapes and sizes waste valuable time and energy every day by managing their invoices by hand. The accounts payable department is bloated with the manual process of entering invoice data, creating paper invoices, matching purchase orders, and filing endlessly. To complete a single invoice, AP controllers must toggle back and forth between their email and invoice preparation application, be it Oracle NetSuite, Wave, QuickBooks, Tipalti, Xero, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, ERPNext, Odoo, GunCash, TurboCASH, Sage Inacct, or other ERP softwares. Not only is this process time consuming, it is also riddled with human error leading to costly consequences. What’s worse is this boring, repetitive job can result in employee burnout and high turnover rates.

robotic process automation for invoice

AP Controller can add an average of 5 invoice per hours at 12 minute per invoice. This process includes which includes data entry, proofing and correcting the mistakes, and processing the invoice. A single invoice done manually can cost a company anywhere from $2.25 to $3.25 in hard and soft costs. This is a yearly cost of $36,000. Companies need a faster and cheaper alternative for invoice processing.

robotic process automation for invoice

Solution

Robotic process automation can rescue your employees from boring tasks, save your company from expensive mistakes, and deliver a fast and efficient workflow solution to your organization. Invoice processing is the perfect candidate for RPA because it is boring, repetitive, and rule-based. Software bots can be programmed to process invoice data, validate information, create business exceptions, send invoices, and even generate summary reports once they’ve finished a job—all automatically. Here’s an example of how it works using Wave Invoices as the AP application:

Here’s how it works: The software robot receives invoices as attachments in emails, creates a folder with run dates, and then downloads all the invoices. The RPA bot then opens the Wave application and logs in with secure credentials. It then creates the invoices using the data from the email attachments. If any errors are detected—like a past-due notice—the bot automatically sends an email to the business detailing the problem with the affected invoice attached. A summary report that includes the validated invoices and failed invoices is also sent automatically once the bot has finished its tasks. We used Wave in the example above, but no matter what AP application you use, RPA can be implemented to automate your specific accounts payable workflow.

Impact

Using robotic process automation to streamline the invoice workflow significantly and positively impacts the cost, time, and accuracy of the task. If we remove the knowledge workers from the typical invoice processing workflow above and replace them with digital workers/software bots, invoices can be completed in just 2 minutes at a cost of $0.40 to $0.50. And rather than spending $36,000 annually to manage invoices, the company will only expend $1,200 thanks to robotic process automation.

robotic process automation for invoice

Conclusion

For decades, businesses have been invoicing the same, wasteful way. Now, RPA has arrived to disrupt the process for higher yields, greater savings, and more accuracy. Accounts payable teams no longer waste away toggling between applications, manually verifying data, and sending emails. These jobs are now replaced by robots, freeing up knowledge workers for more important jobs like tracking down payments from customers. A high-functioning workforce consists of robots and humans working together to achieve maximum efficiency and output. Who’s ready to automate with robotic process automation services?

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automated invoices and po requests

RPA Use Case: Automating Hospital PO Requests and Invoices

RPA Use Case

Automating hospital PO Requests and Invoices can lead to higher employee satisfaction and ROI. Let’s look at an example.

Problem

IONM companies have different billing requirements for each facility they work with. Most of the requirements concern when the purchase order (PO) requests and invoices must be sent—the frequency could be daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the facility. All patients can be group together in a single invoice, or sent individually. Hospital billers at the IONM companies must keep track of each hospital’s requirements and compliances. The problem is that all of this data is managed manually by hospital billers. Loads of effort and lots of valuable time are poured into these repetitive, boring tasks. This leads to burnout, inaccuracies, as well as wasted time and resources.

automating invoices and po requests

Solution

Robotic process automation can be implemented to solve this problem. Clerical work like PO requests and invoice management are the perfect candidates for automation because they are repetitive and rule-based. Software bots can be programmed to convert all PO requests to invoices per each hospital’s compliances. Then, invoices can be scheduled to automatically send daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever time requirement is necessary. These RPA software bots can work 24/7/365 without any breaks or errors.

Here’s how it works. Robotic process automation can be added as an additional layer on top of existing infrastructures and applications. RPA can be implemented at an individual level or an organizational level (click here for more on RPA adoption strategies). A step-by-step process module for the task to be automated is prepared by the managing individual. The actions specified in the process module can range from understanding what’s on a screen, completing the right keystrokes, navigating systems, identifying and extract data. It is at this time that the managing individual also includes logic based on each hospital’s schedules and compliances. Once the module is complete, you can turn your software bot loose to start completing its tasks!

automating invoices and po requests